Page - 111 - in Entangled Entertainers - Jews and Popular Culture in Fin-de-Siècle Vienna

Jewishness and the Viennese Volkssänger | 111 Jeinkef” (Th e kosher Jeinkef), Lorens holds Jews responsible not only for the stock market crash but also for the antisemitism of the press.128 Th e antisemitic texts that Carl Lorens penned do not seem to have deleter i- ously aff ected the friendships he had with many Jews.129 Th is apparent paradox illustrates the complex and diffi cult relationship between Jewish and non-Jewish Volkssänger. Volkov’s concept of the “cultural code” helps explain this phenome- non. Th at is why some historians doubt that the inhabitants of Vienna in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries in fact interpreted Lorens’s songs, which Josef Modl also sang, as viciously antisemitic.130 German philosopher Jürgen Habermas argues that a community can only ex- ist if its formation is not undermined by linguistic articulations. In particular, he emphasizes participation in ritual acts.131 It is possible that there were these or similar forms of socialization at work in fi n-de-siècle Vienna that contributed to neutralizing antisemitic stereotypes in the plays, as we saw in Lorens’s songs. If this was the case, then Albert Hirsch’s concept of a special performative com- munity involving both Jews and non-Jews was not a utopian ideal. In this sense, Hirsch’s concept merely served to highlight preexisting social processes and attri- bute greater signifi cance to them. Approaches to Albert Hirsch’s Jewishness Up until the meeting held on 21 March 1903, Jewishness did not play a role in the Volkssänger war. In any event, it was not explicitly mentioned. But during the meeting at Seifert’s Saal, Recher brought up Jewishness in a discriminatory fashion, and Hirsch also mentioned it in referring to himself. Hirsch consciously presented himself as a Jew, who, despite perceiving a degree of similarity between himself and antisemites, specifi cally Karl Lueger, understood the limits in in- teracting with them and did not wish to exceed these limits. As he described it, his Jewishness prevented him from joining his colleagues in exclaiming “All hail Lueger!” In the following, I search for additional evidence of Hirsch’s Jewishness. Can we identify additional clues that point to his Jewish self-understanding, apart from the explicit reference he made during the Volkssänger meeting? To answer this question, I analyze Hirsch’s actions and statements. Rather than arguing for an additional obvious avowal of religious affi liation, I present evidence of Hirsch’s performative articulations that underscore a particular kind of relationship to Judaism. Th e fi rst indication of Hirsch’s Jewish self-understanding, I assert, lies in his sense of solidarity with Jews who were in distress. Th is does not mean that he was hard-hearted toward non-Jews. On the contrary, he was often involved with assisting impoverished colleagues and thus garnered great sympathy, which went beyond the Volkssänger milieu. However, there is no evidence that Hirsch also This open access edition has been made available under a CC BY 4.0 license thanks to the support of Knowledge Unlatched.