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114 | Entangled Entertainers
Hirsch never made any attempt to adapt to non-Jewish majority culture. Rather,
he pursued his own interests. And he did not have to integrate himself into the
Viennese Volkssänger scene. Th
ere was no reason for this, because he was already
an important member of it. Nevertheless, he also wanted his fellow perform-
ers to accept him as an equal and treat him fi
rst and foremost as a Volkssänger
rather than a Jew, despite any factual diff
erences between him and the majority of
them. Quarreling parties should conduct a disagreement with sound arguments,
not by attacking the opposition with disparaging remarks related to religious or
ethnic affi
liation. We may reasonably conclude that Hirsch was convinced that
unprejudiced coexistence was possible in a community whose members commit
to creating it on a performative basis. Individual participation in processes of
group formulation, rather than primordial codes, should be the decisive factor
for structuring belonging.
Th
ese community-building processes include church visits. At times, Hirsch
demonstratively ignored the divisiveness of religion. Th
is was not only the case
with the fl
ag consecration ceremony, but also, as another example, his attendance
at the funerals of colleagues.147 In his farces, he repeatedly touched on the topic
of Jews attending church. Hirsch’s personal church visits, as well as those of the
Jewish characters in his pieces, are always associated with a certain occasion, es-
pecially with concrete liminal events. Th
e purpose of this attendance is either to
mourn the death of a colleague, to celebrate an individual’s acceptance into a reli-
gious community, or, as was the case with the consecration of the Volkssänger fl ag,
to strengthen ritually the performing singers’ collective identity. Th
ose present at
such events pursue a common goal that binds them together, at least for the dura-
tion of the event. Distinctions and diff
erences that separate them in everyday life
seem to be largely eliminated during these kinds of ceremonial occasions. Th
ey
take place in a kind of “interstitial space” that is neither part of nor completely
removed from everyday life, therefore allowing for the formation of a particular
kind of community. Th
e French ethnologist Arnold van Gennep (1873–1957)
theorized such a “liminal space” in 1909.148 His colleague, the Scottish anthro-
pologist Victor Turner (1920–1983), further developed his concept, introducing
the notion of communitas, a space in which the participants merge together.149
Hirsch’s particular sense of connection with those present at the church during
the consecration of the Volkssänger fl
ag, which also allowed him to fi nd common
ground with the antisemite Lueger, may have been the result of a “threshold”
experience.
Hirsch’s localization of community in a liminal space is not rooted in a
long-established notion of history that typically serves as the origin of national
myths and conceptions of ethnic authenticity.150 Rather, he sought to evoke the
recent past when he described examples of Jewish and non-Jewish coexistence.
Th
ere was a direct connection between Hirsch’s understanding of time and
his concept of space, in which community was constituted performatively. Other
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Entangled Entertainers
Jews and Popular Culture in Fin-de-Siècle Vienna
- Title
- Entangled Entertainers
- Subtitle
- Jews and Popular Culture in Fin-de-Siècle Vienna
- Author
- Klaus Hödl
- Publisher
- Berghahn Books
- Date
- 2019
- Language
- English
- License
- CC BY 4.0
- ISBN
- 978-1-78920-031-7
- Size
- 14.86 x 23.2 cm
- Pages
- 196
- Categories
- Geschichte Vor 1918
- International
Table of contents
- Introduction 1
- 1. Jews in Viennese Popular Culture around 1900 as Research Topic 13
- 2. Jewish Volkssänger and Musical Performers in Vienna around 1900 44
- 3. Jewishness and the Viennese Volkssänger 78
- 4. Jewish Spaces of Retreat at the Turn of the Twentieth Century 121
- 5. From Difference to Similarity 148
- Conclusion 163
- Bibliography 166
- Index 179