Page - 116 - in Entangled Entertainers - Jews and Popular Culture in Fin-de-Siècle Vienna

116 | Entangled Entertainers 17. IWE 232 (24 August 1903): 7. 18. IWE 314 (15 November 1903): 18. 19. See IWE 359 (31 December 1903): 5. 20. See IWE 359 (31 December 1903): 5. 21. IWE 356 (28 December 1901): 4. 22. In fact, only a very few Volkssänger suff ered from a physical handicap. Th e others surrep- titiously obtained permission to be a Volkssänger by pretending to have poor eyesight. See Elisabeth Brauner-Berger, “Volkssängertum im Wandel” (PhD diss., Vienna, 1993), 52. 23. A few Volkssänger had attempted to do this some years before: see Iris Fink, “‘Wien, Wien, nur Du allein . . .’ Das Wiener Lied im österreichischen Kabarett als Ort der Identitätsfi ndung,” ed. Joanne McNally and Peter Sprengel, Hundert Jahre Kabarett: Zur Inszenierung gesellschaftlicher Identität zwischen Protest und Propaganda (Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann, 2013), 51–63, here 53. 24. Despite the objections, it was not long before the Volkssänger began to charge a fi xed entry fee (fi xes Entrée). Indeed, one of the fi rst was Salomon Fischer. After he received a license to manage a singspiel hall in 1904, he abandoned the practice of collecting donations from the audience at the Prater Orpheum, where he was a guest performer at the time (see IWE 103 [13 April 1904]: 6; IWE 131 [11 May 1904]: 11). 25. Brauner-Berger, “Volkssängertum,” 53. 26. IWE 356 (28 December 1901): 4. 27. IWE 183 (6 July 1900): 15. 28. Amon Berg was the author of numerous well-known one-act pieces, solo scenes, and satirical songs, such as “Th e Old Drahrer” and “Dear Augustin.” He began his career in 1875 and rendered great services as co-founder of the Allgemeine Wiener Volkssängerver- ein. In the 1890s, he suff ered a stroke on stage and was unable to practice his profession for a long time. After a period of impoverishment, he was fi nally able to make a come- back (see IWE 62 [3 March 1899]: 5.) 29. Strict laws governed Volkssänger performances in Vienna. Performing musicians were required to have a permit, issued under specifi c prerequisites. For example, one of the requirements for obtaining a permit was that applicants had to reside in Vienna for a certain period of time (usually multiple years). But in reality, the leaders or managers of Volkssänger groups, who were “licensed” (li zenzirt), often hired performers who did not have a permit. Amon Berg criticized the fact that ensembles not only had a mixture of licensed and unlicensed members, but they also sometimes provided guest spots to foreign Volkssänger. 30. See IWE 350 (21 December 1901): 15. 31. IWE 356 (28 December 1901): 4. 32. Hauser was the fi rst and longtime chairman of the “League” of Viennese Volkssänger. 33. IWE 356 (28 December 1901): 4. 34. IWE 3 (3 January 1902): 6. 35. Koller, Volkssängertum, 166f. 36. IWE 321 (21 November 1899): 4; IWE 329 (29 November 1899): 2. 37. IWE 261 (23 September 1900): 9. 38. For more general information on the topic of xenophobia and social envy, see Herfried Münkler, Populismus in Deutschland. Eine Geschichte seiner Mentalitäten, Mythen und Symbole (Berkeley, CA: Counterpoint Press, 2012), 15–16. 39. IWE 356 (28 December 1901): 4. This open access edition has been made available under a CC BY 4.0 license thanks to the support of Knowledge Unlatched.