Page - 124 - in Entangled Entertainers - Jews and Popular Culture in Fin-de-Siècle Vienna

124 | Entangled Entertainers tury, th e Judenplatz is described as an example of Old Vienna that has endured in the midst of new Viennese (ne u-Wiener) surroundings.12 An article on sections of Leopoldstadt, the Prater and what is today the third district, or th e Landstrasse, provides further documentation thereof. Among other things, the article goes back to the seventeenth century and mentions a house located on th e Unterer Werd, which later became Leopoldstadt. It was torn down in 1901. Th e article specifi es that it had been known as a Jewish tavern since 1623. Th e building was situated on a street that was named He rrengasse three hundred years prior and was known as the seat of wealthy Jewish merchants.13 However, the article does not acknowledge that this circumscribed area was in fact the Jewish ghetto (1625–70) and that Jews were forbidden from occupying the city long after it was abolished.14 Nevertheless, it gives the impression that there was a continuous Jewish presence well into the twentieth century. Th e International Exhibition of Music and Th eater (Internationale Ausstel- lung für Musik- und Th eaterwesen), which took place from May to October 1892 at th e Wiener Prater, illustrates a “Jewish” eff ort to present Jews as an integral part of Old Viennese society. One of the event’s most popular attrac- tions was the representation of Old Vienna, with a reconstruction of the Hoher Markt, a square in Vienna’s city center, as the centerpiece.15 Osk ar Marmorek, a well-known Jewish architect, was commissioned for the project. To that end, he studied building plans from the seventeenth century. Nonetheless, these only served as rough guidelines for his work. To design the buildings, he relied upon his imagination, by means of which he “‘understood’ the historical square.”16 To a certain extent, he played with and constructed the past. Marmorek, who was familiar with Zionism and had a keen sense of Jewishness, did not miss the opportunity to reveal the historical existence of Jews through his work. We may observe this in the fact that he included the Judengasse among the few side streets that led to his reconstruction of the Hoher Markt.17 Marmorek constructed a notion of the past that was also marked by Jews. In this manner, the exhibition conveyed to viewers that Jews belonged to Vienna’s past. 18 Th e second diff erence between the Jewish and the general constructions of Old Vienna was directly tied to the emphasis placed on a Jewish presence in the city’s past. Th is emphasis did not lie in the representation of the city itself, but rather in showing Jews in peaceful interaction with non-Jews. Albert Hirsch’s work serves as a signifi cant example of this manner of portray- ing Jewish existence. At the beginning of 1902, his troupe performed a burlesque that he had written entitled Der Apostel vom Schottenfeld (Th e apostle of Schot- tenfeld).19 On the one hand, newspaper advertisements demonstrate its ties to the city’s past, as they market it as an old Viennese play. On the other, this con- nection would have been apparent to many contemporaries from the title itself.20 Although Sch ottenfeld was not on Vienna’s periphery, after it was incorporated into the seventh district in 1850, it stood in close relationship to the outskirts and This open access edition has been made available under a CC BY 4.0 license thanks to the support of Knowledge Unlatched.