Page - 131 - in Entangled Entertainers - Jews and Popular Culture in Fin-de-Siècle Vienna

Jewish Spaces of Retreat at the Turn of the Twentieth Century | 131 those who live in these old buildings usually have good neighbors, in the evenings there is sometimes a lively game of tarok [Tarokp artie] under the chestnut tree. What fun and banter are to be had at such courtyard tarok games. And as soon as dawn comes, the courtyard is again full of children, who set out ropes to make swings at the foot of the old chestnut tree.43 Th ese homey descriptions represent only one side of his stories. Time and again, Löwy allows darker aspects to creep in that portray Old Vienna or the village-like structure of the city’s periphery in an unfl attering light. We see an example of this more insidious aspect in his text “Die Poldi” (Poldi), which is presented as a short story about the city’s outskirts.44 Th e main character, Poldi, is described as a charming and lovely young woman with whom many young men have fallen in love. Yet she does not pay her suitors any attention. None of them knows that she is having a love aff air with a stranger. She becomes pregnant and has his child. Since she and her lover are not married and having a child out of wedlock is seen as shameful, Poldi tries to keep the pregnancy and birth secret. Her fear of public disgrace eventually leads her to infanticide. Th e police fi nd out and Poldi is sen- tenced to a long imprisonment, but she dies only one year into her incarceration. In “Poldi,” Löwy not only recounts the memorable fate of a young woman, but he also criticizes the manners and morals in the outskirts, especially the an- tiquated stance on intimate relationships, which are only considered legitimate upon marriage. Other forms of sexual activity are frowned upon in such a way that the fear of being found out proves to be greater than the horror of commit- ting murder. Löwy’s book Geschichten aus der Wienerstadt (Stories from the city of Vienna) makes the tension between the idyll and a moral abyss even more explicit. Th e foreword states that the author delights readers with stories from the outskirts and Old Vienna. It goes on to describe the outlying districts as places where Viennese women and men “sit in little houses, humble parlors, courtyards from which the green has not yet disappeared.”45 Only one Jew appears in the whole book. His Jewishness is not addressed specifi cally and is evident only in his name: “Moses Goldschlagpapier from Rzeszow.”46 Apart from a short mention that he works as a buyer, he does not play a role in the story. Above all, Löwy character- izes life in Old Vienna and the outskirts respectively as convivial spaces. People make merry together and spend most of their free time with one another. Unlike the present, which many of Löwy’s contemporaries experienced as solitary and isolated, premodern V ienna seems to have provided for a fulfi lling existence. According to Löwy, the conviviality that characterizes the existence in Old Vienna and the outskirts stems not least from the cramped housing and living conditions that drives people out of their homes and thereby encourages contact with neighbors. However, the eff ects of these conditions are not limited to foster- ing community. Th ey also sow the seeds for various types of wrongdoing. Poverty This open access edition has been made available under a CC BY 4.0 license thanks to the support of Knowledge Unlatched.