Page - 134 - in Entangled Entertainers - Jews and Popular Culture in Fin-de-Siècle Vienna

134 | Entangled Entertainers of time. Walter Benjamin, Siegfried Kracauer, and especially Georg Simmel, all of whom were Jewish, are some of the most famous commentators on this per- ception of time.58 A comparison between the aforementioned proponents of a break from the past and those who advocated that it be made subjective, and with it an expan- sion of the present, reveals that the fi rst group does not include Jews, while the second consists of Jews alone. Th e American historian Stephen Kern traces this diff erence to the historical experiences of the Jews. According to Kern, Jews, on account of their historical existence in the ghettos and the lack of their own home, ascribed little meaning to place and instead became fi xated upon time. Since Jews could look back on a long history, their concept of time was anchored in the past to a far greater degree than that of non-Jews.59 Generally speaking, Kern provides an insightful point of departure for tracing the development of a distinct concept of time and place among Jews over the course of their history.60 For my analysis of fi n-de-siècle Vienna, however, Kern’s assertion applies only in part. Space, in its function as an interstice, was of the utmost importance to Viennese Jews, as I have demonstrated with the examples of Felix Salten and Stefan Zweig.61 Nonetheless, we may bring Kern’s argument regarding the diff erences between how Jews and non-Jews understood time to bear on the case of the Hapsburg capital. It appears that there was a dividing line also in Vienna between Jews and non-Jews, between those who sought to break from the past and those who advocated the notion of an expanded present. Moreover, this diff erence in the perception of time, as I demonstrate below, was connected to ideas about social interaction and concepts of space. A present that is experienced as the sum of momentary impressions largely corresponds to a net- work of interpersonal relationships that is just as fragmented. Th e reason for this lies in the lack of the temporal continuum that is necessary to deepen liaisons. In this manner, people often remain strangers. Georg Simmel clearly describes this atmosphere in his thoughts on life in the metropolis, which is defi ned by a multitude of selective sensory impressions. He writes, “In formal terms, the spiritual attitude of city dwellers toward one another may be deemed as reserve.” Moreover, Simmel continues that “as a consequence of . . . [the reserve] we often do not recognize by sight neighbors of many years.”62 Although physically pres- ent, one’s closest neighbor is a stranger in everyday life. Th ere is no time to engage with fellow human beings. In lieu of places where diff erences among people be- come insignifi cant and solidarity may be forged, diff erent groups have their own respective spaces. In this context, we may also refer to the spaces the Volkssänger Carl Lorenz denoted as Jewish (see chapter 3). By contrast, the expanded present off ers a time frame in which human rela- tionships can be formed such that a feeling of togetherness arises. Primarily taking Niklas Luhmann’s argument as a point of departure, Aleida Assmann writes that in “an expanded space of the present” there may be “simultaneous perceptions, This open access edition has been made available under a CC BY 4.0 license thanks to the support of Knowledge Unlatched.