Page - 136 - in Entangled Entertainers - Jews and Popular Culture in Fin-de-Siècle Vienna

136 | Entangled Entertainers representations of Alt-Berlin.66 Early on, Ury took the step from the past into the present, which for him was accompanied by experiences of alienation. Little Kohn Th e written version of Little Kohn, a work by Caprice, was approved by the cen- sorship board at the end of 1902 and performed by the Budapest Orpheum Society the following year.67 Th e performances were among the troupe’s greatest popular successes, even though they did not begin to approach the popularity of Die Klabriaspartie. Little Kohn refl ects the consequences of a transitory present that is experienced as fl eeting and reveals the diffi culty of building relationships between people, especially Jews and non-Jews, against this backdrop. At the same time, the work takes up antisemitic ideas and provides an illuminating glimpse of one of the tactics that part of Viennese Jewish society employed upon encoun- tering views hostile to Jews. Little Kohn counters two specifi c antisemitic stereotypes. First, the piece con- stitutes a response to the fi gure of the “Little Kohn,” a motif that was very pop- ular in the form of a series of postcards and as a theme for songs and poems around the turn of the century.68 Little Kohn’s appearance was an emblematic product of the contemporary antisemitic imagination. He exhibited the essential physical features that were ascribed to Jews. Th ese included the hooked nose, thick lips, large ears, crooked legs, and a small stature.69 Th ese peculiarities are clearly discernable in the caricatures of Little Kohn that appeared in Kikeriki, an antisemitic Viennese satirical journal. 70 In addition to his physical characteristics, Little Kohn had two other defi ning attributes. Th e fi rst concerned his fl ightiness. He was diffi cult to catch, always appearing briefl y and then disappearing again. In a sense, Little Kohn simulta- neously embodied the temporal experience of the late nineteenth century and contemporary mobility. Hundreds of thousands of people were ripped from their everyday existence each year and roamed about, searching for better living con- ditions. Th ey migrated from the rural provinces into the cities and from one country to another. Whereas some accepted this uprooting from their spheres of experience, others perceived a threat to the existing order in the ensuing uncer- tainty. Little Kohn embodied this sense of instability that could not be circum- vented. Yet even more than the general phenomenon of vagrancy, he was the epitome of the wandering Jew. Jews were perceived as far more itinerant than oth- ers. Contemporary antisemitic publications certainly perpetuated this idea; Adolf Wahrmund’s text Das Gesetz des Nomadenthums und die heutige Judenherrschaft (Th e Law of Nomadism and the Modern Domination of Jews) is a primary exam- ple.71 However, the centuries-old tradition of Jews being in perpetual motion and unable to put down roots was crystallized in the trope of “the eternal Jew.”72 In This open access edition has been made available under a CC BY 4.0 license thanks to the support of Knowledge Unlatched.