Page - 148 - in Entangled Entertainers - Jews and Popular Culture in Fin-de-Siècle Vienna

Chapter 5 FROM DIFFERENCE TO SIMILARITY d The Apostle of Schottenfeld, Little Kohn, and Th e Journey to Grosswardein not only provide insight into how Viennese Jews culturally processed time and space. In this chapter, I demonstrate how these texts also highlight the possibility of a peaceful coexistence between Jews and non-Jews in the particular image of Jewishness that they cultivate. In doing so, my investigation uncovers how these three texts evince signifi cant overlap with the other Volkssänger pieces that I have explored in the previous chapters. Th rough an analysis of these three works, I draw conclusions about the Jewish Volkssänger milieu in general. In addition to this aspect, I discuss some of the implications of the concept of “inclusive” Jewish diff erence. Specifi cally, I explore the question whether we must understand inclusiveness and diff erence to be mutually exclusive. Can Jewishness in fact maintain its distinctiveness when associated with qualities that potentially also characterize non-Jews? Th e Struggle against Antisemitism In one way or another, all three Volkssänger plays depict the antisemitism preva- lent in Vienna at the time. While Albert Hirsch’s stage work deals with concrete anti-Jewish ascriptions, Little Kohn deals with widespread stereotypes. Both plays aim to expose how antisemitic views are baseless and have nothing to do with fact. Th e Journey to Grosswardein once again makes it clear that the attempts to escape these prejudices—that is, in its depiction of Zionism—do not represent a realistic solution. In the following section, I focus on a few select details from each work to demonstrate how all three portray anti-Jewish prejudices and their impact. This open access edition has been made available under a CC BY 4.0 license thanks to the support of Knowledge Unlatched.