Page - 153 - in Entangled Entertainers - Jews and Popular Culture in Fin-de-Siècle Vienna

From Diff erence to Similarity | 153 Th e contrast between conjecture and verifi able reality seems to disappear al- together in an attempt to identify Kohn as a victim of suicide. Although the clothes that the police offi cer presents to Mr. Spitzer and his daughters seem to constitute indisputable evidence of Kohn’s suicide, this assumption turns out to be incorrect. A similarly confusing situation, though in reverse, was Jellinek’s actual suicide several months before the production of Little Kohn (see chapter 1). Although all the evidence seemed to point to the fact that he had actually committed suicide, the police assumed that Jellinek was intent on pulling the wool over everyone’s eyes. Th is conjecture prevailed over existing facts. Th e ru- mors that fueled the Jellinek case and turned it into a veritable scandal also shape the interpretation of Kohn. Th ey construct a villain that does not exist. Th e play illustrates how antisemitic projections usually operate. A Response to Antisemitism Vienna can be described as the cradle of political Zionism. Th e city served as the movement’s center at least in its early years. Not only did Th eodor Herzl reside there, but the primary newspaper of the Zionist movement Die Welt (Th e world) was also published in the Habsburg capital. In addition, the Zionist organiza- tion’s central offi ce, which directed the Zionist agenda on an international level, was located in the city until 1905.14 One and a half decades before the publica- tion of Herzl’s Th e Jewish State (1896), the Akademischer Verein Kadimah was founded in Vienna, the fi rst Jewish-national student association in western and central Europe. Zionism also found relatively large support among Viennese Jews. Although Zionists did not gain a seat until after World War I on the board of the Israel- iti sche Kultusgemeinde Wien (the Vienna Jewish Community), the offi cial rep- resentational body of the Jews in Vienna, Zionist lists were able to win around one-third of the votes cast before 1914 at the biennial polls, despite the restric- tive electoral system that excluded many Jews from voting because of a lack of taxation.15 But before Th eodor Herzl gained a certain amount of prominence, the situation looked diff erent. Until the late 1890s, adherents of Zionism were mainly confi ned to the student milieu. Th e Kadimah as well as fi gures such as Nathan Birnba um (1864–1937) were unable to persuade the rest of Vienna’s Jews of the validity of emigrating to Palestine and thus giving up life in the Habsburg capital in exchange for life in impoverished and economically un- derdeveloped regions.16 We see this hesitation with respect to Zionism refl ected in the Volkssänger play Th e Journey to Grosswardein. Th e historical background informing this play’s plot structure includes this hesitation, even hostile attitude, toward Zionist endeavors. This open access edition has been made available under a CC BY 4.0 license thanks to the support of Knowledge Unlatched.