Seite - 2 - in Entangled Entertainers - Jews and Popular Culture in Fin-de-Siècle Vienna

2 | Entangled Entertainers pitiful dwellings of the Jews as “bug castles” and “pest caves,” which were said to pose a health risk to the non-Jewish population.4 Th e oppressive poverty that characterized the everyday life of the Katz family was familiar not only to some of the Jewish, but also to non-Jewish members of the Viennese population. Such experiences, shared by both Jews and non-Jews, were also evident in Anna Katz’s attempt to plunge into the Danube Canal as a result of her seemingly hopeless misery. Contemporary newspapers were full of accounts of people whose living conditions were so desperate that they saw no way out other than to commit suicide. We see the full extent of this tragic situation, for example, in the 1904 case of four female corpses that a pedestrian discovered in the Danube Canal. Independent of one another, the women had jumped into the ice-cold water, and all washed up on the riverbank at roughly the same time and place.5 In 1900, when Anna Katz decided to take her own life, she was among fi ve hundred other Viennese citizens who chose a similar course of action.6 Only suicide by hanging and gunshot wound claimed more victims than suicide by drowning. Often, the people who drowned in the Danube also took their children with them to their deaths. Anna Katz’s failed suicide attempt thus corresponds to a widespread pattern of behavior. Th eir desperate act was, con- sciously or unconsciously, established in a culturally prescribed way.7 In eastern Europe, on the other hand, where poverty among Jews could be even more dire than in Vienna, suicide was largely unheard of.8 We can surmise that many Viennese Jews acted in concert with the city’s non-Jewish population than with Jews in other areas and cultures. We cannot speak of a uniform Jewry that was clearly distinguishable from its non-Jewish counterparts, at least when considering this cultural background. Jews and non- Jews in Vienna often followed similar lines of action that diff ered from those in other areas or regions. Anna Katz’s identity as a woman working as a peddler warrants further dis- cussion. Her occupation is diffi cult to reconcile in light of existing narratives about Jews in Vienna. To be sure, a comprehensive scholarly study investigating the history of Jewish peddlers and peddling in the Danube metropolis has yet to be written.9 Th e few scholarly works that do exist on the subject only discuss men engaged in this kind of work. According to the dominant narrative, Jewish women seem to have had no presence in this profession. On the other hand, var- ious accounts of eastern European Orthodox Jewish life portray women engaged in the profession of peddling.10 At times, men devoted themselves exclusively to the study of religious scriptures, while their wives cared for and earned money to support the family.11 For the case of Vienna, however, Jews quickly brought gender roles into line with prevailing social standards. According to these stan- dards, the man of the household was responsible for providing for his family with money earned through gainful employment.12 In any case, Anna Katz’s ex- istence seems to deviate from this established historical narrative. Th e cause for This open access edition has been made available under a CC BY 4.0 license thanks to the support of Knowledge Unlatched.