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Jews in Viennese Popular Culture around 1900 as Research Topic | 17
Stage names do not always pose a problem for historians. Occasionally, we
fi nd that various studies and publications have already researched individual
Jewish artists, comedians, and Volkssänger and identifi
ed their real names and
identities. Examples include Josef Ar min (1858–1925), who was actually called
Josef Ro ttensteiner; Heinrich Eisenbach (1870–1923), the singing comedian of
the Budapest Orpheum Society, who was born Heinrich Mandl and also known
by the nickname “Wamperl”; Armin Be
rg, also known as Hermann Weinberger;
and Josef Mü
ller, whose real name was Josef Sc
hlesinger. Th
is is just to name a
few, as the list of these artists and performers goes on and on.
Th
e use of artist names on the part of Jewish artists and Volkssänger engaged
in Viennese popular culture around 1900 makes it diffi
cult, not only in histor-
ical retrospect, to engage in scholarly studies about them. Sometimes even their
contemporaries were mistaken about the ethnic-cultural or religious affi
liation of
these entertainers. We see a particularly interesting example of this kind of error
in the announcement of the alleged death of the “humpbacked wine tavern poet
[Heurigendichter]” Loisl Ungr ad. He was famous for his “impromptu” Gstan-
zeln (short satirical songs), which he performed on the Brettl—the stages where
Volkssänger performed. Ungrad, like many of his colleagues, performed under an
assumed name. His real name, so people assumed, was Kohn. Only through an
obituary printed by mistake do we learn that he was actually named Vopitschka
(Ungrad even read the report of his own death in the newspaper).18
Th e choice of stage names also exerts an infl uence over historical research in
other ways. For example, Koller’s 1931 overview of Viennese folk songs, Das
Wiener Volksängertum, states that Franz Krieba um, longtime director of Dan-
zer’s Orp heum and a former Volkssänger, was “actually called Grünbaum.”19 W
e
fi nd this piece of information in almost all subsequent scholarly discussions and
mentions of Kriebaum, including Ernst Weber’s 2006 article in which he refer-
ences “Franz Xaver Kriebaum (a.k.a. Grünbaum, 1836–1900).”20 Although not
specifi cally mentioned, this kind of formulation contains an implicit reference
to Kriebaum’s ostensible Jewishness.21 Even the 1994 Historisches Le xikon Wien
(Historical lexicon of Vienna) gives the name “Grünbaum” in brackets follow-
ing the name Kriebaum.22 Th e proliferation of this kind of information occurs
despite reference in the encyclopedia entry to an article from the Wiener Zeitung
stating that the name Kriebaum can be found listed in the baptismal records of
the parish Nussdorf, indicating that his family was never called Grünbaum.23
But the particular formulation of this artist’s name, “Kriebaum a.k.a. Grün-
baum,” has apparently become so popular that it has been taken for granted,
meaning that Kriebaum’s connection to Judaism has persisted in the scholarship
as a given fact.
Th
is approach seems to be the product of what might be described in Yiddish
as Efn a zeml un aroys a yid, “Wherever you turn, you meet a Jew.” In other words,
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Entangled Entertainers
Jews and Popular Culture in Fin-de-Siècle Vienna
- Titel
- Entangled Entertainers
- Untertitel
- Jews and Popular Culture in Fin-de-Siècle Vienna
- Autor
- Klaus Hödl
- Verlag
- Berghahn Books
- Datum
- 2019
- Sprache
- englisch
- Lizenz
- CC BY 4.0
- ISBN
- 978-1-78920-031-7
- Abmessungen
- 14.86 x 23.2 cm
- Seiten
- 196
- Kategorien
- Geschichte Vor 1918
- International
Inhaltsverzeichnis
- Introduction 1
- 1. Jews in Viennese Popular Culture around 1900 as Research Topic 13
- 2. Jewish Volkssänger and Musical Performers in Vienna around 1900 44
- 3. Jewishness and the Viennese Volkssänger 78
- 4. Jewish Spaces of Retreat at the Turn of the Twentieth Century 121
- 5. From Difference to Similarity 148
- Conclusion 163
- Bibliography 166
- Index 179