Seite - 22 - in Entangled Entertainers - Jews and Popular Culture in Fin-de-Siècle Vienna

22 | Entangled Entertainers ers, traders, and sellers of fashion articles, and fashion designers in particular, off ers a paradigmatic example of an area in which Jews co-determined prevalent standards.51 Lisa Silverman has recently described the signifi cant role that the Viennese Zwieback department store played in this cultural and economic sec- tor.52 In other words, even if some Jews traded the caftan in favor of the business suit, refl ecting an acculturation to prevailing clothing conventions, this did not constitute the adoption of non-Jewish standards, but rather an interest in fashion trends that were pursued by Jews and non-Jews alike. Finally, I must mention the infl uence of the performative turn in cultural studies. Th is infl uence has also contributed to theoretical refl ections in the fi eld of Jewish studies that have in turn undermined the previously upheld impor- tance of the acculturation narrative.53 According to the concept of performance, cultural meaning is constituted interactively between a sender and a receiver. For every performative act, at least two people or two interacting groups are neces- sary. Every change in the communication partner and any change in the com- position of the group or the context of interaction has an impact on the content of the culturally negotiated message. Culture is considered highly fl uid in this case. Its transience eludes any eff ort to determine exactly how and where cultural adaptation might take place. Instead of acculturation, the performative approach outlines social and cultural processes that were jointly designed by non-Jews and Jews. Especially in the fi eld of Viennese popular culture at the turn of the twenti- eth century, where there was a dense network of Jewish–non-Jewish cooperation, this concept has proved immensely fruitful. We can see a special form of interaction that infl uenced Viennese popular cul- ture and reveals the dynamic character of cultural signifi cance in performances by Volkssänger groups. Th ey took place in a so-called performative setting. Th is means that the audience was able to participate in the performances by making noises, whistling, uttering compliments, and other articulations, and so to some extent also negotiated the interpretation of the plot, as the actors only roughly adhered to a script and focused instead on improvisation. Since Jewish Volkssänger groups usually played in front of a mixed, Jewish and non-Jewish audience, non-Jews also took part in these performances. Non-Jews were thus involved in the creation of cultural meaning, and sometimes also in the understanding of what was “Jewish.” We can identify an example of a performance infl uenced by the interaction between audience and actors in th e theater piece Der Findling (Th e foundling) by the S. Fischer Society. In this play, a Jewish peddler takes shelter in the home of a man known to be a miser and to his surprise discovers that his daughter is em- ployed as the man’s cook. Concerned about her well-being, he starts a conversa- tion with her employer, which turns into a fi ght. In what follows, the miser expels the Jewish peddler from his house. At this point, a portion of the audience took sides with the peddler, while another segment of the audience found themselves rooting for the miser. Both groups loudly expressed their respective sympathies This open access edition has been made available under a CC BY 4.0 license thanks to the support of Knowledge Unlatched.