Seite - 34 - in Entangled Entertainers - Jews and Popular Culture in Fin-de-Siècle Vienna
Bild der Seite - 34 -
Text der Seite - 34 -
34 | Entangled Entertainers
this case of fraud had nothing to do with Judaism. Even Jellinek’s Jewishness
could not evoke a mention from the Jewish media. Only an antisemitic response
to the case would have put the Jellinek aff
air on their radar.109
A few months after the Jellinek aff air, the Budapest Orpheum Society brought
the farce Der kleine Kohn (Little Kohn) to the stage (for details on the content
of the play, see chapter 4). In the play, Leopold Kohn, treasurer of the Spitzer
bank, is accused of embezzling money. At one point in the performance, Marcus
Spitzer speaks to a police offi cer about Kohn, saying, “Th
ere has never been such
a Jellinek before.”110 Caprice, the author of the play, uses the name Jellinek as a
synonym for a crook. Such a reference only makes sense if the ostensibly majority
Jewish audience of the Budapest Orpheum Society was aware of the Jellinek case.
But this also means that their audience must have followed the reports that ap-
peared in the non-Jewish press. Th
e Jellinek aff
air was part of the everyday Jewish
perspective, even if the Jewish media did not write about it.
A fourth and fi
nal piece of evidence elucidating my thesis that ordinary—even
Orthodox—Jews read general newspapers includes newspaper reports containing
clearly religious references and even advertisements referring to Jewish cultural
life. For example, an article from March 1904 announced the restoration of the
Wäh ring Jewish cemetery and informed relatives of the deceased that they should
communicate any changes they wish to make to the graves to the religious com-
munity.111 In this case, the announcement targeted a Jewish audience, as it was
unequivocally a religious matter. Because Jewish newspapers made it their goal
to address Jewish concerns, one might assume that this piece of news would have
been within their purview. However, the Jewish newspapers omitted reporting
on it. As such, Jewish readers only learned about the cemetery restorations if they
consumed general media.
We see a similar pattern in announcements advertising the Lemb
erg Singspiel
Society, a theater company from Galicia. Th
e group performed in Leopoldstadt,
where a considerable number of eastern European Jewish immigrants resided.
Lemberg Singspiel Society performances sometimes had a clearly religious con-
text.112 Th
e “Polish,” as they were called, at times performed plays by well-known
Yiddish authors, such as Abra
ham Goldfaden (1840–1908) or Jose
ph Lateiner
(1853–1935).113 Announcements for the programs of these performances some-
times emphasized that theatergoers could expect “strictly ritual food” as part of
the entertainment. Such advertising thus also addressed religious Jews as poten-
tial audience members.114
Although Lemberg Singspiel Society performances thematized Jewish cultural
life, the Jewish press did not make any mention of these cultural activities. Th
is
lacuna corroborates my thesis that Jewish newspapers sometimes failed to report
on issues with clear references to Judaism if the general press already allocated
suffi cient print space to them. Maybe Jewish newspapers did not wish to be re-
dundant and instead focused on reporting that readers could fi
nd nowhere else.
This open access edition has been made available under a CC BY 4.0 license thanks to the support of Knowledge Unlatched.
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