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Jews in Viennese Popular Culture around 1900 as Research Topic | 35
As it stands, the coverge in Jewish and general news outlets overlapped and com-
plemented each other to some extent. And this overlap was probably the reason
why there were hardly any reports related to popular cultural performances in
Jewish print media.
Variations in the Interpretation of Events
In summary, a review of Jewish newspapers indicates that religious issues, their
associations and organizations, and the need to defend against antisemitism were
of considerable signifi
cance to the Jews of the Habsburg metropolis. Th
is seems to
imply that Viennese everyday life was not relevant to the city’s Jewish population.
However, we must juxtapose this claim with evidence that they read and received
general media. It suggests that Jews, at least a majority of them, exhibited con-
siderable interest in their social environment. Th
ey did not live secluded in their
own world, nor did they display indiff
erence to events outside their immediate
everyday milieu. And because Jews consumed general media, I argue that Jewish
newspapers were able to concentrate their news coverage on those areas that the
general press did not cover. At any rate, Viennese popular culture was not one
of these areas. For this reason, historians who only analyze Jewish media in their
research on the history of Viennese Jews fi
nd little evidence of their involvement
in popular cultural activities. Th
is circumstance is likely to be one of the reasons
why scholars have tended to neglect this topic in their studies.
Th
e media consumption habits of Viennese Jews allow us to see that they were
informed about current events and were familiar with social trends, standards of
value, and intellectual ideas. Like non-Jews, they took interest in contemporary
discourses and also helped shape them. And their everyday expectations may
have been similar to those of non-Jews in many ways. Nevertheless, diff
erences
remained between them. Th ese diff
erences manifested themselves in many ways
and were not necessarily based on religion. We see one of these diff erences at the
beginning of the twentieth century in the interpretation of cantor performances
in Viennese synagogues, about which both Jewish and non-Jewish newspapers
wrote. A comparison of respective reports reveals clear distinctions in the inter-
pretation of these performances.
Th
e singing skills and performances of cantors have often inspired worshippers.
But what traditional Jews perceived as a novelty in nineteenth-century Vienna,
however, was the spectacular character associated with many such performances
and the reactions of some worshippers who saw them only as entertainment, di-
vorced from any religious content. Some Jewish newspapers strongly condemned
this development. Th
ey warned that the synagogue would become a theater or
concert hall and that many people would only attend to be entertained.115
Th
is criticism was formulated, for example, on the occasion of the perfor-
mance of a Hungarian cantor in the Leop
oldstadt Temple. Th
e cantor in question
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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