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Jewish Volkssänger and Musical Performers in Vienna around 1900 | 45
Th
e following chapter takes this thesis as its point of departure. I begin with an
overview of the most important Jewish Volkssänger groups and their performance
venues, which in turn allows me to discuss what makes a Volkssänger ensemble Jew-
ish and whether we can speak of “Jewish” singspiel venues. I also discuss whether
a theater director who converted can still be understood as Jewish, as scholars have
tended to do, for example, in the case of Gabor Steiner, the manager of Ven
ice in
Vienna (Venedig in Wien), Danzer’s Orpheum, and the Ronacher.
Th e Etablissement Nestroy-Säle
“Th
e two main streets in the Leopoldstadt are Taborstraße and Praterstraße. Pra-
terstraße is almost grand, and it leads directly to pleasure. Jews and Christians
populate it. It is smooth, wide, and bright. It has many coff
eehouses.”3 Th
is is
how Austrian writer Joseph Roth (1894–1939), in his book Th
e Wandering Jews
(Juden auf Wanderschaft), describes the boulevard that leads from the city center
to the Prater, Vienna’s extensive entertainment and recreation area. One of the
cafes to which Roth alludes was the Café Wi lly, a meeting place for musicians
and artists who enlivened Viennese nightlife with their performances. Th
e coff ee-
house provided a space for artists to set up performances at singspiel halls and va-
riety shows, make and cultivate contacts, and exchange information with fellow
artists. In addition, the Café Willy had the meeting room for the “Jolly Knights”
(Lustige Ritter), an association of Viennese Volkssänger.4
Jews and non-Jews alike socialized at Café Willy. Together, they shaped the
entertainment options available to the Viennese population and made up the au-
diences that attended the cabarets as well as the performances put on by Volkssänger
and wrestlers, ventriloquists, and magicians in Leopoldstadt. Together, they also
marveled at the artistic feats and exotic oddities on display in the variety shows.
In this sense, Joseph Roth’s observation that “Jews and Christians” bustled about
alongside one another on the Praterstrasse was nothing out of the ordinary. And the
ethnic distribution of the people inhabiting this part of the city suggests that both
Jews and non-Jews were visible in the streets of Vienna’s second district. Among all
the Viennese districts, Leopoldstadt had the highest proportion of Jewish residents.
Around 1900, 35.8 percent of Viennese Jews lived there. On account of this high
concentration of Jews, this district was often called “Matzah Island” (Mazzeinsel).5
Of this district’s entire population, 36.4 percent was Jewish.6 But this means that
the Jewish percentage of the population in Leopoldstadt was signifi
cantly lower
than in the “Jewish” areas of other cities, such as Terézváros, Bud
apest’s sixth dis-
trict, where three-quarters of the population was Jewish. Nevertheless, it is not
surprising that both Jews and non-Jews left their mark on the streetscape of the
Leopoldstadt. Needless to say, their presence next to one another was not always
characterized by mutual understanding but also by tension and confl
ict.7
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