Seite - 58 - in Entangled Entertainers - Jews and Popular Culture in Fin-de-Siècle Vienna

58 | Entangled Entertainers becomes clear that he only fakes his illnesses. Th e real reason for his daily appear- ances is the fi nancial support he receives from Eulalia to acquire the medications she prescribes. However, he pockets the money she gives him instead of going to the pharmacy. In addition, the doctor treats him to lunch every day, another reason for his regular visits. Th e opening scenes depict Salamon as a small-time crook who shamelessly exploits Eulalia’s sense of compassion. However, this depiction changes as the plot progresses, especially in light of a conversation between Eulalia and Julius Senftberger, the secret lover of her niece Ida. Julius visits Eulalia to ask her per- mission to marry Ida. But he proves to be too shy to make his request known. Eulalia assumes that Julius is a patient who wants to be examined, which is why she asks him to undress for the medical exam. Since Julius does not know that Ida’s aunt is a doctor, he thinks her request amounts to a desire for a love aff air. He is deeply outraged at Eulalia’s seemingly impertinent behavior. Th e comical misunderstanding, however, is cleared up by the end of the play. But before the misunderstanding can come to light, Julius rushes to Ida and reproaches her for not telling him the true nature of her aunt’s profession. At this point in the play, Salamon joins Julius and Ida and confesses that he has been pulling the wool over Eulalia’s eyes with regard to his illnesses. In this context, his dishonesty no longer seems like deception, but rather a venial misconduct, on par with Ida’s unsettling reticence regarding her aunt’s profession. Salamon, the Jewish peddler who at the beginning seemed to be a con artist, becomes a person with human weaknesses just like any non-Jew, in this case just like Ida. Salamon’s Jewishness is not explicitly mentioned or articulated in Your Only Patient. Since religion plays no role at all in the entire play, only his name and profession seem to hint at his Jewish identity. Th ese are very unreliable criteria for determining a character’s Jewishness. Even though the profession of the peddler was often associated with Jews, many non-Jews also practiced it. As I discussed in the case of the play Family Pschesina, a name alone cannot provide us a clear indication of one’s ethnic or cultural affi liation. In addition, Your Only Patient portrays Salamon as greedy and sneaky, characteristics that were frequently em- ployed at the time in antisemitic discourse.69 But these characteristics were not used solely to describe Jews. Th e traits evoked to establish a character as Jewish are thus inclusive and can apply to non-Jews as well. Whether such traits are indicative of Jewishness depends entirely on context. Jewishness in Your Only Pa- tient consists primarily in a diff erence that is also inclusive. Toward the end, when the play establishes a parallel between Salamon’s behavior and that of non-Jews (at least comparable to the non-Jewish Ida’s conduct), this diff erence largely dis- solves. Th e distinctness of being Jewish is hardly present in the play. Th e bound- aries between Jews and non-Jews become even more obscure and blurred. Not all plays at this time in Vienna portrayed Jewishness as indeterminately as Your Only Patient. Some burlesques, written by Jews and performed by Jewish This open access edition has been made available under a CC BY 4.0 license thanks to the support of Knowledge Unlatched.