Seite - 60 - in Entangled Entertainers - Jews and Popular Culture in Fin-de-Siècle Vienna

60 | Entangled Entertainers that his father had. We can likely contribute his failure to the fact that by the time he founded his ensemble, the heyday of the Volkssänger and the singspiel halls, which had reached its peak at the beginning of the twentieth century, was already over. By the early 1900s, vaudeville and cinema had become the most popular forms of entertainment. We can see the extent to which Volkssänger saw the vaudeville variety show as a particular source of competition in the fact that they increasingly oriented their performances and chose names more in line with what was happening in the vaudeville scene. For example, in the summer of 1904, Salomon Fischer hired Mister Marrion, Mister Raab, and Roszinka Galo mbosy to perform at the Prater-Or pheum. Marrion was lauded for his talents as a “vocal phenomenon,” Raab was famous for his ability to imitate an entire orchestra, and Galombosy was known as a “transformation singer.” Only after these three had taken the stage were there two theatrical performances with a Jewish connection: Josef Armin’s Gutmann’s Success and Louis Taufstein’s Th e Silent Partner.76 In 1899, Al- bert Hirsch sought to draw crowds by advertising the performances of an “Afro- Cuban dancer named Vera Corézé” as part of his ensemble.77 A year later, Hirsch announced that he had renamed his group the Variété Hir sch.78 Th e Hirsch and Kassina Ensembles Th e most important Jewish Volkssänger in Vienna at the end of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries by far was Albert Hirsch (1841–1927). Despite his importance for the entire Volkssänger industry, little scholarly attention has been devoted to him thus far. Most studies that discuss Hirsch merely repeat the infor- mation provided by Josef Koller’s 1931 survey of Viennese Volkssänger. Because I devote nearly the entire third chapter of this study to Albert Hirsch, I outline here only a few details related to his biography. Albert Hirsch was born in Vienna and began his acting career early by per- forming with the Th eater an der Wien, Th eater in der Josephstadt, and Th eater unter den Tuchlauben. However, despite this experience, he was unable to fi nd a foothold in the world of theater, which is why he turned his attention to the folk-singer scene. For a time, he and his wife worked for the Drexler Singspiel and later for the Josefi ne Schmer Ensem ble. Hirsch subsequently started his own ensemble, with family members making up the performers. His son Adolf, who was known simply by his nickname “Adolfi ” and who had completed his mu- sical education under the tutelage of Anton Bruckner (among others), was re- sponsible for the group’s music.79 Albert Hirsch, his wife, who was also a former actress, and his daughters played various roles in the group’s performances. He later added to his roster well-known Volkssänger such Mr. and Mrs. Armin, Karl Noisser, and Jose f Müller.80 This open access edition has been made available under a CC BY 4.0 license thanks to the support of Knowledge Unlatched.