Seite - 93 - in Entangled Entertainers - Jews and Popular Culture in Fin-de-Siècle Vienna

Jewishness and the Viennese Volkssänger | 93 minutes and seconds and learned punctuality. Better organization meant that more could be achieved in a given time than ever before.62 Th e accelerated speed of life was also refl ected in the means of locomotion. Leisurely strolls seemed to be a thing of the past. More and more people seemed to be constantly in a rush. In his seminal work Der Mann ohne Eigenschaften (Th e Man without Qualities), Robert Musil noted that in the years leading up to World War I, people could be seen hurrying through the streets faster than in previous decades.63 And if that was still too slow, you could always hop on a bicycle. However, this form of locomotion was not without various dangers. For example, if cyclists rode too fast, they could get “bicycle face.”64 And traveling by train was even faster than riding a bike. While the Volkssänger, clinging to the past, glorifi ed the horse and cart, people became increasingly enthusiastic about the new means of transport.65 Here, too, we see a discrepancy and growing sense of alienation between the Volkssänger and their audience. Th e acceleration of life was not only perceived as positive. It also seemed to be connected to all sorts of illnesses.66 Medical professionals at the time warned that the enormous increase in economic transactions due to the expansion of the railroad, the use of steam power, and the invention of the telegraph would lead to increased tooth decay and promote hair loss. But even more threatening was the rise in cases of nerve weakness (neurasthenia). Th e American physician Georg M. Beard is attributed with fi rst describing this condition. He saw the cause in the “American way of life.”67 In Vienna, the Jewish physician Martin Engländer researched this ailment (among other things). In a lecture that he gave to a Zi- onist association, which appeared in print in 1902, during the turmoil among the Viennese Volkssänger, Engländer argued that the “struggle, hustle and bustle, hunt for happiness . . . did not slip past man without a trace. . . . Broad layers of contemporary society in all European countries and particularly in America have become nervous and neurasthenic.”68 It was no accident that Engländer posted advertisements for potential patients who wanted to be treated for nerve problems in the entertainment section where newspapers advertised new enter- tainment options.69 At times, doctors believed that people could adapt to the new circumstances. Beard, for example, agreed with this supposition. Others, such as the writer and Zionist Max Nordau (1849–1923), feared that the inhabitants of the modern world were experiencing a form of decay and described this process as degener- ation. He saw in modernity and its concomitant phenomena the source for the increase in mental illness, crime, and other types of suff ering.70 In this sense, the acceleration of everyday life was at best an ambivalent development and, from a medical point of view, perhaps even very problematic. Th e leisureliness of the lifestyle that the Volkssänger embodied, on the other hand, seemed to impede illness, especially the neurasthenia associated with America and other so-called nervous diseases that were connected with the new hectic pace of everyday life. This open access edition has been made available under a CC BY 4.0 license thanks to the support of Knowledge Unlatched.