Seite - 99 - in Entangled Entertainers - Jews and Popular Culture in Fin-de-Siècle Vienna

Jewishness and the Viennese Volkssänger | 99 to the Hotel Schwarzer Adler, “we children of Vienna: Kutzle, Mirzl, Seidl-Wies- berg, Gutschelbauer(!), and my humble self [were] crowded out from the venue [where we played], and business was booming.” Th e people whom Hirsch names represent the cream of the crop of the older Viennese Volkssänger community. By including his name in this list, Hirsch situates himself as an “original Viennese,” and thus as a Volkssänger belonging to Old Vienna. In this way, he may have been attempting to anticipate any challenge to his representing an “authentic” Volkssänger on account of his Jewishness. Although the Budapest Orpheum Society, as Hirsch describes it, initially caused irritation among the local Viennese Volkssänger, the new group succeeded very quickly in becoming a universally respected and integral part of Viennese entertainment culture. Th e Budapest Orpheum, according to Hirsch, thus serves as an excellent example of a foreign troupe’s ability to enrich the local entertain- ment industry. In the letter, he rhetorically establishes the Budapest Orpheum’s move to Vienna as a precedent for the Folies Caprice. Hirsch thus attempts to dispel concerns about the group’s announced move to the Habsburg capital. Furthermore, Hirsch emphasizes in his letter to the editor that the Folies Ca- price would be established as a “family variety,” meaning that the pieces they would stage would be devoid of any piquancy, so that even children could be a part of the audience. Hirsch’s announcement makes sense when we consider that the Folies Caprice had a reputation for their salacious performances. By mak- ing this point, Hirsch wanted to forestall critics who might make an argument against the Folies Caprice based on moral grounds. After mollifying readers somewhat by making these points, Hirsch gets to the heart of matter and makes his explosive point. He signs the letter, “A. Hirsch, Viennese and future sole director of the new family variety show at the Hotel Central, located at 8 Taborstrasse.”85 Hirsch introduces himself, in an off hand kind of way, as the leader of the Folies Caprice, as the one responsible for bring- ing the group to Vienna. Th e appearance of this letter to the editor put all of Vienna’s Volkssänger in a brief state of shock. For a year and a half, the Volkssänger had been holding meetings, drafting resolutions, and contacting politicians, all for the purpose of preventing Hungarian groups from performing in Vienna. It now almost seemed like it had all been in vain. However, the perception that one of their own had betrayed and compromised them weighed even heavier than their futile eff orts. And they felt particularly betrayed by someone who had always clearly spoken out against Hungarian groups. Hirsch must have been aware this declaration would trigger an uproar in the Volkssänger community. With his tactic of presenting the licensing issue as the central point of his letter, he sought to mitigate the anticipated outrage at least to some degree. Revoking the licensing requirement that many of his colleagues demanded implied that foreign ensembles would be able to perform in Vienna This open access edition has been made available under a CC BY 4.0 license thanks to the support of Knowledge Unlatched.