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family’s private sphere. Th
is comes as no surprise: after all, he maintains amorous
relationships with Spitzer’s daughters Bertha, Ida, and Ella and plans to run away
with Spitzer’s wife, Malvine. Nevertheless, each family member remains unaware
of the other romantic relationships. Kohn promises Bertha, Ida, and Ella alike to
ask for their father’s hand in marriage. He is of course unable to keep his promise.
It seems that Kohn is insincere in his liaisons and lives out his pronounced sexual
desire by deceiving his gullible partners.
Marcus Spitzer is an irritable patriarch. Fixated upon his work, he neglects his
family and is unaware of Kohn’s liaisons with his daughters. It is only when his
bookkeeper, Moritz Beer, tells him that he encountered Kohn with Spitzer’s house-
keeper Marie at a hotel, who were likely there for an intimate tryst, that Spitzer gets
an inkling of Kohn’s sexual excesses. He, too, seems to have a liaison with her, be-
comes enraged, and wants to admonish Kohn at once. To that end, Spitzer searches
the entire house but cannot fi
nd him anywhere. Th
e other family members are
also interested in Kohn’s whereabouts and ask about him tirelessly. All the while,
the parrot caws “Little Kohn.” Th
ese circumstances make Spitzer so angry that he
bellows, “No matter what is going on in this house, Little Kohn has a hand in it.”76
Although Leopold Kohn is physically absent, he nevertheless displays a strik-
ing presence. Everyone in the house is talking about and looking for him, and
everything revolves around him. Th
e Jewish Kohn is the axis around which the
events revolve. Without taking specifi c action, he is presented as an all-powerful
fi gure. Finally, Kohn turns up, utterly bewildered by all the fuss. Spitzer pounces
on him in order to reprimand him for his conduct with Marie. To Spitzer’s sur-
prise, Kohn does not deny that they had met at the hotel. However, he claims he
did not do anything dishonorable in the process and instead becomes infuriated
with Spitzer for interfering in his personal life. Th
us, the question of whether
Kohn has a romantic relationship with Marie remains unanswered. Although
there is much to suggest that he does, in the end there is no proof.
Th
at said, Spitzer is still convinced that Kohn maintains intimate relations
with Marie. He therefore orders him to change his behavior and end the aff
air
with her, because “it cannot go on like this.”77 Yet Kohn does not want to adhere
to any code of conduct. When he has heard enough of Spitzer’s grumbling, Kohn
asks what he wants from him. Th
e banker answers, “I want to rid myself of you;
in six weeks I want to be de-Kohned.”78 Kohn answers that if Spitzer does not
approve of his presence, he could always leave.
Spitzer’s desire to divest himself of Kohn is easier said than done. After the
sparring match between the two, Ida confesses to her father that she is pregnant
with Kohn’s child. Th
is revelation makes Spitzer so angry that he yells at Kohn,
“You have taken the liberty of populating my house with illegitimate children?
You have laid the cornerstone for my future progeny?”79 To his great consterna-
tion, he cannot get rid of Kohn because he now belongs to the family. Th e ties
between the Jew Kohn and the non-Jew Spitzer appear to be unbreakable.
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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