Seite - 163 - in Entangled Entertainers - Jews and Popular Culture in Fin-de-Siècle Vienna

CONCLUSION d In this study, I have sought to provide an overview of Viennese Jewish Volkssänger while simultaneously investigating the question of their Jewishness. I have fo- cused primarily on burlesques and farces that Jewish Volkssänger either wrote or performed, as a method for analyzing their Jewish self-understanding. Given this focus, it is also important to ask whether the insights we gain by investigating their conception of Jewishness pertain solely to the fi ctional characters in their works or whether we may also draw conclusions about Jewish Volkssänger and their personal experiences in the real world. I have proposed to answer this question by plumbing Albert Hirsch’s bi- ographical details, specifi cally his professional life. Chapter 3 off ered insights into his sometimes diffi cult relationship with his colleagues. At the height of the “Volkssänger war,” he presented his colleagues with statements that speak to his conception of Jewishness. At the same time, I have ascertained numerous similar- ities between individual protagonists in his plays and Hirsch’s biography. We may reasonably conclude that his farces more or less clearly trace his own personal un- derstanding of Jewishness. Because there are numerous similarities between the portrayal of Jewishness in Hirsch’s performances and the plays penned by other Jewish Volkssänger, I argue that their manuscripts and performances provide in- sight into their self-understanding as well, no matter how fl uid it may have been. Th ese Volkssänger plays, I assert, repeatedly address certain topics, despite that a variety of authors penned them and numerous ensembles performed them. Th is repetition potentially indicates that they were topoi that the public both recognized and anticipated seeing in the performances. But these themes may have also preoccupied Viennese Jews (or at least a portion of the Viennese Jewish population) to a considerable extent and therefore consistently appeared in theat- rical works. Seen in this light, these farces represent important sources regarding everyday life among Viennese Jewry. One of these themes that these farces often incorporate is suicide or the threat of suicide by plunging into the Danube. As I discussed in the introduction by This open access edition has been made available under a CC BY 4.0 license thanks to the support of Knowledge Unlatched.