Entangled Entertainers

Klaus Hödl is a lecturer and researcher at the University of Graz, Austria. His publications include Kultur und Gedächtnis (2012) and Wiener Juden – jüdische Wiener: Identität, Gedächtnis und Performanz im 19. Jahrhundert (2006).

• IntroductionChapter 1. Jews in Viennese Popular Culture Around 1900 as Research TopicChapter 2. Jewish Volkssänger and Musical Performers in Vienna Around 1900Chapter 3. Jewishness and the Viennese VolkssängerChapter 4. Jewish Spaces of Retreat at the Turn of the 20th CenturyChapter 5. From Difference to SimilarityConclusionBibliographyIndex

“This book provides an interesting outlook on the life and work of previously understudied popular singers and entertainers in late-nineteenth-century Vienna. Informed by the most recent empirical studies and theoretical considerations within Austrian Jewish studies, it presents a new angle on the antisemitic climate of fin-de-siècle Vienna and a new reading of the ways in which Jewish and non-Jewish worlds overlapped and entangled, producing a rich and flourishing popular culture. It thus widens our understanding of the vast heterogeneity of Jewish influence in Austrian and Viennese history, which hopefully will continue to be a subject for further studies.” • Central European History“Hödl’s work reveals something new and important about fin-de-siècle Viennese popular culture, which appears in his analysis as a space of unexpected entanglements and complexity that belies the relevance of commercial and unreflective properties that were attached to it for so long. Works such as this make historical research in the field of European popular culture engaging and intriguing, bringing Vienna to the attention of a larger community of scholars once again.” • H-Habsburg“This is an excellent book, based on fascinating primary sources, and set within a sophisticated scholarly and theoretical frame. Klaus Hödl has for many years been one of the most dedicated and interesting scholars in the field of Austrian Jewish studies, and this book shows the fruits of his efforts.” • Steven Beller, author of The Habsburg Monarchy 1815–1918