Disciplines
Other Humanities (20%); Arts (60%); Linguistics and Literature (20%)
Keywords
Theatre,
Theatre History,
Jewish Culture,
Vienna 1900,
Performance,
Belonging
Abstract
The book explores the function of theater for the Jewish experience of Modernity. It focuses
on Vienna at the turn of the 20th century (18901920); and it investigates theater phenomena
in a cross-cutting fashion: performative behavior in public as well as a production on a stage;
bourgeois drama and modern dance just as popular farces. Theater thereby turns into a multi-
layered cultural practice through which Jewish belonging was negotiated, self-consciously
asserted, or questioned. Jews described their public life "as if on a stage." Due to modern
Antisemitism, they were exposed to constant observation and confronted with the accusation
of not behaving self-identically, but too "theatrically" in public. Jewish theater artists responded
to this social harassment in turn: for example, by experimenting with alternative modes of
social existence through theater and dance. Or by closely observing, commenting on, and
reshaping public roles in a performative manner. The book interweaves the Jewish history of
Vienna with Theater Studies and reveals from a cultural-historical perspective how belonging
and participation are negotiated in a modern European society by means of theater. For the
Jewish population of Vienna 1900, theater is thus as the study sums up with Stefan Zweig
"the play and mirror form of life".