Volume 14

Szenen der Wiener Moderne

This essay tells the story of three artefacts from Vienna, beginning with the silent movie »Die Stadt ohne Juden« (»The City without Jews«, 1924), which was filmed in the First Austrian Republic, through »Die Klabriaspartie«(»A Game of Klaberjass«, 1890), a theater sensation at the turn of the twentieth century, to the year of the World’s Fair in 1873, which witnessed the creation of a photographic typology of a Jewish peddler. Although each of these idiosyncratic artefacts only becomes comprehensible in its particular context, all three are woven into a European framework of experience and traditions of thought. An examination of these artefacts affords insights into conceptions of Jewishness in Viennese modernism and reveals processes of authentication and deconstruction. This allows for perspectives to be opened up on the history of film, theater, and media relating to questions of Jewish modernity and the dimensions of the enduringly relevant concept of authenticity.