The transformation of Jewish identity in Vienna, 1918--1938.

This dissertation examines the ways in which literature, theater, politics and gender not only reflected but also actively shaped the identities of Viennese Jews after the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. In response to more narrowly defined constructions of Jewish identity, it draws out the subtler patterns of association and socialization that characterized modern Jewish life, including matters of taste, cultural alignment and political membership. Study of these socio-cultural affiliations ultimately shows that for many Austrian authors, dramatists, and politicians---and for their broader audience---a Jewish background mattered a great deal in the process of negotiating and fashioning culture.The first chapter introduces the issues at stake during the insecure, uncertain and volatile years from 1918 to 1938 that profoundly affected all Austrians, but transformed the lives of Jewish Austrians in particular. It investigates the wide spectrum of Jewish responses to the postwar political and social crises as Jews were forced to renegotiate previously comfortable identities. The second chapter explores one such response through the involvement of socialist leader David Joseph Bach in the cultural policies of "Red Vienna," which reflected the emphasis on Bildung already popular among secular Central European Jews. In contrast to this enthusiasm for Bildung, journalist Else Feldmann's position as an impoverished Jewish woman allowed her to make visible the problems of interwar Socialism often glossed over by more idealistic, bourgeois party leaders. The third chapter considers authors Veza Canetti and Mela Hartwig, who likewise maintained critical distances to ideologies supported by many of their male counterparts, including socialism and psychoanalysis. Chapter four argues that new space in the Viennese public sphere allowed women including Eugenie Schwarzwald, Berta Zuckerkandl and Alice Schalek to flourish as journalists, educators, and organizers of social welfare systems, even as the parallel development of antisemitism and misogyny limited their success. The last chapter examines Jewish participation in both Yiddish theater and the baroque Catholic Salzburg Festival, illustrating how the Jewish responses to political and social changes in interwar Austria included both support for and rejection of traditional notions of Jewish and Austrian identities.Thesis (Ph.D.)--Yale University, 2004.School code: 0265