Performing the Austrian-Jewish (negative) symbiosis: Stella Kadmon's Viennese Stage from Red Vienna to the Second Republic

Frances Tanzer, Brown University

Abstract

This article examines the changing content and context of the cabaret director Stella Kadmon’s repertoire as she attempted to establish continuity with the Viennese cabarets of Red Vienna—first in exile in Tel Aviv and then after her return to Vienna in 1947. Although Kadmon’s long-term cultural work has seldom been considered within the framework of German-Jewish history, I propose that Kadmon’s stage serves an example of one of the most adequate attempts to rebuild the type of Jewish and non-Jewish conjunction that had existed before the Anschluss. A central contention of this article is that Kadmon’s theatre—during its interwar, exile, and post-war incarnations—provided a space to represent Jewish characters and work through issues that Kadmon believed were important to Viennese Jews. These issues included a critique of assimilation; the possibility of restoring an Austrian-Jewish symbiosis after 1945 (and its stark limitations); and a defence of life in the land of the perpetrators (together with criticism of Zionism). And yet, her theatrical productions were misunderstood in both the Yishuv and the Second Republic.