Samson in Vienna: the theatrics of Jewish masculinity.

In the winter of 1923, dramatic political events were unfolding in and around Vienna. Bloody confrontations were taking place between monarchists and socialists; the nascent Nazi Party was flexing its political muscle on the city's streets; the treaty of St. Germain became a flashpoint for Vienna's nationalists; and pan-German passions were inflamed by the French occupation of the Ruhr. Yet, for several months, these events were practically eclipsed by a most unlikely episode in Viennese popular culture. The Viennese public was held in breathtaking suspense "by a phenomenon that has simply never been witnessed," reported the Wiener Sonn- und Montags-Zeitung:

 
   A human being of supernatural powers. Breitbart. He bends steel as 
   if it were soft rubber, bites through chains as though they were 
   tender meat, drives nails into thick wood with his bare fist.... A 
   bridge loaded with hundreds of kilograms of concrete block is 
   lowered onto his gigantic body, and the blocks are pounded with 
   hammers.... He uses his body as a support for a manned carousel 
   which revolves at a dizzying speed. (1) 

All of this, enthused the reporter, "is enough of a sensation to astonish the Viennese. Breitbart, Breitbart, Breitbart. No one talks of anything else. No one else is the subject of so much admiration."

Within the volatile political environment of postwar Vienna, a stunning array of Vienna's residents--Jews and non-Jews, nationalists and liberals, men and women--found themselves captivated by Europe's newest entertainment sensation. Billed as "The Strongest Man in the World," Siegmund ne Zishe Breitbart, son of a Jewish blacksmith, was born in 1893 in Starowieschtch, in the city of Lodz, then part of Imperial Russia. He was the second of seven children in a poor Yiddish-speaking religious family. In his autobiography, he reported that his family discovered his unusual strength when, at age three, he managed to free himself from a heavy iron bar that had fallen on him in his father's smithy. By the age of four, he had already begun casting iron with his father. (2) Expelled from a succession of religious schools for the intemperate use of his strength against fellow students, the young Breitbart dreamed of grander venues that would showcase his powers and earn him public adulation. Having embarked upon a career as a circus strongman, clown, and acrobat, Breitbart also performed on the Yiddish stage with a traveling Yiddish theater troupe. (3) Inducted into the Russian Army at the beginning of World War I, he was captured by the Germans and, remaining in Germany after the war, earned a meager living by performing at local markets.

It was at one such market in Bremen in 1919 that the director of Circus Busch spotted Breitbart and decided to pick up his strongman act. (4) Featured first as an opening act at the circus, Breitbart made the move into theater and eventually became a prime draw on Central Europe's vaudeville stage. Having reached the apogee of his fame in Vienna in 1923, he spent part of the following year touring the United States, also to great acclaim. Although his career was cut short by a stage accident in Poland that led to his death at the end of 1925, during the few years of his reign as Europe's "Iron King" and preeminent strongman, a veritable cult of Breitbart flourished with the production of two German films and a Yiddish screenplay, burlesque parodies of his many challengers, product endorsements, a physical culture correspondence course, jokes, poems, songs, and collectibles. (5) There was even a "Breitbart March" composed.

Breitbart's career as a world renowned strongman and self-styled "artiste" took off precisely at a time when the body was increasingly being taken as a measure of racial quality and antisemitism had reached its postwar peak. Antisemitic agitation during the five years of the Austrian republic was particularly fierce, targeting the recent arrivals from Galicia and Bukovina who had come to Vienna as war refugees. (6) Hence, alongside daily installments on the Breitbart affair appeared press reports of a more menacing nature. The Neue Freie Presse reported, for example, that antisemitic student organizations sought to introduce a numerus clausus to restrict the admission of foreign Jewish students to the University of Vienna. In early February 1923, the Wiener Morgenzeitung published a story that Jewish medical students had been barred from performing autopsies on "Aryan" cadavers. (7) During the same week, the Ignaz Siepel government acceded to right-wing pressure to include race as a category in the census of 1923. (8) Most worrisome of all were the series of antisemitic political demonstrations on Vienna's Ringstrasse. On January 15, 20,000 Viennese citizens supporting Christian-Social, conservative nationalist, and National Socialist parties, together with sports groups, students, professors, and war veterans, had marched on City Hall to demand the curtailment of Jewish rights in Austria. (9) Similar demonstrations continued through February. (10) The Wiener Morgenzeitung noted that antisemitic agitation in Vienna had become so widespread during the month of January that "even the Social Democrats, who are normally indifferent to popular hostility toward the Jews, have stood up and taken notice." (11)

Yet amid a hostile and racialized discourse, the body of Vienna's most popular Galician Jew was probably viewed and admired by more Viennese than any entertainment or sports figure in at least a decade. In this article, I seek to trace the intersecting and competing cultural forces that contributed to the production and reception of this Jewish popular icon. How did Breitbart's extraordinary body and expert showmanship succeed in capturing the contemporary cultural imagination at this particular moment in postwar Central European history? In particular, I will examine the content and the cultural significance of Breitbart's sensational performances before both Jewish and non-Jewish audiences. How was his Jewishness construed by diverse audiences? What role did the scandal plotted by his rival Erik Jan Hanussen play in Breitbart's Viennese reception? To what extent could his performances be read as both reinforcing and contesting normative social ideals?