Jewish Difference and the Arts in Vienna: Composing Compassion in Music and Biblical Theater by Caroline A. Kita

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Reviewed by: Jewish Difference and the Arts in Vienna: Composing Compassion in Music and Biblical Theater by Caroline A. Kita Catherine Greer Jewish Difference and the Arts in Vienna: Composing Compassion in Music and Biblical Theater. By Caroline A. Kita. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2019. Pp. xxxiii + 188. Cloth $46.00. ISBN 978-0253040534. At the heart of a movement toward German cultural renewal in nineteenth-century Vienna was the belief that compassion, or Mitleid, could enact social change through an audience’s identification with a suffering character in dramatic and musical works. Largely shaped by the writings of Schopenhauer and Wagner, this discourse of compassion excluded the Jewish subject and advanced antisemitic stereotypes. Yet as Caroline A. Kita’s monograph Jewish Difference and the Arts in Vienna shows, German Jewish writers and composers in fin-de-siècle Vienna contended with and challenged constructions of the “uncompassionate Jew” by turning to “biblical alter egos” (xvii) in their musical compositions and dramatic works. Kita draws on Lisa Silverman’s framework of Jewish difference and in five case studies of works by Siegfried Lipiner, Gustav Mahler, Arnold Schoenberg, Richard Beer-Hofmann, and Stefan Zweig, she explores how these writers and composers invoked compassion for the Jewish subject while negotiating their own German Jewish identities. Their creative works ultimately challenged popular antisemitic discourses and “reinscrib[ed] the Jews as a compassionate collective and as a modern, musical, and mythical people” (129). In response to the writings of Schopenhauer and Wagner, poet and philosopher Siegfried Lipiner developed his own theory of compassion that subsequently served as a model for Mahler, Schoenberg, Beer-Hofmann, and Zweig. In chapter 1, Kita traces the development of Lipiner’s compassionate art by looking to his early writings, including his epic poem Der entfesselte Prometheus (1876) and an 1878 speech for the Leseverein der deutschen Studenten Wiens. She illustrates how Lipiner’s biblical drama Adam, the prelude to his Christus tetralogy, embodied compassionate art by eliciting sympathy for the character of Cain. Lipiner recasts Cain as a “tragic antihero” (21) and a “victim of arbitrary categories of difference” (23) deserving of redemption. In doing so Lipiner challenges antisemitic stereotypes and his compassionate art facilitates the dissolution of cultural and religious difference, ultimately leading to the creation of an inclusive community. In the following chapter, Kita demonstrates how Gustav Mahler’s Second (1888–1896) and Third (1893–1896) Symphonies serve as a “musical corollary” (63) to Lipiner’s biblical drama and further embody his vision of compassionate art. Through the inclusion of Lieder in both symphonies (“Urlicht” [End Page 615] and “Was mir der Mensch erzählt”), Kita argues, Mahler offers “dramatic narratives of compassionate transformation” (35) that elicit sympathy for the suffering Jew while also constructing a compassionate community. Her thoughtful analyses of these two symphonies, in addition to her detailed account of Lipiner’s influence on Mahler, serve as highlights of this volume. Whereas Lipiner and Mahler evoked sympathy for the suffering Jewish subject to overcome difference, Schoenberg, Beer-Hofmann, and Zweig conversely created Jewish protagonists that served as “models of cross-cultural exchange” (xxvvii) and reflected the authors’ shifting negotiations of their individual German Jewish identities. In chapter 3, Kita focuses on two works by Arnold Schoenberg, his monodrama Totentanz der Prinzipien (1915) and the oratorio Der Jakobsleiter (1917), to show how Schoenberg employed polyphony and new poetic modes in attempts to create compassionate art that would engender collective spiritual renewal (69). In both works, Schoenberg reclaims compassion for the Jewish subject through prayer, which serves as humanity’s “compassionate covenant” with the divine. In doing so, Kita argues, Schoenberg “recast[s] the Jewish legacy of monotheism as the origin of compassionate spirituality” (93). In the following chapter Kita explores how Richard Beer-Hofmann turned to Wagner’s paradigm of Gesamtkunstwerk to enact his own vision of compassionate art in Jaákobs Traum (1915), a prelude to his planned biblical tetralogy Die Historie von König David. Beer-Hofmann’s reconceptualization of Gesamtkunstwerk evidences his attempt to reconcile German-Austrian theater practices with Jewish tradition and culture. While reviews of the 1919 premiere of Jaákobs Traum in Vienna described the work as “ein jüdischer...