Fräulein Else Steinhardt, Weiner Sängerin
Should people be defined by their victimhood?
By Phil Hall
Fraulein Else is the name of the novella Arthur Schnitzler wrote in 1924. It was a forerunner of Joyce's stream of consciousness writing and it incorporated some of the pschosexual ideas of Freud. It's about a young girl of 19 who lives in Vienna and is cornered into stripping for a roue by her mother. The father is having financial problems and the man will help the girl's father if she obliges by undressing in front of the rich man.
There are some parallels with Else Steinhardt, my great aunt. Else was roughly the same age as the character in the novella at the time it was published, and she probably moved in the same circles as Schnitzler, as a young opera singer. Moreover,though Else's face lacked classical proportions, she was beautiful, attractive, flirtatious and overtly sexual. In the pictures Else is arch. She licks ice creams, sits on men's laps and embraces the naked statues. In other pictures she is dressed in loose, flowing clothing or swimwear or "hot pants" and there is an open and self-aware expression on her face.
Richard Steinhardt, her brother, dedicates a picture of them both, taken in the '20s to her with the words (in English): "To the prettiest girl I know." Certainly not to "the most chaste girl I know".
Else's father was an important journalist, the foreign editor of the Neue Freie Presse, but he was also profligate, like the father in Fraulein Else. And even if there was no explicit connection linking the fictional fraulein with the real one, (though there may have been), then the story of the novella must have echoed within within Else's circle. Coincidence.
In going through the family letters and photographs I realise how little the tragedy at the end of Else's life should define her. The rapist doesn't shouldn't be allowed to define the life of the person they rape. The victim's life should not be defined by the Hutu mass murderer and Else should not be defined by Auschwitz. That's letting the devil create meaning. And when we look for meaning in his devilish work of mayhem in destruction we do not find it. Instead of looking at the rich lives cut short, the murderer sucks at our attention. But why did you do that father, mother, teacher bully, robber? Poor you. Poor perpetrator that must have been so disturbed and they turn with their crime our attention to their psychological make up. So that we worry about Demyanuk and Schicklegruber's motives and forget about the rich lives and the potential of the people they killed, the murdered Kafkas, Einsteins, Wittgensteins and Hanna Arendts.
But Arendt is right about the banality of evil. Look about you. There is bound to be a psychopath near you who would happily join in in with mass murder. Some embittered and unfeeling zombie shell of a human, blaming their desolation on another race, another culture, another sex, another species. These people are less real. They are scripted. They are common. They are the least interesting. Schicklegruber the tramp, mumbling about Germanness. Pregnant with hate. The world is full of these unrealised people, these Schicklegrubers. When I contacted the Prague Jewish museum about Else's mother, my great grandmother, I was maudlin and the letter I got in reply was salutary. It was an admonition. The story of the Prague Ghetto is not the story of the Nazi persecution, we had a thriving community here. And this is the point. The story of the people of Gaza is not merely their suffering, it's their humanity in spite of their suffering and when people become refugees and make a life elsewhere, if they can, they leave their suffering behind them. They don't allow their persecutors to create meaning out of their persecution.
But, increasingly, I can imagine Else, in the amazing interwar period in Red Vienna, thoughtful, often post-coital, a woman feeling free for once. Feeling free of a tyrannical father, a father nostalgic for the Hapsburg empire, free of history and racial identity - flourishing. The mystery of sexuality that we all explore, that Else explored, finding life enhancing meaning deep inside it, as we all find meaning in it.
And that and friendship and laughter and triviality and sadness and all the rest was at the heart of Else's life. Her best friend and cousin Paula, her doting little brother Richard, her intellectual brother Arthur and their circle of friends in Vienna. The love of her mom and the regretful love of her father - his bubble of pomposity popped and left behind the man and his life. He died in the Prague Ghetto on 8th March 1941.
Else had the opera.
She wanted to become an opera singer and she did (actually she sang operettas) and she had support and help to do so and by the time the Nazis banned all Jewish actors and singers and directors from the stage, though she was not celebrated, Else had built up quite an impressive repertoire.
Her last performance in Vienna was in 1937 in an Operetta by Strauss. She kept her cuttings and her calling cards and photos - I have them here - and her repertoire typed up, which she took to Paris in 1938 to give to theatre directors there, in order to find work.
And I'll type it up as it is on paper, to celebrate her. Copy from the paper, yellower now, with the faded d's.
Repertoire: Else Steinhardt
__________________________
Opernsoubrette, Lyrische Sangerin u. Operettensangerin.
______________
Graf V. Laeheins: Angele
Friearike: Friearike (?)
Fruhlingsluft: Emilie
Geschiedene Frau: Jana
Berzen im Sehnee: Margaret
Fortunios Liea: Marie
Abentenei in Tunis: Marion
Die Goldene Mule: Ketlerein
The last two items were handwritten, and I had trouble reading the handwriting, so I could have transcribed them incorrectly.
[And, if I may remark: The people who tried to erase Else and others will not succeed if we can help it. A little example: Google "Weiner Sängerin" (Viennese Singer) and this ARS NOTORIA article comes in 1st place. Keep this in mind and perhaps there is somone who you may decide should be celebrated too, and get top billing on Google through ARS NOTORIA. Just be careful to choose the right title for your blog as this is what the search engines pick up.
Is there a poet, an artist, a revolutionary that you feel you would like to celebrate? Write about them on ARS NOTORIA.]
Labels: Else Steinhardt
posted by Philip Hall @ December 26, 2009
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