'We Have Become Niggers!': Josephine Baker As a Threat To

‘We Have Become Niggers!’: Josephine Baker as a Threat to Viennese Culture By Roman Horak Abstract Early 1928 Josephine Baker, by that time a famous dancer and singer, came to Vienna to be part of a vaudeville show. Even before her arrival the waves went high – her possible presence in Vienna caused a major uproar there. Various commentators constructed an image of Baker that was based on the assumption that she was seriously attacked on the values of traditional European culture and, furthermore, true Viennese culture. In my essay, where I address the Viennese Negerskandal more directly, I explore the various discourses that produced this ‘event’ along the interface of mass culture/avant-garde and high/low culture. It is evident that these events centre on a construction of ‘blackness’ and of ‘black cultural expression’; it goes without saying that racism and sexism play a central role. I will, however, try to contextualize the ‘nigger scandal’ in a broader setting: against the background of Vienna in the late 1920s the perceived threat of ‘Amer- icanisation’ will be discussed. Keywords: Blackness, Viennese culture, racism, Josephine Baker, Americanisa- tion. Horak, Roman: “‘We Have Become Niggers’”, Culture Unbound, Volume 5, 2013: 515–530. Hosted by Linköping University Electronic Press: http://www.cultureunbound.ep.liu.se Introduction On Thursday 9 February 1928, Karl Kraus held one of his famous lectures in the Architektenvereinsaal, the hall of the architects’ association in Vienna. Kraus, whose favourite target in those days was still the Chief of Police, Schober, couldn’t resist addressing recent events that had been reported by the National Socialist Deutsch-österreichische Tages-Zeitung under the heading Negerskandal (‘nigger scandal’) (Deutsch-Österreichische Tages-Zeitung 1928). The ‘scandal’ itself was unleashed by the first Viennese stage appearance of the young singer and dancer Josephine Baker, who had been catapulted to stardom in Paris. Hot on the heels of Baker’s performance came further causes of outrage: the successful premiere of Ernst Krenek’s opera Jonny spielt auf, and the perceived threat to (German) Viennese culture represented by jazz – ‘nigger music’. It is in fact the case that Josephine Baker was presented over and over again as the Other of urban European modernity. ‘As the embodiment of “life”, “nature”, “wantonness”, the primitive took the guise of the repressed Other of civilisation’, writes Nancy Nenno (1997: 150), adding with reference to Marianna Torgovnick that the ‘primitive’ does not constitute a singular, monolithic quantity but is rather a creation of modernity that takes various forms in response to specific needs (Torgovnick 1990). This ‘primitive’ has many aspects, ranging from ‘threatening’ through ‘fascinating’ to ‘amusing’, as Nenno has shown with reference to the culture of inter-war Berlin. ‘The evaluation of each depends on the degree to which it could be assimilated into modern culture, as well as its potential threat to that or- der.’ (Nenno 1997: 150) I will bear these considerations in mind in the discussion of the production and encoding of Josephine Baker in Vienna, although my con- cerns are admittedly not as broad. In the following paper, where I address some distinctive moments of the Viennese Negerskandal more directly, I explore some of the discourses that produced this ‘event’ along the interface of mass culture/avant-garde and high/low culture. It is evident that these events centre on a construction of ‘blackness’ and of ‘black cultural expression’; it goes without saying that racism and sexism play a central role. It remains to discuss these issues in the specific context of Vienna in the nineteen-twenties, Vienna as metropolis, ex-metropolis, almost-metropolis, Vienna a mere six months after the Palace of Justice Fire and six years before the Austro-Fascist putsch. Following the overwhelming success of the ‘Revue Nègre’ in Paris – it ran from October until the end of November at the Théâtre des Champs-Elysées and completed its run in a smaller theatre at the end of December – Caroline Dudley planned an extended European tour, to include Moscow. But Baker had already accepted a contract with the ‘Folies Bergère’, whose rehearsal schedule would not allow for an extended tour, and so the winter of 1926 saw only isolated perfor- mances in Brussels and Berlin. [516] Culture Unbound, Volume 5, 2013 The first trip to Berlin was not only a huge success, reaping great acclaim for the ‘Revue Nègre’, but signified a change of track for Josephine Baker’s future European career. Max Reinhardt, who had already seen her perform in New York in 1925, offered to train her as a ‘proper actress’ and wanted to keep her in Berlin. As she recalled a half-century later, she decided after some hesitation to stay with the ‘Folies Bergère’ and so to return to Paris, primarily because parts of the music for her new variety show were to be composed by none other than Irving Berlin (Baker et al. 1997: 49). Simplifying matters somewhat, one could say that in this confrontation between entertainment and high culture, music, jazz and spontane- ous rhythmic dancing won out over the art of acting. This did nothing to dispel the sense that high culture was somehow under threat, as we shall see. Baker’s reputation as a singer and dancer had by this time reached Vienna. In a supplement to the Neues Wiener Tagblatt, entitled simply ‘Josephine’, Moriz Scheyer (1927) sought to account for the Baker phenomenon. This feature sparked off a discussion that was to reach a climax over a year later. Scheyer was reporting from Paris, as is clear from the way in which his first- hand account does not just narrate the events but actually pinpoints their location. Josephine Baker is a ruler, an empress; Scheyer cannot resist relating this image to that of another Empress Josephine, namely Napoleon’s wife. Baker rules supreme, but only by the grace of snobbery: she holds court and all of Paris pays homage to her, and her residence, besides the Folies Bergère, the most venerable of all the Parisian music-halls, is ‘Josephine Baker’s Imperial’, a ‘boîte de nuit’, a night-spot in the Rue Pigalle, that street that’s so sober and depressing by day and that serves as an unholy route for all the pilgrims of Montmartre. It is evident from the start of the text that the author takes no real pleasure in the Baker phenomenon. In the second column, the grounds for his displeasure are made more explicit: Josephine Baker has so far had great success in exploiting the nigger-boom of our jazz age: she set her sights on conquering Paris, and her skin colour alone has guar- anteed that she’ll pot the black. The cheap racist wordplay – more offensive instances of which we’ll encounter further on – almost distracts the reader’s attention from Scheyer’s actual objec- tions. The author’s anxiety and displeasure is occasioned by the ‘nigger-boom of our jazz age’. He nevertheless treats the reader to a full account of the impression made on him by Josephine Baker’s performance, and confesses freely that ‘the tropical Venus’ has greatly disappointed him. Given Scheyer’s obviously racist sentiments, this comes as no surprise. To be sure, she has a barbaric appeal that’s immediately striking. She exudes a can- nibalistic, voracious sensuality as she tumbles about the stage under blaring lights, dressed in nothing but her own hair, combed down and shining with oil. To be sure, she is reminiscent all at once of an untouched Amazon of the jungle and a grotesque, unruly clown, like one of the Graces but more supple and bestial, exuberant as a young ragamuffin (…) But that is all there is to it. For what Josephine Baker offers Culture Unbound, Volume 5, 2013 [517] to the public by way of an ‘artistic performance’ is scant at best. Her greatest art seems to reside in turning her lower parts uppermost in a way that’s agile as an ape and monstrously lewd (…) This all happens to the deafening din of an uninhibited jazz band, and to top it all Josephine makes onomatopoeic noises that are so decep- tively convincing that one is tempted to hold one’s nose as well as stop one’s ears. Art? ‘Art’ that’s paid for to the tune of thousands of francs…. Moriz Scheyer may end the paragraph with four ellipsis points, but he leaves us in no doubt as to what he means. He is concerned with art, and he can’t recognise art in the performance of an ‘Amazon of the jungle’. And because that which isn’t intended as ‘art’ cannot be recognised as ‘art’, it poses a threat to ‘art’. What the author senses here is the threat to the clear, neat boundary drawn between high culture and entertainment. His only consolation is to refer to the ‘fools’ who are repeatedly duped by this kind of thing. An anonymous contributor to the same newspaper a few days later feels moved to draw different conclusions. ‘Negroes’, runs the heading of this two-column piece, which seeks to go further than Scheyer’s feature. To begin with, the un- named writer refers to the Josephine Baker feature, and goes on to formulates the following point of view: ‘The case of Josephine Baker is no exception, but rather an example and symbol of the taste of our times, of an age that has lost its way and that flees from itself into raw exteriority’ (Neger 1927). The ‘seemingly global understanding’ reached after the war has ‘extended our mental horizons beyond the world of European concepts and sensibilities’, but to the author this represents a serious impoverishment: Literature and music, dancing and entertainment have become black arts, and this en-niggerment (Vernegerung) is the last gasp in the development or rather deca- dence of the European.

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