EDT Blogs

More about The Kaiser's Jubilee

March 15, 2009

By Stefan Iwaskewycz, EDT Dancer, with contributions

In 1913, the Emperor Franz Josef I von Habsburg celebrated his 65th year on the throne of what, after 1867, was known as the Austro-Hungarian Empire. In the Imperial capital of Vienna there were commemorative events and celebration, including a concert during which representatives of each of the Empire's subject peoples, dressed in folk costume, saluted and honored the Kaiser (German for "Emperor").

Austria-Hungary was a diverse realm; at the time of the Jubilee celebration, it embraced either all or most of modern-day Austria, Hungary, Czechia (Czech Republic), Slovakia, Croatia, Slovenia, Bosnia, Romania, and included parts of Poland, Ukraine, Serbia, Montenegro, and Italy. Each of these lands had distinctive folk and high cultures and various local social and political traditions.

Ethnic Dance Theatre has chosen this as the background for its 35th Anniversary concert for a variety of reasons:

First, though Ethnic Dance Theatre is a performing company with over 50 suites from all around the globe in its repertoire, the songs, music and dance of Central, Eastern and Southern Europe--from an area that roughly corresponds to the territory of the Habsburg monarchy--have been at the core of the company's repertoire since its founding in 1974.

Second, it was at this time, during the late 19th century and early 20th, that many of the performance styles were created, and many of the costumes, dances and much of the music was selected that is still used today to present folk dance and music professionally on the stage. A Golden Age of Folk Culture was in full swing by the time of the Kaiser's 1913 Jubilee. A century or so earlier, at the outset of the 19th century, Europeans began to take folk culture more seriously. More of Europe's elites--many of whom hailed from bourgeois families that were only a generation or two removed from life in the countryside--began to see the folk arts and culture of the peasantry and the countryside as worthy of the name of culture and art, if not on par with the high cultures of the towns and cities. At a time during which they were colonizing much of the globe and were inventing sciences like ethnography in order to explain their encounter with societies very different from their own, Europe's elites were also discovering that right in their own backyard were incredible cultures they hardly knew. By the time of the Kaiser's 1913 Jubilee something of a Golden Age of Folk Culture had been in full swing for some time throughout Europe.

To have been active as folklorists at that time! Villagers in 1913 still for the most part wore what we today call "folk costume" as their daily garb. They were still dancing dances and singing songs that have today in many countries been lost (a fact that folklorists like ourselves greatly lament!). As the 20th century progressed, elements of traditional country and village life vanished at different rates in different parts of Central Europe and throughout the world. 1913 in some ways marks the beginning of the end of the Golden Age of Folk Culture in Central Europe. It is some of the vibrant folk cultures that inspired this Golden Age and that provided some of the initial inspiration for the founding of our company that we are celebrating for our 35th Anniversary.

A word about the Kaiser and His Empire:

Habsburg rule was based on the ancient strategy of a general tolerance for ethnic difference combined with tactics of divide and rule. The overall restraint shown by Habsburg rulers in ethnic matters often won them the admiration and support of certain subject peoples (while angering others). The 18th century Austrian Empress Maria Theresa was a folk hero among many of the subject peoples, and Franz Josef was a genuinely popular ruler throughout much of his reign. The popular or folk affection that emerged for Kaiser Franz Josef was similar to that shown by peasants of the Russian Empire for the so-called "good Tsar." It was popularly believed that while the Emperor loved his "children," everything that was wrong within the Empire--the poverty, the ethnic tensions, the social stress--was caused by the machinations of local elites. In truth, such machinations were tolerated and even encouraged by Habsburg rulers, such as Franz Josef, as suited the needs of the state.

Franz Josef thus frequently appears in the folk epics, songs, and visual arts of various subject peoples in both a good and bad light, especially in the later Monarchy. At the time of the 1913 Jubilee, two generations of Habsburg subjects had come of age during a period when the Empire had not been involved in a single, external war and was reaping the benefits of several decades of a high rate (for the era) of economic growth. The overall rise in the quality of life that had taken place by 1913 is rerpresented in one set of our costumes for this show: the peasants of the Sárköz region of Hungary could afford to purchase silks (imported from Lyon, France) for use in their finer clothing (click to see our reproduction of the costumes from Sarkoz that will be used in The Kaiser's Jubilee). This general increase in overall prosperity, however slight for the majority of people, certainly contributed to the popularity of the Kaiser in the Monarchy's last days before the Great War (WWI).

In this show, it is not Franz Josef that we aim to celebrate per se but the folk cultures of the domains he ruled and the general values of tolerance and patience with diversity that Habsburg rulers practiced. Since its founding, the mission of the Ethnic Dance Theatre has always been, in addition to preserving and promoting folk music and dance as art, to promote mutual understanding between and respect for people of different ethnic backgrounds. Click to read EDT's mission statement.

We hope that you will enjoy the show!

Did you know? EVEN MORE about Austria-Hungary:

I. Folkish Anecdotes from the zeitgeist of The Kaiser's Jubilee:

It was common practice for impressment gangs in the Hungarian Kingdom to use folk dance as a means to recruit young village men into the Kaiser's army. In a practice that dates from the 18th century, Hussars arriving in villages would dance what was known as verbunk (from the German word "werben," meaning "to recruit, to enroll"), and many of the young village men that joined the dancing found themselves suddenly whisked off ("enrolled!") to the army. A verse of a folk song that likely originates from this period and which we have included in the Dunantuli suite performed in this show goes:

I won't be marrying you this summer
Because Franz Josef called me in to be a soldier
If Franz Josef hadn't enlisted me
I would have been your partner, my dear, so soon

Click to preview video of the Dunantuli suite.

In this and many other ways, town and country increasingly met, and many young men who would have lived their entire lives in their villages found themselves suddenly thrust into the cosmopolitan world of the Empire.

The Archduke Wilhelm von Habsburg, potential heir to the Habsburg thrown, wore a traditional, Hutsul-style embroidered shirt under his officer's coat when commissioned to lead a corps of Ukrainian soldiers in the Kaiser's army during the Great War (WWI). Wilhelm had early on in life become passionate about Ukrainian folk culture after a trip to the Hutsul region of the Carpathian Mountains, and had already mastered the Ukrainian language prior to his commission. In this way a Habsburg prince became a folk hero first among Hutsuls then among many of the Kaiser's Ruthenian (Ukrainian) subjects, who knew him by the name Vasyl Vyshyvanyj (Wilhelm the Embroidered).

The finale of The Kaiser's Jubilee is a suite of Hutsul dances that is the result of a similar trip to the Ukrainian Carpathians; read how EDT's Artistic Director and one of EDT's dancers became enchanted by Hutsul culture this past summer, 100 years or so after Vasyl Vyshyvanyj's experience in the same mountains.

II. On the Arts and Politics of Empire

The imperial capital of Vienna was a cultural mecca, for some the most refined in Europe. Vienna was the chosen home of Mozart and Beethoven; it was the city where Sigmund Freud grew up and lived out his life. Vienna also was the home of such figures as Gustav Klimt and was the birthplace of such movements as the Vienna Secession, a group of artists in the late 19th century that reacted against the neoclassicism that was promoted by and reflected the worlview of the Habsburgs and of Franz Josef in particular. Vienna even gave us such figures as Franz Mesmer, from whose last name and early work with hypnotism we are able to say such things as, "We hope you will be mesmerized by our show!"

From the Hungarian side of the Empire, we receive Franz (Ferenc) Liszt and Bela Bartok, both of whom spent a part of their childhoods in provincial towns of the Hungarian Kingdom, where they imbibed much of the Hungarian folk music that would be an enormous influence on their later careers as composers (Liszt also lived briefly in Vienna as a child, where he studied music with a former student of Beethoven). In particular, Bartok began conducting in 1908 what has to be recognized as among the most important early attempts to conduct modern, ethnomusicological field work of the folk music of the Hungarian Kingdom. His fieldwork is exemplary of the fever for folk culture that swept much of Europe's bourgeois elite during the Golden Age of Folk Culture.

The provinces ruled from Vienna also gave us such figures as Antonin Dvorzak and Franz Kafka in Prague and Leopold von Sacher-Masoch in Lwow/Lviv/Lemberg. Dvorzak too was deeply influenced by the folk melodies of his native (Bohemian) land, while Kafka's writing reveals a picture of the darker sides of the late Monarchy that often go unnoticed. Both figures exemplify the sophistication and cosmopolitanism of the Prague that Bohemian elites felt should have been a third capital in the Empire next to Vienna and Budapest. The work of Sacher-Masoch (from whose last name the term "masochism" was coined, to the writer's great chagrin!) also exemplifies the fever for folk culture during the Golden Age. Sacher-Masoch's father was the chief of police in the town of Lemberg/Lwow/Lviv and was of Austrian background; his mother descended from Ruthenian (Ukrainian) gentry and Sacher-Masoch was raised in large part by a Ruthenian (Ukrainian) governess. He thus learned and cultivated an acute appreciation for and wrote at length about the folk culture of the local (mostly Ukrainian) peasantry of his native region of Eastern Galicia, and included many folk motifs and legends in his novels (which enjoyed a wide popularity beyond the Empire and throughout much of Europe at the time).

Sacher-Masoch, Dvorzak, Liszt and Bartok each contributed to the high culture of the Empire that was so revered throughout much of the world, and to varying degrees each of their high art forms were inspired by a folk culture found within the Empire. Similarly, the promotion of folk dance as art has been part of the mission of the Ethnic Dance Theatre since its foundation.

Though the arts and learning were at a high level, the Empire also had its serious troubles. By the late 19th century it was clear that modern development of its infrastructure was seriously lagging behind that of its increasingly powerful neighbors to the North and West. Wave after wave of peasants emigrated from the Empire's most impoverished lands, usually to the United States. The politics of the Empire became increasingly riven by competition between various ethnic and social groups. In 1867 a viable compromise was reached that greatly reduced tensions between the Hungarian and Austrian elites of the Empire, but elites of the various Slavic nations clamored for a similar arrangement of local autonomy for their lands. Also, as everywhere in Europe at the time, a grand political drama was being played out, one that was leading away from absolute monarchy to some form of representative and democratic government (constitutional monarchy if not outright a republic), and simultaneously away from multinational and imperial states toward nation-states. In this context, members of various groups viewed rule from Vienna and by the person of the Kaiser sometimes in friendly terms, sometimes in not-so friendly terms, and often in both.

 

For the show we aim to recreate the atmosphere of the Kaiser's 1913 jubilee celebrations, and to this end invite audience members to come to the show dressed in 1913 period-specific clothing and/or folk costume! Click for more information on 1913 period clothing!

The Kaiser's Jubilee can be seen:

March 20-22, 2009
Fri-Sat: 7:30 PM; Su: 2 PM

Fitzgerald Theater
10 E Exchange Street
St. Paul, MN 55101
*Click for map

Fitzgerald Box Office:
651-290-1200
www.ticketmaster.com
Ticketmaster: 800-982-2787
$25 Adult;
$20 Senior;
$15 Student;
$12 under 12

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