Internationale Kulturwissenschaften International Cultural Studies Etudes culturelles internationales
Sektion X:		Mehrsprachigkeit: Regionen, "Nationen", Multikulturalität, Interkulturalität, Transkulturalität
Section X:		Multilingualism: Regions, "Nations", Multiculturalism, Interculturalism and Transculturalism
Section X:		Plurilinguisme: régions, "nations", multiculturalité, interculturalité, transculturalité

Birgit Lang (Wien)

German

Intersexions -
Constructions of gender difference/s in the German-speaking exile cabaret in Australia1

"The social articulation of difference, from the minority perspective, is a complex, on-going negotiation that seeks to authorize cultural hybridities that emerge in moments of historical transformation", says Homi K. Bhabha in the introduction to his book The Location of Culture.2 He stresses the integrative as well as antagonistic powers of such authorizations. The examples Bhabha gives (and this is true for Postcolonial Studies in general I suggest) are confined to a specific, often British and solely colonial, discourse. When outlined, the hybridity of the subjects often lack a description from a gendered perspective.3

Taking the German-speaking exile cabaret in Australia as an example, this article investigates a specific hybrid comment. Here, the British-Australian colonial discourse and a consequence of the racist and antisemitic politics of national socialism, namely the expulsion of the German-speakers classified as Jewish, intertwine. Central to my analysis will be the question on how gender difference/s is/ are represented within the exile cabaret.

After the annexation of Austria through national socialist Germany and the pogrom at the 10th November 1938 Australian bureaucracy faced a sudden problem. Three weeks after the Anschluß about ten thousand Austrian >Jews<4 applied for immigration to Australia.5 The expelled turned to Australia in distress. The complicated and partly antisemitic history of Australia's refugee policy has been described elsewhere.6 At the end of W.W.II, about 8,500 Jewish refugees were living in Australia. Austrians comprized one quarter of the German speaking refugees. In 1948 about 4000 Austrian refugees were living in Australia.7

The refugees arrived in a country they considered to be at the end of the world. Both Australia's and the refugees' gaze was fixed upon Europe. Australia oriented itself strictly by the United Kingdom, the German-speaking refugees - at least in the representation of the exile cabaret - gazed backed at a lost world, Vienna. Their gazes never met. Australia thinking of itself as a white British island in the Pacific welcomed white British immigrants only. Everyone else - at the time meaning mainly Italian immigrants and the refugees from Nazi-Germany - were supposed to assimilate as soon and as "effectively" as possible. At the same time the immigrants were denied access to an (intellectual) middle class. German-speaking lawyers, doctors and actors, to name but a few, were not able to pursue their careers. Language problems, but mainly bureaucratic and political obstacles, were put in their path. University careers were out of the question as well, because only the British educational system was accepted and therefore the refugees degrees were not recognized by the Australian educational system.8

The foundation of the Little Viennese Theatre in Sydney, Australia has to be seen in this context. It was founded in 1941 and served the German-speaking refugee community for 45 years. Cabaret plays written by Karl Bittman and Alfred Baring were a part of the theatrical program. These cabaret productions were the biggest success of the theatre over the years. The first cabaret production – subsequently called Bunter Abend – was already produced as early as 1945, before the end of W.W.II, with special permission by the state authorities (Performances in German were forbidden because Germany was at war with Australia). The eleventh, and last, Bunte Abend was performed in 1973. Several different stages in the development of the cabaret can be found over time . The comparison between a lost Vienna and a contemporary Sydney, though, was the one topic that featured prominently in all those years. Putting the figure of the refugee who suffered from inner strife in the centre of all their cabaret plays was a brilliant idea of Karl Bittman and Alfred Baring. The cultural difference/s between Vienna/Austria and Sydney/Australia were embodied by the figure of the >culture-lagged< refugee; the comparison between cultures was internalised in his or her psyche. The symptoms of this inner strife, or rather the representation of this internalised and constructed cultural difference, were the differences in language, in (high) culture, in humour, in food and in female gender roles. An example for the latter is the dream sequence in the Bunte Abend >Eine Fahrt ins Blaue<9 from 1952, in which the main character, Hans Mantler, splits into his Austrian and his Australian selves. Hans, the Viennese part, favours süße Mädeln10, and John, his Australian opponent prefers >Australian women<. A similar passage in which male gender roles are compared does not exist.

Women figure prominently not only when it comes to the comparison of intercultural gender roles. The role of the wife is central in all Bunte Abende. Interestingly enough, the "conventional" differences between husband and wife include also the way each deals with their migration and assimilation within the Australian society. Here is an example from the Bunte Abend in 1946. In this couplet Herr Schoen [Mr. Beautiful] and Herr Froehlich [Mr. Merry] sing:

Schoen:	Ach sagn's Herr Froehlich, koennten sie raten, Mei Frau benimmt sich sonderbar.
Froehlich:	Kein Wunder, wenn - bei so an Gatten Man seltsam wird oder ein Narr
Schoen:	Sie spricht nur Englisch, auch wenn wir zu Hause, Und kocht mit Dripping11 ungeniert.
Froehlich:	Gehn's ladn's mich ein, das naechstemal zur Jause, Ich haett sie gern analysiert!
Schoen:	Sie sperrt nicht zu die Wohnungstuer, Und trinkt sich Tee von sechs bis vier, Sie geht herum in einer Tour, Mit rotem Hut und gruene Schuh, Sie tragt sogar, auch wenn ich steig, Die Ledertasch, die ich erzeug! Das Geld mit Losen sie verliert, Ich bitte sagn's mir, was passiert?
Froehlich:	Aber Herr Schoen, sie brauchen sich nicht zu sorgen, Sie ist bloss naturalisiert!(12)

Translation into English:

Schoen:	Tell me Mr. Merry, my wife behaves strangely
Froehlich:	No wonder with this husband she is strange or a fool
Schoen:	She only speaks English, even when we are at home, and when she cooks she uses dripping without shame.
Froehlich:	Please invite me over next time, I’d like to analyse her.
Schoen:	She does not lock the door, she drinks tea from six to four she wears a red hat and green shoes And she even wears the handbags I produce
Froehlich:	You don’t have to worry, she is only naturalised.

The wife of Herr Schoen seems to adjust better to the "Australian way of life" than her husband. This attribution stays the same over many years. Wives don’t seem to be as homesick as their husbands, they seem to deal with the stress and inner strife of migration much better than their husbands. It is uncertain whether such attribution corresponds to the reality of immigration. The perception and representation of women and men as assimilated in different shades is most likely due to gender-specific representation of labour. Labour was seen as a purely male domain, domestic work as purely female. Considering this, men and women have actually the same strategy when it comes to dealing with migration. Both inevitably adapt to the new surroundings: women in the private arena of the couple's home which is portrayed as their sphere of responsibility, men at work. Only, the first is made fun of, whereas the latter is seen through sentimental eyes.

Considering the above examples, what conclusions can be drawn? In the first example, female gender roles, namely the >süße Mädel< and the >Australian woman<, are compared by means of parody from the perspective of a male figure. This parody is one-sided, because male gender roles are not discussed. But even when female gender roles are imagined as fixed and rather stereotypical, still they are put into perspective through the comparison.

The portrayal of women rarley concentrates on the comparison of culturally / nationally marked gender differences within the same gender, but deals with gender difference in a more conventional way. Men and women, in this case husbands and wives, are portrayed differently along the lines of gender, for example when differences in assimilation and adaptation to the migration process are discussed. Here, the male figures have to adapt when it comes to their work. "At home ", in the private realm, adaptations are not welcome. The female figures adapt in the area attributed to them - the privacy of >the home<. Consequently, the >home< is constructed on gender difference. This difference is the basis for many jokes in the cabaret plays. In this construction, the only place for women to discuss their relationship concerning their own migration is the >home<; no other textual space is available. What is also interesting in this context is the fact that when wives are described, it is not clear if the models for description of social realities have their origins in the public discourse in Vienna during the war, or in a contemporary Australian setting. In other words, it is not clear if these models are a quote from the past or a description of contemporary thought.

To return to Homi Bhabha's quote in the opening of my paper: the exile cabaret can be seen as an attempt to authorise cultural hybridity. Two notions are of special concern. If the writers of the Bunte Abende discuss cultural difference/s, it means that as soon as the discourses in the country of origin contradict the discourses in the country of refuge, the cabaret has freeing and revolutionary features. If the discourses in the country of origin overlap with those of the country of refuge, for example in the description of wives, the normativity of what is being ascribed increases. This implies that the described authorisation of cultural hybridity is antagonistic and integrative, conservative and innovative at the same time.

NOTES

1	This article is published while the writer is holder of a doctoral scholarship of the Austrian Academy of Science. Thanks to Jirina Zachova (Plsen, Chicago) for carefully proofreading the English version. Two remarks concerning the title:Intersexions is the title of two recently published books, namley: Intersexions. Gender/class/culture/ethnicity. Ed. by Gill Bottomley, Marie de Lepervanche and Jeannie Martin. Sydney: Allen & Unwin 1991. Intersexions. Feministische Anthropologie zu Geschlecht, Kultur und Sexualität. Hg. von Gerlinde Schein und Sabine Strasser. Wien: Milena 1997. Exile means exile from national socialism.
2	Homi Bhabha: The Location of Culture. London New York 1994 p. 2.
3	See for example Ann McClintocks critique of Homi Bhaba in her book Imperial Leather. Race, Gender and Sexuality in the Colonial Context. New York: Routledge 1995, especially p. 61-65.
4	The reason why the term Jews is hyphoned here lies in the complicated classification processes at the time. Irrespective of one's actual religious identity everyone who had only but a Jewish grandparent was classified as Jewish. This meant that Jews (from secular to religious, from atheist to orthodox) and people of Jewish descent were forced to leave Austria (or otherwise were subsequently murdered). All of them were classified as Jewish by the national socialists. The states that allowed refugees to immigrate accepted and perpetuated this definition that was forced upon the refugees by Nazi-Germany. Being classified as Jewish did not necesseraly mean identifying as Jewish, although of course the classification by the state had an impact on the identity of the refugees.
5	Blakeney, Michael: Proposals for a Jewish Colony in Australia: 1938-1948. In: Jewish Social Studies p. 277.
6	See Bartrop, Paul R.: Australia and the Holocaust 1933-45. Melbourne: Australian Scholarly Publishing 1994.
7	Bittman, Karl: Strauss to Matilda. Viennese in Australia 1938-1988. Sydney: Wenkart Foundation 1988 p. xiv.
8	Interview with Prof. Dr. Alphons Silbermann in Cologne September 1999.
9	>Eine Fahrt ins Blaue< translates as journey into nowhere, but is also a play between the phononyms Fahrt (journey) and fart (Furz).
10	The picture of the >süße Mädel< was a often described and popular stereotype that portrayed Viennese working class girls, especially servants, as sensual and sexually promiscuitive.
11	Sheepfat. Common Australian cooking fat of British origin, also used for doing fish & chips.
12	Bittman, Karl: Bunter Abend 1946 [S. 6]

		Internationale Kulturwissenschaften International Cultural Studies Etudes culturelles internationales
Sektion X:		Mehrsprachigkeit: Regionen, "Nationen", Multikulturalität, Interkulturalität, Transkulturalität
Section X:		Multilingualism: Regions, "Nations", Multiculturalism, Interculturalism and Transculturalism
Section X:		Plurilinguisme: régions, "nations", multiculturalité, interculturalité, transculturalité