A Lost Entertainment Industry? Popular Entertainment in Austria after 1945

Abstract In this article, I investigate lost knowledge in popular entertainment in Austria following the Second World War. Through a close examination of Stella Kadmon’s activities to re-establish popular entertainment, I examine the way popular theatre and political cabaret unfolded in Vienna (and beyond) starting from the postwar period until the 1980s. In tracing Kadmon’s activities when reopening her theatre, I identify gaps in the entertainment tradition, and ask how those who were not persecuted and remained during the war years – most of whom were strongly influenced by National Socialist ideas – were able to produce theatre in the face of the construction of a new ‘Austrian’ repertoire of popular culture. I base my investigation on two theoretical frameworks by cultural theorists: Stuart Hall’s concept of ‘back-then’ in the intermediating process of the construction of old into new identifications; and Homi K. Bhabha’s paradigm of ‘other knowledge’ in the making of colonial discourses.