Wie organisiert man die Vergnügungsindustrie? Internationale Verbände der deutschsprachigen Varietéwelt, 1880–1929.

Abstract

This article traces the social and spatial organization of the amusement industry as it emerged in Germany. It investigates how entrepreneurs and performers coordinated the rapidly growing and transnationally expanding world of variety entertainment from the 1880s to the 1920s. A detailed analysis of trade journals and associations, as well as a GIS-supported mapping of production networks reveals that the sector relied upon different internationalization strategies and particular forms of business organization in the German-speaking world. While the industry became increasingly integrated into the nation-state, its producers continued to pursue multi-level strategies and retained much of their internationalist outlook.

Biographical Note

Antje Dietze (SFB 1199, Leipzig University, Germany)

Antje Dietze studied cultural studies in Leipzig and Paris, earning her PhD in 2012 from Leipzig University for a work on the role of cultural organizations and artistic practice during the post-socialist transition in Germany. As part of her current research she spent 2014/15 as a German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) P.R.I.M.E. research fellow at the Canadian Centre for German and European Studies at the University of Montreal (Canada). Her research interests include entertainment and the arts, cultural industries, and cultural change within the study of culture and transnational history, focusing particularly on Europe and North America in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.