How does popular culture contribute to constructing distinct yet interconnected identities in Central and Eastern Europe? That was the common thread all participants of workshop Performances of Belonging touched upon in various ways. Particularly fruitful discussions revolved around questions of nation-building, othering, racism, and antisemitism, as well as the region’s position within global dynamics.

Contributions covered a wide variety of themes, stakeholders, and regions, ranging from Leipzig’s once vibrant variety theatre scene as a space of identity performance to the impact of Ukrainian folk theatre groups in the Russian empire on Ukrainian self-understanding, and representations of Blackness in contemporary Serbian hip-hop music videos. Applied approaches were equally diverse, with scholars from history, regional studies, literary studies, and media studies, amongst others.

ANTJE DIETZE (Berlin) introduced the workshop topic by citing a case study of Leipzig entertainment institutions. She demonstrated how variety theatres from the 1880s onward became local spaces of identity performance while participating in transnational German-speaking networks of variety theatre entrepreneurs.

Continuing this thread, STEFAN HOFMANN (Leipzig) and HANNA VESELOVSKA (Kyiv) engaged with the theatre stage as a space for identity building. Veselovska showed how Ukrainian folk theatre gained traction for a short time in the late 19th-century Russian Empire with Ukrainian-language shows held in St. Petersburg and Moscow, impacting not only the Russian gaze on Ukraine but also Ukrainian self-perceptions. Hofmann looked further to the West, illustrating how – around the same time – Jargon theatre gained prominence in Vienna, Berlin, and Budapest. Jargon shows typically featured Jewish actors drawing on stereotypes to ridicule antisemitism and therefore sparked controversies within Jewish communities on their possibly adverse effects. Hofmann related these discussions to Jewish acculturation and fears of “invisible Jews”.

VINCENT HOYER (Leipzig), co-host of the workshop and featured in the second panel, provided a survey into Polish-Jewish history, exploring nationalist antisemitism within debates around the Palais de Glace, a venue for exclusive entertainment that opened in Warsaw in 1912. He argued that the venue became one of the prime targets of antisemitic agitation because it symbolized Warsaw’s modernity and European lifestyle, a belonging that Polish nationalist discourse in Warsaw ascribed to Christian Poles. In the same panel, JONAS LÖFFLER (Vienna) demonstrated how a transformation of musical culture in Tbilisi shaped perceptions of national belonging around 1900. He argued that popular music became an agent of nationalism, prompting a shift from traditional Persianate tunes to Western-inspired songs with Georgian lyrics. According to Löffler, the new musical style was not only conflated with nationalism but contrasted with the seeming backwardness of Persianate tracks. A newspaper reference to the “Hottentot” nature of Persianate music Löffler presented sparked debates among the participants about the development of regimes of racialization in the region – a theme that has received more scholarly attention recently1 and was frequently discussed in the workshop. JAMES MARK (Exeter) added another perspective to the panel with his analysis of how a Soviet film inspired by Genghis Khan was instrumentalized by right- and left-wing groups in interwar Hungary. These groups interpreted the film through the lens of a broader concept of “Eurasianism,” which they contrasted with Western Europe. While the left’s affinity to the Soviet-produced film seemed almost natural, right-wingers found appeal in the idea of national rebirth through a closer identification with Eurasia that they saw in the movie. However, according to Mark, some right-wing critics themselves expressed confusion over their enjoyment of the film, given its Bolshevik-tainted, anti-imperialistic plot.

A full panel was dedicated to stage performances in Central Eastern Europe as an arena of identity-building with a particular focus on Blackness. MARTYNAS PETRIKAS (Vilnius) examined a Black theater troupe performing in Kaunas in 1930. He touched on notions of exoticism and authenticity the group was attributed with – an experience of othering often shared by Roma people in the region. Participants discussed further parallelisms, raising the question of comparability between different regimes of racialization in the region. ALEXANDRA CHIRIAC (Leipzig), co-host of the workshop, illustrated how African American performers, who emigrated to Romania and embedded themselves within the local artistic milieu during the first half of the 20th century, faced challenges to their belonging – or even the impossibility of belonging – in different periods. Drawing on interviews with Hungarian jazz musicians, ÁDÁM HAVAS (Barcelona) traced the development of US-mainstream and Bartók-oriented free jazz in Hungary. He elaborated on how these two different styles, especially in terms of their perceived authenticity, were linked to identities, with implications for Jewish and Romani belonging in Hungarian society. BEÁTA HOCK (Leipzig), chair of the panel, pointed out that the panel demonstrated a break with common assumptions about the 1920s and 1930s as a ‘deglobalized’ period in Central Eastern Europe.

Focusing on Blackness, PARIS PIN-YU CHEN (Birmingham) explored how Black wrestlers in the Baltics became a reflective lens for Baltic self-perceptions as Northern European, in contrast to Asian or African identities. His findings on “blackface” allegations against a Black wrestler in the Baltics demonstrated that “blackface” was a well-known practice in the Baltic states in the 1930s. KATALIN TELLER (Budapest) presented a history of the circus in the 1930s in Germany, Austria, and Hungary, scrutinizing how German circuses adapted to different national contexts while keeping close domestic ties to National Socialism. Nazi entanglements were also at the core of VIKTÓRIA MUKA’s (Budapest) study of passion plays performed by a German minority in the 1930s in Budaörs, Hungary. She demonstrated how a seemingly authentic German tradition was invented at the time, how Nazi propagandists tried to instrumentalize it, and how in the legacy of World War II and the subsequent expulsion of many Germans, minority Germans falsely rewrote its history to sustain a historical victim narrative.

Keynote speaker CATHERINE BAKER (Hull) tied together many approaches that were developed throughout the workshop, especially regarding questions of Central Eastern European regimes of racialisation and relations to (post-)colonialism and the Black Atlantic.2 For instance, she inquired about the possibility of interpreting “blackface” in Central Eastern Europe as a semi-peripheral region in the same way as it would be interpreted in the U.S. or Western Europe, citing the case of recent “blackface” scandals around the Eurovision Song Contest. In this regard, Central Eastern Europe, is different for two reasons, Baker argued: The regions’ countries didn’t control their own colonies. Instead, they were often subject to imperial influence themselves. However, there have been indirect links to the global colonial system, e.g., via missionary travelers who brought African artifacts to a museum in Slovenia. Thus, instead of disavowing colonial entanglements and racism, according to Baker, anti-Black racism, anti-Roma racism, as well as antisemitism, need to be studied in their respective, distinct configurations in Central Eastern Europe.

Anti-Roma racism was central to the second day’s first panel. MARIA CHIOREAN (Sibiu) presented a quantitative approach to analyzing a broad archive of Romanian literary works from 1890–1933. She identified patterns in the portrayal of Romani characters and labor and argued that novels, as a central media for Romanian nation-building, did not allow for Romani agency. Instead, Roma were excluded or included in this constructed nation based exclusively on Romanian needs. Usual descriptions of Roma, according to Chiorean, entailed obscuring Romani musical labor by portraying Romani musicians as naturally inclined performers. Within the same panel, SÁRA BAGDI (Budapest) showed how Hungarian communists came to include non-white people in a notion of the global working class through poetry in the late 1920s. Going back to the Romani experience in Romania, ILINCA TAMARA TODORUȚ (Cluj-Napoca) explained how Giuvlipen, a Romani theatre group, intersectionally addressed anti-Roma racism in a Shakespeare adaption entitled Caliban and the Witch.3

Staying within the realm of contemporary media production, ANIKÓ IMRE (Los Angeles) examined TV-show production industries operating in Central Eastern Europe. She illustrated how foreign production firms take advantage of low production and labor costs in Central Eastern Europe, potentially delivering profits to corrupt governments while exploiting workers. INDIRA HAJNÁCS (Leipzig) took up music as a sphere of identity production exploring how mytho-historical references to the Eurasian “Steppe” shape identities in a recent surge of Hungarian folk music. Adding another perspective to the discussion of Blackness in Central Eastern Europe, SUNNIE RUCKER-CHANG (Columbus) investigated how white Serbian hip-hop musicians appropriate a particularly Black form of “cool” in contemporary music videos. In the videos, Black people regularly appear as passive bodies in the background, while white rappers imitate historically Black performance styles. Therefore, Rucker-Chang’s presentation further raised issues of racism and belonging, particularly as she explored the motivations behind white rappers’ inclusion of Black bodies in their music videos.

The sustained engagement of participants as well as guests of the workshop did not only speak to the success of the event but also corroborated the need to address the position of Central Eastern Europe, a region often described as “semi-peripheral”, within global histories. The latter, currently one of the most dynamic fields of study within historiography, might in turn benefit from turning to a complicated region under study. Moreover, the workshop revealed the potential of bringing together research on different configurations of discrimination and othering within identity production in Central Eastern Europe. Discussions on comparability and theory-building regarding mechanisms proved fruitful and should be extended beyond the scope of entertainment and popular culture. For example, such an opportunity might be found in a closer examination of eugenics discourse in the long 19th century, as it shaped ideas of race and belonging at the time – potentially bridging temporal and national boundaries within medicine, science, but also society, and perhaps even popular culture.

Conference overview:

Welcome and Introduction

Alexandra Chiriac (Leipzig) / Vincent Hoyer (Leipzig): Welcome

Antje Dietze (Berlin): Popular Entertainment in Leipzig: Perspectives on Performances and Belongings since the 1880s

Panel I: Play and Perception

Stefan Hofmann (Leipzig): Walking a Tightrope: »Jargon« Entertainment and the Politics of Jewish Visibility in Fin de Siècle Central Europe

Hanna Veselovska (Kyiv): Ukrainian Theatre in the Space of Popular Culture Inside the Russian Empire

Panel II: Entertainment and Contest

Jonas Löffler (Vienna): Persianate Pasts, National Futures. Shifting Musical Entertainment Cultures in Tiflis / Tbilisi around 1900

Vincent Hoyer (Leipzig): Whose Venue? Warsaw’s Palais de Glace and the Nationalization of Urban Space

James Mark (Exeter): A Storm over Asia: Pudovkin’s Genghis Khan and the Eurasianisms of interwar Hungary

Panel III: Jazz and the Other

Martynas Petrikas (Vilnius): First Encounters: All-Black Performance in 1930’s Lithuania

Ádám Havas (Barcelona): »Swinging« Cultural Difference in East Central Europe: The Genesis and Structure of the Hungarian Jazz Diaspora

Alexandra Chiriac (Leipzig): Becoming Romanian: African American Performers in Jazz Age Bucharest

Panel IV: Sports and Spectacle

Katalin Teller (Budapest): Americanization, Internationalism, and Nationalisms in Austrian and Hungarian Circuses in the Interwar Period

Paris Pin-Yu Chen (Birmingham): National Sports and Race: Wrestling and Black Showmen in the Interwar Baltics

Viktória Muka (Budapest): Passion Plays in Budaörs / Wudersch as a Performance of Belonging in the 1930s and Today

Keynote Lecture: Catherine Baker (Hull): Your Race Still Sounds Familiar?: Historicising Popular Entertainment and Racialisation in Central and Eastern Europe

Panel V: Labour and Performance

Maria Chiorean (Sibiu): Romani Music and Performance in Post-Abolition Romanian Prose: On Racialized Emotion and Romani Labor History

Sára Bagdi (Budapest): 100% Anti-Imperialism: The Role of Anti-Imperialist Poetry in the Late 1920s Hungarian Labor Movement Culture

Ilinca Tamara Todoruț (Cluj-Napoca): Slavery and the Nation in Giuvlipen’s »Caliban and the Witch«

Panel VI: Fictions and Revivals

Anikó Imre (Los Angeles): Racial Fantasies in Peripheral Popular Media Industries

Indira Hajnács (Leipzig): Resurging the »Eastern Roots«: The Intersection of Traditional Music, Nationalism, and Identity in Hungary's Illiberal Turn

Sunnie Rucker-Chang (Columbus ): Sonic Blackness, Black Cool, and the Metonymic Black Body in Serbian Music and Film

Notes:
1 Cf. Catherine Baker/ Bogdan C. Iacob / Anikó Imre / James Mark (eds.), Off White. Central and Eastern Europe and the Global History of Race, Manchester 2024 or Ivan Kalmar: White But Not Quite. Central Europe’s Liberal Revolt, Bristol 2022.
2 Paul Gilroy, The Black Atlantic. Modernity and Double Consciousness, London 1993.
3 Silvia Federici, Caliban and the Witch, New York 2004.