Little Cohn

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Little Cohn (also spelled “Kohn”) is an anti-Semitic stereotype of “the Jews ” in the German Empire under Wilhelm II. Cohn , derived from the Hebrew term Kohen , is a common surname among European Jews, so it was synonymous with everyone Prejudices against the Jewish population in the early 20th century. The date of origin of the anti-Semitic stereotype of the figure of "little Cohn" is not certain.

song

text

Julius Einödshofer (1863–1930) composed the 4-stanza couplet around 1900. Didn't you see little Cohn? The text says:

1. An illumination also
goes with a maiden, Herr Cohn;
the maiden glows very much for Herr Cohn,
almost more than the sea of ​​flames around,
so her shock is doubled
when suddenly Cohn was away from her.
That was because he saw
the dear half of the wife go!
The maiden is bleak, very despondent,
and goes to the policeman and asks:
[Refrain:]
Didn't you see little Cohn?
Didn't you see him pass by?
In the crowd,
he got into a crowd.
So you're scared,
Cohn is gone!

2. The policeman looks for it and says: "I, where,
go to the treasury, it
's possible that someone from town
has already delivered it there."
The maid goes there, but there was nothing there,
no Cohn -, just a tin can.
What am I doing now in shock!
I'm all gone, the Cohn is gone!
And
now the maiden, wringing her hands, complains loudly about her grief on the street:
[Refrain]

3. A heap of
people is forming around our maiden, very dreadful,
and immediately there is now
the greatest sympathy in the crowd .
Everyone stops asking:
haven't you seen Cohn?
The call continues roaring,
and then becomes a 'winged' word -
whether high, whether low, poor and rich,
when you meet, you immediately ask:
[Refrain]

4. A friendly applause calls out to me,
I'm grateful to come out again,
and I'm happy that this song is
so inspiring for Berlin.
That's why my shock is twice as big,
the little one is still gone.
And if you go into the tunnel now,
I ask you to take a look,
oh why
don't you ask over a glass of beer, and ask again here:
[Refrain]

The song was performed by the singer Guido Thielscher as part of the revue “His Little One. His Little One”, which premiered on January 18, 1902 in the Berlin Thalia Theater . Big equipment posse with song and dance ”.

occasion

The model for the song was an episode with the lawyer Fritz Cohn (1875–1943), son of the publisher Emil Cohn , about which the journalist Margret Boveri reports:

“At the turn of the century, during a break in the Apollo Theater, the little man got lost in the crowd, his girlfriend shouted into the crowd: 'Didn't you see little Cohn?' The call continued from mouth to mouth through the foyers, swelling into the choir. The members of the ensemble recorded him, gave him a melody - and the result was what was called a hit song in my childhood before the First World War, the hit 'Didn't you see little Cohn?' "

The piece of music published by Max Marcus in Berlin was considered the hit of the year. Alfred Kerr wrote a Berlin chat letter for the Königsberger Allgemeine Zeitung on February 2, 1902 with the title "Didn't you see little Cohn?"

When in 1931 the anti-Semitic directory Semi-Kürschner claimed that the model for “little Cohn” was the lawyer Martin Carbe , born Cohn and older brother of Fritz, the writer Kurt Tucholsky contradicted it , but without referring to Fritz Cohn by name.

Lyricist

Who wrote the lyrics of the song Little Cohn was controversial. The authors of Seine Kleine were initially Leopold Ely and the directors of the Thalia Theater, Jean Kren and Alfred Schönfeld.

When the theater critic Ludwig Renner (born October 1, 1868 in Hamburg, died June 11, 1932 in Hof Gastein ) died, the press initially said that he was the poet of Der Kleine Cohn . However, Emil Rosendorff (born December 13, 1877 in Berlin, died March 18, 1942 in the Litzmannstadt ghetto ) claimed to have written the text; according to Rosendorff, "only the refrain idea" came from Renner. Rosendorff wrote in the Weltbühne that he had initially received a fee of 20 marks from Kren and Schönfeld for little Cohn . After they pretended to be a lyricist, he and Rosendorff only received a higher fee in a court settlement.

Even Alfred Schmasow is named as author.

Schmasow wrote the text of another couplet with the name I saw little Cohn .

Postcards

Postcard from around 1905

The figure of “little Cohn”, which became popular through the couplet , was also used on anti-Semitic postcards and caricatures until the 1920s .

The distribution on picture postcards came from the Max Marcus publishing house, and the motif was picked up by numerous postcard publishers such as Bruno Bürger & Ottilie in Leipzig, including Jewish companies. The "little Cohn" is shown in all possible situations and made ridiculous, like the postcard series "The little Kohn in all situations" (Verlag J. Wollstein, Berlin) or "The little Cohn from the cradle to the grave" (Verlag des Kikeriki , Vienna). The visual representation makes use of the common anti-Semitic clichés: on the postcard pictures he appears extremely short, bow-legged, often puny and thin, but always with an oversized hooked nose. The “jokes” at the expense of the character are linked to allegedly “Jewish” negative traits. Several cards alluding to the alleged greed of Jews revolve around a lost and recovered mark. A card titled “ Cafe Bauer ” (Verlag VS & G. Saulsohn, Berlin) says: “Here, Unter'n Linden ', that was strong, / Little Cohn lost a mark / Drum let our town dig right away / Until you find the money. / Now he is cheering loudly in the café / The happiness is in his eyes / And all guests big and small / Are also extremely happy. ”Some cards show how the little man is discarded amid scornful laughter. Such postcards, which were mostly headed with "Greetings from the muster ", were used to communicate the result of their own pattern.

More articles

The Erfurt flower and wax goods company JC Schmidt offered a sentence to the Cohn family based on the Cohnversartionlexicohn in 1911/12. A cohnfuse family treatise , consisting of a “lecture to be read out” by a “mechanical figure of little Cohn”, a “hair-raising wig” and a “squeaky nose”.

reception

The figure of little Cohn was often taken up in literary terms and was the subject of one of the first meetings of the Vienna Psychoanalytic Association in Sigmund Freud's apartment , attended by Wilhelm Stekel , Max Kahane , Rudolf Reitler , Alfred Adler and a previously unidentified writer.

Grand Bazar around 1910

The philosopher Theodor W. Adorno linked the song with a fear fantasy written in 1929, in which little Cohn in the “Grand Bazar” department store on the Zeil in Frankfurt is the “victim of a ritual murder”.

The poet Else Lasker-Schüler also used the motif several times.

The smaller of the two Frankfurt city hall towers built between 1900 and 1904 was popularly known as the " Kleiner Cohn ". Its outer shape corresponded to the Salmensteinschen Haus , a building on the Frankfurt city wall near the former Judengasse that was demolished around 1810 .

The figure of little Cohn was also used by National Socialist propaganda, for example by the singing trio The Three Rulands in a radio broadcast after the November pogrom .

literature

postcard
  • Dietz Bering : The name as a stigma: Anti-Semitism in everyday German life, 1812-1933. Klett-Cotta, Stuttgart 1992, ISBN 3-608-95782-0 , pp. 206-211
  • Fritz Backhaus : “Didn't you see little Cohn?” A hit from the turn of the century. In: canceled. Postcards hostile to Jews. Based on the Wolfgang Haney collection, ed. by Helmut Gold and Georg Heuberger. Umschau / Braus, Heidelberg 1999, pp. 235-240, ISBN 3-8295-7010-4 .
  • Julia Schäfer: Measure - drawn - laughed at. Images of Jews in popular magazines 1918–1933. Campus Verlag, Frankfurt a. M. 2005, ISBN 3-593-37745-4 , pp. 82-85.
  • Ridicule and agitation. Anti-Semitic postcards 1893–1945. From the Wolfgang Haney collection. Edited by Juliane Peters (Atlas des Historischen Bildwissens; 3) Directmedia Publishing, Berlin 2009 (over 50 picture postcards on "Little Cohn").

Web links

Remarks

  1. ↑ quoted from: Froher Sang and lust'ger Klang. 1115 most popular and newest song rhymes and hits , Bardtenschlager, Reutlingen 1912, p. 112
  2. ↑ On “His little one” cf. the review of the 50th performance by Siegfried Jacobsohn : Possenjammer, Die Welt am Montag (Berlin), vol. 8, no. 12 of March 24, 1902, printed in: Gunther Nickel, Alexander Weigel (ed.): Siegfried Jacobsohn. Collected Writings 1900–1926 . Wallstein, 2005, pp. 125-126
  3. ↑ Margret Boveri: We all lie. 1965, p. 20.
  4. ^ Ignatz Wrobel [alias Kurt Tucholsky]: Sigilla Veri . In: Weltbühne , September 29, 1931, No. 39, p. 483
  5. ↑ on Emil Rosendorff see Eva Weissweiler, Lilli Weissweiler (ed.): Ausgemerzt! The Lexicon of Jews in Music and its Murderous Consequences , Dittrich, Cologne 1999, p. 299, 410
  6. ^ Paul Elbogen : Lex Cohn, Weltbühne , 28th year, June 21, 1932, No. 25, p. 948, Textarchiv - Internet Archive
  7. ↑ Emil Rosendorff: A world hit fee! In: Weltbühne , Vol. 28, July 5, 1932, No. 27, p. 35, Textarchiv - Internet Archive
  8. ↑ Postcard “The Cohn is here!” From 1902
  9. ↑ ridicule and incitement, Atlas Number 03/0626
  10. ↑ JC Schmidt: price book about cotillon - ball u. Joke articles, hall decorations, summer party articles, etc. , Erfurt 1911, reprint Olms, 1999, p. 86
  11. ^ Wilhelm Stekel: The 'little boy . In: Masks of Sexuality . 2nd and 3rd ed. Vienna 1924, pp. 137–148
  12. ^ Rolf Tiedemann (ed.), Theodor W. Adorno: Musikalische Schriften, Volume 5 , Frankfurt 1984 (Collected Writings 18), pp. 18-19
  13. ↑ cf. Reinhard Pabst (ed.), Theodor W. Adorno: Childhood in Amorbach. Pictures and memories , Frankfurt 2003, pp. 112–113
  14. ↑ Tobias Picard, Institute for Urban History: Frankfurt am Main in early color slides 1936 to 1943 , Sutton Verlag, 2011, p. 50
  15. ↑ Michael Grüttner : The "Rulands-Eck". Anti-Semitism in cabaret . doi: 10.23691 / jgo: article-98.de.v1