The Shalvi/Hyman Encyclopedia of Jewish Women

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Brigitte Dalinger

Brigitte Dalinger is currently teaching at the Institute of Theatre, Film and Media Studies at the University of Vienna. Her most recent work, Trauerspiele mit Gesang und Tanz, a study of Jewish drama in Vienna, will be published soon. She is the author of “Verloschene Sterne.” Geschichte des jüdischen Theaters in Wien [Extinguished Stars: The History of the Jewish Theatre in Vienna] (Vienna, 1998) and co-editor, with Thomas Soxberger, of Abish Meisels’s review Fun sechisstow bis amerika (Vienna, 2000), a bilingual Yiddish-German publication.

Articles by this author

Klara Meisels, Esther Perelmann and Lea Weintraub-Graf in Ossip Dymow's "Der Sänger seiner Trauer," May 1929

Yiddish Theater in Vienna

Jewish theater in Vienna between 1900 and 1938 is inconceivable without women actors. A total of 112 people were active in the Viennese Yiddish theaters, of whom 37 were women. Actors such as Pepi Litmann, Molly Picon, and Mina Deutsch popularized “trouser roles” in which women depicted men as well as playing strongly typified female characters.