Entertainment Landscape and Ethnographic Shows in Gdańsk, 1860–1914
Entertainment Landscape and Ethnographic Shows in Gdańsk, 1860–1914

Summary/Abstract: Ethnographic shows existed as peculiar projects in a specific time and space. Correspondingly, entertainment played a specific role in the life of modernizing cities. This article aims at reconstructing the circumstances and places of entertainment in Gdańsk, where representatives of ‘exotic’ peoples from distant continents performed on stage. The stage was not only that of ethnic shows (Völkerschauen), where the program of the performance was entirely devoted to one group, but also circuses, where ‘exotic others’ performed alongside other artists, as well as theaters with a light repertoire of variétés that were operating in Gdańsk at the time. The specificity of shows performed by people from distant lands seemed to reside in emphasizing differences: cultural, ethnic and civilizational. Questions emerge concerning what these shows were like, how ‘wildness’ was perceived and how ‘exotic’ daily life was presented? The presented materials have been gathered from the accounts and press advertisements of the Gdańsk press at the time. If meaning in shows was embodied in form, technique, and place, the question at hand, is what precisely we can ascertain about entertainment institutions in urban landscape from this kind of data.

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