Solomon Stramer was the leader of a

Yiddish theater Yiddish theatre consists of plays written and performed primarily by Jews in Yiddish, the language of the Ashkenazi Jewish community. The range of Yiddish theatre is broad: operetta, musical comedy, and satiric or nostalgic revues; melodrama; na ...

troupe founded in

Vienna Vienna ( ; ; ) is the capital city, capital, List of largest cities in Austria, most populous city, and one of Federal states of Austria, nine federal states of Austria. It is Austria's primate city, with just over two million inhabitants. ...

Austria Austria, formally the Republic of Austria, is a landlocked country in Central Europe, lying in the Eastern Alps. It is a federation of nine Federal states of Austria, states, of which the capital Vienna is the List of largest cities in Aust ...

, but based in

Cluj Cluj-Napoca ( ; ), or simply Cluj ( , ), is a city in northwestern Romania. It is the second-most populous city in the country and the seat of Cluj County. Geographically, it is roughly equidistant from Bucharest (), Budapest () and Belgrade ( ...

, Romania from 1919 at least until the late 1920s. For a time, his troupe had the exclusive right to perform

Yiddish Yiddish, historically Judeo-German, is a West Germanic language historically spoken by Ashkenazi Jews. It originated in 9th-century Central Europe, and provided the nascent Ashkenazi community with a vernacular based on High German fused with ...

-language theater in

Transylvania Transylvania ( or ; ; or ; Transylvanian Saxon dialect, Transylvanian Saxon: ''Siweberjen'') is a List of historical regions of Central Europe, historical and cultural region in Central Europe, encompassing central Romania. To the east and ...

, an area which at that time was home to about 300,000 Jews. Stramer's troupe, which after a shaky start developed into a solid

operetta Operetta is a form of theatre and a genre of light opera. It includes spoken dialogue, songs and including dances. It is lighter than opera in terms of its music, orchestral size, and length of the work. Apart from its shorter length, the oper ...

company, deviated from the usual patterns of Yiddish theater in that he successfully achieved a compromise with many

Orthodox Orthodox, Orthodoxy, or Orthodoxism may refer to: Religion * Orthodoxy, adherence to accepted norms, more specifically adherence to creeds, especially within Christianity and Judaism, but also less commonly in non-Abrahamic religions like Neo-pag ...

Jewish groups who had normally been opposed to Yiddish theater, which they saw as a secularizing force. Stramer's productions even incorporated

Hasidic Hasidism () or Hasidic Judaism is a religious movement within Judaism that arose in the 18th century as a spiritual revival movement in contemporary Western Ukraine before spreading rapidly throughout Eastern Europe. Today, most of those aff ...

songs. By 1922, Stramer's troupe had taken the name ''Teatrul Naţional Evreiesc Habimah'' (''Habimah National Yiddish Theater''). They sought, and in March 1922 received, the backing of the ''Uniune Naţională a Evreilor din Ardeal'' (''National Union of Transylvanian Jews'') for the exclusive right to perform Yiddish theater in Transylvania. The Romanian Ministry of Arts chose to back that exclusivity with the force of law: in August 1922, Sara Kanner, widow of Leopold Kanner, was told by the Ministry that she was welcome to perform Yiddish theater anywhere in Romania outside of Transylvania. The exclusive held for several years, and was finally broken around 1926 when an ''

avant-garde In the arts and literature, the term ''avant-garde'' ( meaning or ) identifies an experimental genre or work of art, and the artist who created it, which usually is aesthetically innovative, whilst initially being ideologically unacceptable ...

'' Yiddish theater troupe, who were doing a very different type of theater from Stramer's operetta company, were permitted to tour in Transylvania. Solomon Stramer recorded on 78 rpm records for Decca, Victor, and Odeon.

References

* Bercovici, Israil, ''O sută de ani de teatru evreiesc în România'' ("One hundred years of Yiddish/Jewish theater in Romania"), 2nd Romanian-language edition, revised and augmented by Constantin Măciucă. Editura Integral (an imprint of Editurile Universala), Bucharest (1998). . 121–123, 146. Yiddish theatre performers Hungarian Ashkenazi Jews Romanian Ashkenazi Jews Ashkenazi Jewish culture in Austria Theatre people from Vienna People from Cluj-Napoca Year of birth missing Place of birth missing Year of death missing Place of death missing {{Austria-hist-stub