“History of Circus” with Dr. Birgit Peter of the University of Vienna (Department of Theater, Film and Media Studies) will take place on Saturday, 9 March 2019.
The history and historiography of circus appear as a “blind spot” in German-speaking cultural- and theaterhistorical researches. The gap in scientific representation is blatantly contratictory to the omnipresence of circus during the “long 19th century”. Vienna in particular has a past as circus metropole, that has barely been recognized in collective memory: Thus the city held three magnificient fixed circus buildings around 1900; Zirkus Renz and Zirkus Busch in Leopoldstadt and Zirkus Schumann in Fünfhaus. We will immerse ourselves in the Austrian history of circus and deal with the question as to why this part of history has been forgotten.