Authors

Discussion

Popular entertainment became central to urban life by the end of the 19^th century. Legislation on Sunday rest, limited working hours, and rapidly growing cities bolstered the rise of a transnationally entangled business field. Variety theaters, music cafes, cinemas, air shows, racing events, and circuses flourished, showcasing international artists and catering to a broad range of the population. At the same time, in the multiethnic cities of the partitioned Polish territories, national theatres and opera houses laid claim to the realm of leisure and inscribed themselves into urban spatial orders. Polish nation-building competed with other national and imperial projects in cultural matters. The historiographical focus on these highbrow institutions led to a depiction of life in cities as running along national borders: In places such as fin-de-siecle Warsaw, Poznan, or Lviv, national theatres and opera houses served as proof for nationally divided cities, both in terms of population and space. Through the lens of popular entertainment, this paper explores everyday spatial practices and scrutinizes the conceived nationalization of space in fin-de-siecle East Central Europe. It zooms in on the stakes of entertainers, authorities, political activists, and audiences. Newspaper articles, police reports, and administrative records on entertainment events suggest that borders along national lines were subject to situational change rather than continuously fortified.