Jews played a significant role in the rise and success of circus entertainment in Germany. In fact, civic society, Jewish emancipation, and mass entertainment developed simultaneously and as will be shown, were not only parallel phenomena but also mutually dependent. After all, it was the circus that permitted the spectacular rise to respectability of many poor, largely rural, Jewish families, who worked as peddlers, cattle traders, or even fairground performers in nineteenth-century Germany. Circuses stood at the nexus of past and present. Clearly modern enterprises, they managed to harmonize democratic and autocratic elements in their organization and, most importantly, in their aesthetics. Circuses also promised acceptance for and gave agency to Jewish families who had not been at the forefront in modernizing Germany. These families were not protagonists of the “Jewish enlightenment”; they could claim no far-reaching connections in banking or manufacturing and could boast no academic distinction. They were, however, entrepreneurial, creators of a fascinating microcosm in which they hoped to find what Jews had been systematically denied for centuries: tolerance and respect from a diverse German population. Hence, Jewish families contributed significantly to the birth of the circus, a conservative utopia whose very ambiguity provided them with their greatest opportunities.

Today circuses have become nostalgic events for audiences of small children and accompanying parents, but at the turn of the last century they strongly influenced the press, the arts, and fashion.