ABSTRACT
In 1922 Alfred Roller, the Secession artist who collaborated with Gustav Mahler on several new productions at the Hofoper in Vienna between 1904 and 1907, published a book of photographs of Mahler entitled Die Bildnisse von Gustav Mahler. This chapter shows how Roller's essay both denies and reinforces certain stereotypes about "the Jew's body" in regard to Mahler's physical appearance by comparing his language to explications of the culturally accepted stereotype or caricature. Roller's description, consciously or unconsciously, examines Mahler's body in light of those commonly held assumptions. Despite the fact that Panizza's story is clearly over determined; the physical stereotypes that constituted the Jewish caricature would have been immediately recognizable, even if the word "Jew" remained unmentioned. Whatever one thinks of Alma, or her self-serving prose, or the nature of her relationship with Mahler, she nonetheless gives us a glimpse of the otherwise internal monologue of ambivalence that characterized Viennese love and hate for Mahler.
