Jo(h)nny in a box
You could buy them in shops until 2016 ... packs of Austrian Johnny cigarettes in their distinctive jeans pocket design. When the new jeans design, aimed at younger audiences, was introduced in 1978, the uncommon spelling of “Jonny” that had been used until then was also changed. By then, it had long been forgotten that when the Austrian tobacco company founded the brand 50 years earlier, it was a clear reference to Krenek’s sensational opera "Jonny spielt auf". Like the opera character Jonny, the cigarettes were a symbol of America: They were advertised as an “Austrian cigarette with American style”, differentiating the brand from such others as Nil, Memphis, Egyptische III, and Jussuf, all associated with the very popular “oriental” tabacco commonly used since the nineteenth century.
The link between a cigarette brand and an opera is not as unusual as one might initially think. In addition to Jonny, it was also possible to inhale the flavors of Rosenkavalier and Heliane. Brands like Drama, Gala, and Melody likewise evoked associations of the stage, opera, and music, reinforced by the cigarettes’ packaging: The interior of the packs displayed pictures of, among other things, the Vienna State Opera and stars of the opera scene.
Like many other products during the late 1920s, the design and advertising of such cigarette brands relied on the creativity of young artists. The design of the narrow blue and red stripes of the Jonny cigarettes was created by young architect Oswald Haerdtl, who attended lectures by Josef Frank at the Wiener Kunstgewerbeschule, the architect who (together with Oskar Wlach) designed the furniture for Krenek’s apartment in Vienna.
After the annexation of Austria by the Deutsche Reich, the Austrian tobacco company Tabakregie, founded in 1784, was converted into the Austria Tabak Aktiengesellschaft in 1939. The Deutsche Reich was the sole shareholder. This produced a strikingly ironic contradiction: In the same year that Hans Severus Ziegler presented his exhibition “Entartete Musik” (Degenerate Music) with the distinctive figure of Jonny on the poster, the cigarettes named after the icon of “degenerate music” could still be bought unchanged—with the exception of a swastika embossed on the tax stamp.
Today, it is no longer possible fill your lungs with the smoke of a Jonny, but happily you can still fill your ears—and without any negative health effects whatsoever! On 11 March, a new production of "Jonny spielt auf" will premiere at the Gärtnerplatztheater in Munich, where it was first performed in 1928—shortly before the launch of the Jonny cigarette brand.
Did you know that the Ernst Krenek Institute, on Campus Krems, is housed in a former tobacco factory?
The article “Von der Virginier zur Weiterbildung” (in German only) in the new online magazine "Art & Science Krems" shares more about the fascinating history of the building.
