The Sarrasani Circus in Opole. On Entertainment in the City in the First Decades of the 20 th Century 1 Acta Ethnographica Hungarica 64(1), 93–110 (2019) DOI: 10.1556/022.2019.64.1.6 1216–9803/$ 20 © 2019 Akadémiai Kiadó, Budapest Kamila Baraniecka-Olszewska Insttute of Archaeology and Ethnology, Polish Academy of Sciences, Warsaw Abstract: The article presents outcomes of the transformation of ethnographic shows into circus acts at the example of Sarrasani Circus performances in Opole (German: Oppeln) in the beginning of the 20 th century. The author examines how circus performances created experience of the extraordinary on stage by presenting faraway, distant, exotic cultures. Thus ethnographic shows in the Sarrasani Circus were an element of magic world of wonders performed at arena. The circus visited Opole thrice: in 1913, 1928 and 1933 becoming one of the main attractions in the city. Each time the shows were preceded by a huge advertising campaign in the local German- and Polish-language press. Press articles, notes and advertisements along with scarce archival data constitute the main source for the analysis, though they ofer a very specifc image of the past. Taking this into account, the author focuses on the manner of conceptualizing exotic cultures to make them attractive to the city audience. Such an approach enables research on the process of presenting exotic ethnic groups within a framework of city entertainment in the frst decades of the 20 th century. Therefore what the author describes is a way in which distant cultures become a stage attraction, a circus trick and an element co-creating a fantastic reality on arena. Keywords: circus, ethnographic shows, exotic cultures, Sarrasani, stage performance 1 The research that became the basis for the present article was financed by the National Science Centre, Poland 2015/19/B/HS3/02143. However, I would not have been able to complete it were it not for the help and support of the staff of the State Archives which I searched for materials. Naturally, in this case the assistance of the team at the State Archive in Opole was particularly valuable, yet I also owe a special debt of gratitude to Bogusław Małusecki, the head of the Gliwice department of the State Archive in Katowice. The manner in which he organized my work at the archive (and therefore the work of other people, whom I would also like to thank), as well as his exceptional kindness and the witty interest he expressed in the topic truly deserve to be called a model attitude in archival inquiry. He is also responsible for the fact that my file on circus performances in Silesia is full to the point of bursting.