Jonny from Austria

This pack was named for the African American jazz violinist in Ernst Krenek's 1920s Austrian opera, Jonny Spielt Auf (Jonny Plays). How often do opera and tobacciana coincide!?!

While Nazi propaganda suppressed the opera as Entartete Musik ("degenerate music" in 1938, the brand lived on and Krenek had a cultural revival in Austria after the war, despite spending the rest of his life in America as a composer, writer, and professor. Read more about it at my blog: http://wp.me/p6AaSY-1h

UNSOLVED MYSTERY: I am at a loss for explaining the flag emblazoned on the cover featuring a golden star rising over a wavy sea (suggestions welcome!).