Eduard Reiss (lawyer)

Eduard Reiss

Eduard Reiss also Eduard Reiss , (born May 8, 1850 in Załoźce near Ternopil , Galicia , Austrian Empire ; † April 27, 1907 in Vienna ) was an Austrian lawyer with a doctorate and the first Jewish mayor of Chernivtsi .

Life

Reiss came from assimilated Judaism . His father was a military doctor who had come to Chernivtsi with the family in 1856 and opened a practice.

Reiss attended the kk I. Staatsgymnasium Chernivtsi . The poet Ernst Rudolf Neubauer (1828–1898) was his history teacher. The later journalist, publicist and poet Karl Emil Franzos was two classes above Reiss . One of his classmates was Mihai Eminescu , who later became the national poet of the Romanians . Like the French, Reiss was decisively committed to a German-Jewish cultural symbiosis.

After graduation he studied from 1868 at the University of Vienna first two semesters medicine , then law . He became a member of the Viennese country team Bukowina . After completing his studies, he returned to Czernowitz in 1872 and took a position at the regional court. In 1875 he gave the keynote speech at the founding Kommersbuch of Franz Joseph's University , whose first doctoral he belonged. In the same year he joined a law firm in Chernivtsi. Since 1880 he was a member of the Bukovinian Bar Association and an independent lawyer . In 1871 he was in the reserve lieutenant in the kuk Hungarian infantry regiment "Archduke Ludwig Viktor" No. 65 . In 1880 he was promoted to first lieutenant .

In 1884 he was elected city representative for the first time. From January 16, 1894 to April 12, 1905, he held the office of Vice Mayor. He was re-elected seven times. During this time, there were many urban innovations: water pipes and sewers, electrical lighting, street paving and the installation of a tram.

On April 12, 1905, Reiss was elected mayor of Chernivtsi with 48 of 50 votes. He was the first Jewish mayor of an Austrian capital. In Chernivtsi he was not the only one. In 1912 he was followed by Salo von Weisselberger . Re-elected on February 7, 1907, he witnessed the opening of the city theater, the new train station and the Palace of Justice in the two years of office until his sudden death. He died of a stroke while on a vacation trip to Vienna. His body was transported to Chernivtsi by train. The funeral procession began at the train station. Reiss was buried in the Jewish cemetery in Chernivtsi on April 30, 1907 at 2 p.m. He left behind his wife Fanny and the children Alma and Joseph.

See also : History of the Jews in Czernowitz  and student associations in Czernowitz

Associations and honorary positions

• Academic reading room
• Chernivtsi men's choir
• Supervisory Board of the Wiener Landesbank
• Vice-President of the Bukovinian Bar Association
• Chairman of the state school council
• Member of the Board of Trustees of the Israelite Orphanage

Honors

• Franz Joseph Order (1880)
• Imperial and Royal Councilor (1900)

Commemoration

Tear the grave

On the day of the funeral, on April 30, 1907, the city council decided to rename the Schlangengasse, where the Reiss family's house was located. When Dr. Eduard Reiss-Gasse it is already listed on the city map from 1908. During the Romanian era it was renamed Strada Mircea Voda . It has been called vulycja Ukrainska since the Soviet era .

Reiss' tomb is located at the entrance to the Jewish cemetery, on the right behind the morgue and across from the grave of the Zionist leader Benno Strauch . The Jewish community donated a crypt of honor and had it built over with a chapel-like canopy, which - finely sawn out of metal - the words “Dr. Eduard Reiss Mayor ”. The tomb rusted in Soviet times, but was restored after the collapse of the Eastern Bloc . The nameplate was lost; the word “mayor” was retained.

Reiss' portrait was hung in the town hall meeting room. Long gone, in 1998, on the occasion of the celebrations for the 150th anniversary of the autonomy of Bukovina , it came back to the Czernowitz town hall with pictures of all mayors.

literature

• Franka Kühn: Dr. Eduard Reiss. The first Jewish mayor of Chernivtsi 1905–1907. Foreword by Peter Rychlo . Edited by Erhard Roy Wiehn . Hartung-Gorre Verlag, Konstanz 2004, ISBN 3-89649-891-6 .

Web links

• ÖBL

Remarks

1. ↑ The dissertation topic is unknown; the work is not available.
2. ↑ The alley runs parallel to Herrengasse and connects Russische Gasse with Armeniergasse.
3. ^ Raimund Lang : The Wiener Landsmannschaft Bukowina - the root of the Czernowitz corporation life . Einst und Jetzt , Vol. 56 (2011), pp. 249-256.