History of the Jews in Austria

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The Jews on the floor of modern Austria is the first time in the Roman detectable. At the beginning of the 10th century, the Raffelstetten customs regulations were the first to mention Jews in this area as traders. In Vienna, Burgenland and eastern Lower Austria, centuries of history tell of the existence of Jewish communities.

In other parts of today's Austria there were hardly any or only brief periods of Jewish communities and, from the end of the 19th century, in some provincial capitals. Some regions of the Habsburg Monarchy were more populated by Jews than others. There were large Jewish minorities in almost all crown lands of Austria-Hungary , with Galicia and Bukovina , which made up parts of today's Poland, Ukraine and Romania, had large Jewish populations. After the legal equality of the Jews and due to industrialization , many Jews emigrated from the more rural areas to the cities of the monarchy. Tens of thousands moved to Vienna, which after the collapse of the monarchy numbered around 200,000 Jews, which corresponds to around 90% of the Jews. In Vienna, Jewish culture unfolded in theater, film, and music, and assimilated Judaism produced outstanding personalities in practically all areas of society - business, science, art, culture (see History of the Jews in Vienna ).

After Austria was "annexed" to the National Socialist German Reich , around two thirds of Austrian Jews fled the Nazi dictatorship and around 65,000 were murdered. Only a few survived the Nazi terror, even fewer returned. After 1945, small Jewish communities were re-established in the largest cities. Today, mainly due to immigration from the former Soviet Union, between 8,000 and 15,000 Jews live in Austria - today, as then, mostly in Vienna.

history

Roman times

The oldest evidence of Jewish life in Austria today comes from Roman times. It is an amulet that was found in the grave field in Halbturn (Burgenland) in 2000 in a Roman children's grave from the 3rd century. The lengthy evaluation of the excavation findings did not reveal until 2006 that the amulet contained a 22 mm long sheet of gold on which the most important Jewish prayer formula, Shema Yisrael, was carved in ancient Greek letters . It is the oldest testimony to Jewish life on Austrian soil today.

middle Ages

Unclear beginnings in the Middle Ages

Very little is known about the presence of Jews in the early Middle Ages. Numerous legends about fairytale kingdoms of Jews, which were founded by Jews and ruled over cities such as Tulln , Vienna, Korneuburg or Stockerau , try to explain the beginnings of rule in Austria: The "Chronicle of the 95 Rulers" from the second half of the 14th century “Claims that the Jew Abraham came to the land of the Danube in 859 after the flood . This country is said to have received the name Judeisapta (suitable for Jews) from a Jew who lived there earlier . According to the chronicle, the Jew Abraham is said to have settled in Stockerau in order to found a dynasty of princes there, which is said to have ruled the region until 210 BC. This is not a meaningful source.

The first indications of the presence of Jews in what is now Austria after the Great Migration date back to the Carolingian era. The first sparse sources from the early Middle Ages in which Jews are mentioned speak only of people passing through and not of Jewish settlements. More concrete is a letter, presumably from Salzburg's Archbishop Arn (798–821), in which the latter asks an unnamed count to send him "that Jewish or Slavic doctor" whom another bishop had previously used.

The first undisputed proof of the presence of Jewish merchants is the Raffelstetten Customs Regulations , which arose between 903 and 906. The final provision of wisdom in raffle houses was that merchants, namely Jews and the rest of the merchants, whether they came from this or other territories, should pay the lawful duty of both slaves and other goods, as they did under previous kings was common. Jewish merchants were therefore an important group in the long-distance trade between the East Franconian Empire and the Slavic regions.

The Raffelstetten customs regulations cannot prove the settlement of Jews. In the Duchy of Bavaria, Jews can be found in Regensburg for the first time in 981, but it cannot be ruled out that there were Jews living in the area before. In the area of ​​today's Austria, however, there are a number of place names with Jews as part of the name that refer to Jewish trading bases or settlements. These Jewish villages were mostly on important north-south trade routes. One of the most important of these was today's Judenburg , which is documented as mercatum Judinburch 1074. The fact that the name was retained until the town was raised in 1224 shows the continuity of the settlement ( Judenburger Gulden as the first and for a long time the most important gold coin in Austria, settlement until the country was evicted in 1496).

The first Jew mentioned by name in Austria was a certain Schlom, mentioned in 1194 in the Formbacher Traditionscodex. He was appointed mint master by Duke Leopold V of Babenberg and appointed administrator of the ducal property. Schlom was probably called into the country especially for this purpose, because at that time Leopold V received the English ransom for the release of King Richard the Lionheart . After one of his servants stole 24 marks from him, Schlom had him thrown into prison. His wife called in some crusaders who murdered Schlom and fifteen other Jews in a pogrom in 1196 . Duke Friedrich I then sentenced two leaders of the crusaders to death. This measure proves the importance of the Jews for the ruler, under whom the Jewish community in Vienna was able to develop rapidly. A synagogue in Vienna, documented in 1204, testifies to this . Around 1230 a Jewish community was established in Wiener Neustadt and one in Krems, and in 1237 in Tulln . The immigrants mainly came from the Rhineland cities of Worms , Mainz and Trier , which they left during the persecution of the First Crusade in 1096.

The heyday of the communities

The urban system, which was promoted by the Babenbergers and allowed the urban population to grow, also required an increased presence of Jews, who covered the constantly growing capital needs of the new citizens. Even at the Herzoghof in Vienna it was customary in the 1230s for Jews to act as advisors. The best known was the Hungarian chamber count Teka (Latin "Techanus"), who first appeared in 1225. In 1232 he became the guarantor of Duke Leopold VI. named for a debt of 2000 marks silver and was thus directly involved in the settlement of a dispute between Leopold VI. and King Andrew II of Hungary involved. Numerous communities arose throughout the duchy in the 13th century, especially in today's Lower Austria . Synagogue buildings still bear witness to this today, some of which are still preserved today (the synagogue in Korneuburg , Bruck an der Leitha , in Hainburg , in Neunkirchen and Wiener Neustadt or Ebenfurth ). Apart from such humble to medium-sized communities, there were still entire villages and small towns with Jewish communities. However, this changed with the Pulkau persecutions of 1338 . From now on, Jewish settlement tended to be concentrated in the larger communities and cities.

At the end of the 12th and beginning of the 13th century, Jews were not prevented from advancing to high positions, and they could also employ Christian service personnel. In Vienna, Krems and Wiener Neustadt they were able to form larger communities. There were no persecutions during the first two crusades, so the murder of Schlom in 1196 remained an exception. A Jewish law was formed in the course of the dispute between Emperor Frederick II. And Duke Frederick II. In 1237 imposed the Emperor imperial ban on its namesake and put Vienna under his rule. The Viennese citizens convinced him to exclude the Jews from all public office. In 1238, however, the duke was on the advance again, and after this change, Emperor Friedrich II sought the favor of the Jews. In August 1238 he issued a privilege for the Viennese Jews to underpin their claims to power. It is based on the privilege granted to Jews in the Reich in 1236. But in 1240 Vienna fell back to the Duke, and a reconciliation with the Emperor took place. On July 1st, Duke Friedrich II declared the imperial town charter of 1237 invalid and in 1244 issued a ducal privilege for Jews throughout Austria, the Fridericianum . King Ottokar II took over the privileges, and in 1262 the blood accusation was also banned.

In the 14th century, yeshivots were trained in Austria , who were able to make a name for themselves beyond the narrow local borders. It is a development that should also be seen in connection with the plague pogroms that occurred in Germany in the middle of the century, and to which entire communities fell victim. In the Austrian rite and custom ( Minhag ) there are many details that differ from the tradition on the Rhine, in Swabia and Franconia, not only in the pronunciation of Hebrew during the service, in the wording and melody of various prayers, but also in the selection of additional prayers . The rites also differed in the areas of purity regulations, rules of slaughter and food regulations, as well as customs such as funeral rites , circumcision and wedding customs . Understanding these differences was important among scholars. In addition to Vienna, centers of Jewish learning emerged primarily in Wiener Neustadt and the Krems community . The leading group of Austrian scholars was largely related to one another, all members of the small, learned and often economically leading upper class.

Over time, as a result of reports of blood accusations, host sacrilege, the south German rint meat pogrom and probably an economic crisis, hatred of the Jews grew. In 1338 the persecution of Jews started in Pulkau (accusation of desecrating the host ). The Jews in Vienna, the most important community in Austria at the time, as well as in Krems and Wiener Neustadt escaped threatening pogroms by lowering the interest rate on loans they granted.

Hussite Wars and early modern times

Memorial plaque in Vienna- Landstrasse
The relief on the "House of the Great Jordan"

In the course of the Hussite Wars , the Jews were expelled from the Duchy of Austria (1420/21), as Albrecht V suspected them, among other things, of collaborating with the Hussites . The destruction of the Jewish communities at that time is known as the “ Wiener Gesera ”, which is reminiscent of an anti-Semitic relief on the “House of the Great Jordan” on Judenplatz in Vienna . In 1496 the Jews were expelled from Styria and Carinthia at the insistence of Maximilian I's estates , but were allowed to settle on the eastern edge of the empire (Zistersdorf, Eisenstadt). From 1551 they had to wear the "yellow stain" when visiting cities and markets. In Vienna the number of Jews rose again at the end of the 16th century, a new cemetery (Seegasse, Vienna 9) was established, and in 1624 the Jews received a privilege from Emperor Ferdinand II and were allowed to settle in what is now Leopoldstadt . In 1669/70 the Jews were again expelled from Austria . But just ten years later, Samuel Oppenheimer and Samson Wertheimer came to Vienna and worked as court Jews and received privileges.

Age of bourgeois revolutions

With Joseph II's tolerance patents , emancipation also began for the traditionally ghettoized Jews of the Habsburg monarchy, at that time around 1.5 million. In 1781 a tolerance patent had been issued for the Christian minorities, especially for the Protestants and Greek Orthodox, who comprised around a third of the population. This was followed in 1781 by the court decree for the Jews of Bohemia , who had constituted the largest Habsburg Jewry ( before 1772 ) and were already largely acculturated. A tolerance patent was also issued in 1781 for the rest of Silesia , which remained with Austria after the Silesian Wars .

Beginning of emancipation and early industrialization

With the tolerance patent for the Jews of Vienna and Lower Austria in 1782, they were admitted to all schools and universities and were given extensive freedom of trade. The express political goal was to give Jews access to craft and agricultural professions and thus to increase their usefulness for the state. However, immigration was just as prohibited to them as was the acquisition of property and property and the importation of Jewish writings. In 1788 the military obligation was extended to them.

Fanny von Arnstein

Numerous special laws restricted these equality approaches again. However, some Viennese Jewish families achieved sensational social advancement (Arnstein, Eskeles, Königswarter, Hönigstein), which was accelerated during the wars of freedom against Napoleon. For monarchist officials like Friedrich von Gentz , Prince Metternich's advisor , Jews were "born representatives of atheism , Jacobinism, and the Enlightenment". That did not prevent him from visiting the salon of Fanny von Arnstein (née Itzig) at the Vienna Congress . In Vienna, as in Berlin, at the end of the 18th century, the salon society enabled regular and intensive domestic contacts between people of different classes and different religious denominations. Above all, it offered women the opportunity to participate in social life. Frau von Arnstein, who refused to be baptized all her life, regularly gathered an illustrious society of diplomats and aristocrats on Tuesday evenings, including Wilhelm von Humboldt , the papal nuncio in Vienna, Cardinal Severoli , the Duke of Wellington and Prince Karl August von Hardenberg . She tried to influence the problems of her fellow believers discussed during the congress.

The political attempts to make the Jews more useful for economic development, however, initially had little success. The professions, which were still organized in Christian guilds and guilds , fought off the emerging Jewish competition as best they could. Jews continued to rely largely on trade and only slowly found their way into other branches of the economy. In the cities, the Jews succeeded better in gaining access to manual trades than in the countryside. The long-distance trade of the Jews, the relatively crisis-proof supply of uniforms to the army, and the leasing of the tobacco control room proved to be the starting point for the establishment of Jewish factories. With the help of trading capital, Jews were able to build their own factories. After the importation of raw cotton was cleared, the Jews in Bohemia succeeded in making the rapidly growing cotton industry their domain, to the chagrin of the linen and wool industries that had dominated the fabric industry for centuries. Despite fierce protests, the tailors' guilds in Moravia could not prevent financially strong Jewish wholesalers from developing and converting clothes and uniforms, traditionally carried out by Jews, into a real clothing industry, which in turn was now a large number of Jewish subcontractors who took over the sales in towns and villages , Gave bread. Jewish banks also managed to expand into economic sectors that were expanding during this early industrial period. The Emperor Ferdinand's Northern Railway from Vienna to Galicia, financed by Salomon Rothschild in Vienna, was around 400 kilometers long and employed 14,000 workers to build it.

Since the equalization of Jewish rights with those of the other citizens had an effect more quickly in the city, many Jews moved to the cities. As early as 1800, Prague had 8,500 Jews, which corresponded to a population share of 10.6%, the highest share of Jewish population among all large cities in the German-speaking area. In 1848 there were 11,700. That was about 40% of the Jews of Bohemia, the rest of them had settled in rural communities. In Moravia, however, Jews were not allowed to settle in villages until 1848. Most of them lived in cities and Brno became an attraction for them. Around 1800 there were also a large number of poor Jews among the Jews in Bohemia and Moravia, but their economic situation was better than in many other regions. That was reason enough to try together with the respective authorities to prevent the "creeping in" of Jews from the unimaginably poor Galicia, who were often beggars, thieves and crooks. Vienna, on the other hand, only had 500–600 Jews around 1800 out of a total population of around 200,000. Only a few privileged families were tolerated here. In 1848 the Jewish population in Vienna had risen to 4,000, which corresponded to a share of 0.8%, and the first Jewish community in Vienna was constituted.

Restoration after 1815

Before the wars of freedom against Napoleon, Catholic romantics such as Friedrich Schlegel , Franz von Baader and Klemens Maria Hofbauer stood up for the passive civil rights of Jews, but also continued anti-Judaist prejudices. The Holy Alliance of the rulers of Prussia, Russia and Austria, founded in 1815, regarded the Christian religion as the declared basis of their politics, represented the divine right of princes and was at the beginning of a restorative phase. A hostility towards progress arose and, with regard to the Jews, an unwillingness to continue their emancipation. The social theorist Adam Heinrich Müller , a leading exponent of German Romanticism and a member of the Christian-German Tischgesellschaft , demanded in an expert report in 1823 that Jews and Christians should be banned from marrying and that equality be withdrawn. In a reactionary attitude, turned towards the pre-industrial world, he turned against the modernizations that stemmed from the economic activity of the Jews and equated Judaism and capitalism.

Salomon Sulzer

Meanwhile, assimilation began in the urban Jewish communities in the form of a reform movement. Starting in Vienna, the previously traditional Ashkenazi service, which was largely a community meeting with profane elements such as the turbulent auction of seats in the synagogue, was similar to the Christian service. Lay preachers replaced the Yiddish language with German and thus also questioned the primacy of rabbis. Under Isaak Noah Mannheimer and Salomon Sulzer , the “Vienna Rite” was created, which, in addition to a German sermon, was characterized by strict rules of propriety and a high musical level of the cantor . From Vienna, the Viennese rite spread through Bohemia and Galicia all over the world and is still used today.

Between the revolution of 1848 and legal equality

Some Jews decided to convert to Christianity. Only with increasing acceptance of Jews around the middle of the century did the frequency of conversions decrease. One of the most prominent converts was Johann Emanuel Veith , who became court preacher at St. Stephen's Cathedral in Vienna in 1831 . He remained connected to his Jewish community. When the blood accusations against the Jews of Damascus arose, he swore from the pulpit on the Crucified One that these accusations were obviously false. With Jewish Christian friends, Veith founded the Vienna Catholic Association in May 1848, which not only sought freedom for the church in relation to the state, but also greater freedom in the church. Even Paul Stephanus Cassel was a Protestant preacher and wrote important works on Jewish history. He protected the Jews from the accusations of Heinrich Treitschke and Adolf Stocker.

Ludwig August Frankl, the poet of the revolution of 1848

In the March Revolution of 1848 academics, including many educated Jews, were mostly committed to liberalism. Adolf Fischhof's speech on freedom of the press in the courtyard of the Niederösterreichisches Landhauses in Vienna is considered the prelude to the revolution, Ludwig August Frankl's poem Die Universität , written at the beginning of the revolution of 1848, became the most famous revolutionary song. Many Jews fought with the Christians on the barricades. In the year of the revolution it was still possible for the Jewish preacher Isaak Noah Mannheimer and the cantor Salomon Sulzer to stand together with Catholic and Protestant clergy at a communal grave in the Schmelzer cemetery to honor those who died in March. It was only a short time, however, and tensions soon increased. In Vienna's slums the cry was loud: "Beat the Jews to death!", Accompanied by individual acts of violence. Nevertheless, the Pillersdorf constitution finally brought the Jews the full equality they had longed for in terms of civil rights and religious freedom in Austria . The restoration partially reversed this: in 1851 Jewish officials had to swear allegiance to the state, in 1853 Jews were again forbidden to acquire property, and in 1855 also the notary and teaching professions.

They were allowed to own newspapers, so that they more often achieved leading positions in the publishing industry. As a result, an anti-Semitic Catholic counter-press emerged, which now persistently incited against the “democratic Jewish rabble” and equated it with liberalism, capitalism and communism. The leading figure was the artillery officer Quirin Endlich , the “Jew eater of Vienna”. Even Eduard Müller-Tellering , a journalist for the Neue Rheinische Zeitung of Karl Marx , attacked Jews in his book "Freedom and Jews" as "usurers" (representatives of capital) and "free spirits" (representative democracy), but also attacked back to the old ritual murder legend. In 1848 Sebastian Brunner founded the Wiener Kirchenzeitung and made it his mouthpiece for a sharp ecclesiastical-Catholic anti-Semitism.

Austro-Hungarian monarchy

The Leopoldstadt Temple before 1879
Ephrussi Palace

In 1867, the emancipation of the Jews in the Habsburg Empire was completed in the Austro-Hungarian Compromise . For the first time in their history, the December Constitution allowed Jews to freely reside and practice their religion throughout Austria. 40,000 Jews already made up 6.6% of the population of Vienna and thus outstripped the old Jewish population centers of the Habsburgs such as Prague , Krakow and Lviv . The Leopoldstadt Temple was built in 1854–58 and was one of the most imposing synagogues in Europe. Most of Vienna's immigrants came from the Hungarian half of the empire, followed by Bohemia and Moravia. Also Galician Jews had come, driven by overpopulation, famine and cholera epidemics . When the Polish nationalization campaign pushed them increasingly out of business life in the 1870s, they emigrated en masse. The urbanization focused the formerly small-town and village Jewry in the big cities. Also in cities like Graz, Linz, Innsbruck and others, separate Jewish communities emerged. A few families managed to achieve great prosperity through their business activities in banking, railway construction and industrial areas as well as in trade, especially in the textile trade . The majority of the Jewish population, however, belonged to the petty bourgeoisie .

With the Israelite Law of 1890, which is still valid today ( law of March 21, 1890 regarding the regulation of the external legal relationships of the Israelite religious society, last amended with Federal Law Gazette No. 505/1994), a law was created which regulates the relationship between the various religious communities and the state provided a uniform legal basis.

Theodor Herzl

Since most of the successful Jews were rather German-liberal, the criticism of liberalism was combined with strong anti-Semitism , first through religious arguments and later through economic-social arguments (such as Karl Lueger 1844–1910; 1897–1910 Viennese mayor) up to the racist (especially with Georg von Schönerer , 1844–1921) became increasingly important. In 1885 the Union of Austrian Jews was founded (also to counteract this) . To prevent assimilation , a Jewish national party was formed and in 1882 the Jewish national student union Kadimah was formed . The anti-assimilation and national efforts worked together with the foundation of theoretical Zionism by Theodor Herzl . Under the spiritual leadership of Zwi Perez Chajes , who was Chief Rabbi of the Israelite Religious Community in Vienna from 1917 , the Zionists also asserted themselves in the leadership of the religious community.

Karl Landsteiner on a 1000 Schilling banknote

Many important artists and scientists of Jewish origin enriched the Austrian intellectual life: Alfred Adler , Peter Altenberg , Leo Ascher , Róbert Bárány , Martin Buber , Edmund Eysler , Leo Fall , Sigmund Freud , Alfred Fried , Karl Goldmark , Hugo von Hofmannsthal , Emmerich Kálmán , Karl Kraus , Karl Landsteiner , Robert von Lieben , Gustav Mahler , Adam Politzer , Arthur Schnitzler , Arnold Schönberg , Eduard Suess and others. a. m. The patronage of the Jews played an important role in promoting cultural, intellectual and social life .

1902 arose from a foundation by Charlotte Lea Merores, b. Itzeles runs a girls' orphanage in Bauernfeldgasse . In 1909, with the SC  Hakoah Wien , a sports club was founded as a sign of identity.

Proportion of people by religion and crown lands in the census around 1900
Roman
Catholic 		Greek
uned 		Israelite Greek-
Oriental
(not unified)		 Evangelical Other In numbers
in % in % in % in % in % in %
Lower Austria
(then with Vienna)		 92.4 00.1 05.1 00.1 01.9 0.4 03,100,493
Upper Austria 97.5 00.0 00.2 00.0 02.2 0.1 00.810.246
Salzburg 99.2 00.0 00.1 00.0 00.6 0.1 00.192.763
Styria 98.7 00.0 00.2 00.1 00.9 0.1 01,356,494
Carinthia 94.4 00.0 00.1 00.0 05.5 0.0 00.367,324
Carniola 99.8 00.1 00.0 00.1 00.0 0.0 00.508.150
Trieste and
surrounding areas		 95.1 00.0 02.8 00.8 00.8 0.5 00.178,599
Gorizia and Gradiska 99.7 00.0 00.1 00.0 00.1 0.1 00.232,897
Istria 99.6 00.0 00.1 00.1 00.1 0.1 00.345.050
Tyrol 99.5 00.0 00.1 00.0 00.3 0.1 00.852.712
Vorarlberg 98.7 00.0 00.1 00.0 00.7 0.5 00.129,237
Bohemia 96.0 00.0 01.5 00.0 01.2 1.3 06,318,697
Moravia 95.4 00.0 01.8 00.0 01.1 1.7 02,437,706
Silesia 84.7 00.1 01.8 00.0 13.4 0.0 00.680.422
Galicia 45.8 42.4 11.1 00.0 00.5 0.2 07,315,939
Bucovina 11.9 03.2 13.2 68.5 02.5 0.7 00.730.195
Dalmatia 83.7 00.0 00.1 16.2 00.0 0.0 00.593.784
total 79.0 12.0 04.7 02.3 01.4 0.6 26.150.708

First World War

At the beginning of the First World War, when the Austro-Hungarian army was pushed back a long way and also lost Lviv , around 50,000 (according to the police at the time) to 70,000 (according to the Arbeiter-Zeitung ) Jews from Galicia fled to Vienna before massacres by the Russian army. About 25,000 of them stayed. The Jewish community in Austria at that time had a little over 200,000 members.

First republic

Roth's grandiose farewell to the monarchy

The history of the state during this time was decisively determined by Jews, on the one hand by financiers such as Louis Nathaniel von Rothschild (main shareholder of Creditanstalt ), Wilhelm Berliner ( owner of the second largest European life insurance company ) and on the other hand by Jewish social democrats and Austromarxists such as Otto Bauer and Julius Deutsch .

Since the Treaty of Saint-Germain secured full (also public) freedom of religion in Austria , a Jewish secondary school, the Jewish private secondary school in Drahtgasse (later Chajesrealgymnasium Castellezgasse), was opened in 1919 . This school was the first non-Christian grammar school in Austria.

Jews also played an important role in cultural life, be it in cabaret, in film and theater, or in literature. One of the most important cabaret theaters of the interwar period, the Budapest Orpheum in Leopoldstadt , the center of Jewish life in Vienna, produced some great cabaret and couplet musicians , such as Heinrich Eisenbach , Fritz Grünbaum , Karl Farkas , Georg Kreisler and Armin Berg . In literature, the Jews Friedrich Torberg , Felix Salten and Joseph Roth were among the big names. Another well-known Austrian writer of those years, Hugo Bettauer , fell victim to the pronounced anti-Semitism of the time. He was murdered by a supporter of the NSDAP in 1925 after anti-Semitic agitation.

Important film and theater makers in Austria included Jakob Fleck , Alfred Deutsch-German , Max Neufeld and the film architect Artur Berger . Jews were also found in leading positions in Austrian film, such as the last director of Sascha-Film , Oskar Pilzer , who directed the fortunes of this largest Austrian film company from 1933 to 1938 until he was forced to sell a few months before the “ Anschluss ” a little later was urged to flee. The film producer Arnold Pressburger , also an Austrian Jew, was involved in Sascha-Film for many years. In the 1920s, however, he shifted his main activity to Germany, where he was finally expropriated and fled in the 1930s.

Classical music as well as light muse, such as operetta, hit and film music, was a wide field of activity for many creative and performing artists, such as Alfred Grünwald , Erich Wolfgang Korngold , Fritz Kreisler , Fritz Löhner-Beda , Rudolf Kolisch , Hermann Leopoldi , Arnold Rosé , Franz Schreker , Oscar Straus , Richard Tauber , Gisela Wer District or Erich Zeisl .

Between 1933 and 1938 Austria became a refuge for many Jewish cultural workers from Germany. In 1934 Austria counted 191,481 Jews in the census. Of these, 176,034 lived in Vienna, 7,716 in Lower Austria , 3,632 in Burgenland , 2,195 in Styria , 966 in Upper Austria , 239 in Salzburg , 269 in Carinthia, 365 in Tyrol and 42 in Vorarlberg. This does not take into account those persons with two or one Jewish grandparents who were also persecuted by the National Socialists as “Jewish half-breeds” (“half” or “quarter Jews”).

National Socialism

A number of Jews held leading positions in the Social Democrats ( Otto Bauer , Julius Deutsch , Hugo Breitner , Julius Tandler and many others).

Anti - Semitic agitation had also existed in Austria long before the “Anschluss”. Hitler himself, who moved to Vienna in 1909 at the age of 20 and got to know the writings of the racial ideologist and anti-Semite Jörg Lanz von Liebenfels and the anti-Semitic polemics of politicians like Georg Ritter von Schönerer ( Pan-German Movement ) and the Mayor of Vienna Karl Lueger , was influenced by this milieu. In the interwar period, representatives of both political parties and the Catholic Church had come out against Jews and Judaism. In 1925, for example, Bishop Sigismund Waitz warned of the “global danger of greedy, usurious, unbelieving Judaism, whose power had increased tremendously”, and the Christian Social Party also made use of partly open anti-Semitic clichés in the election campaign. The Austrofascism from 1934 urged Jews in the organization of the Catholic "corporate state" to the edge of society (see, clerical fascism ). “Don't buy from Jews” was a well-known slogan even before the country was incorporated into the National Socialist German Reich.

With the "Anschluss" of Austria to the fascist German Reich and its racist laws in 1938 , the systematic exclusion of Jews began. In 1938, after many had already emigrated, there were between 201,000 and 214,000 people in Austria who were classified as “full, half or quarter Jews” according to the Nuremberg Laws (180,000 of them in Vienna), including 181,882 “full Jews” throughout Austria or 167,249 in Vienna. The Jewish population was very heterogeneous. There was an established upper class and middle class as well as a large lower class. In 1935, only 47,782 members of the IKG were wealthy enough to pay religious taxes.

In the months after the “Anschluss”, the citizens who had been declared Jews in the country had to move to Vienna. There were expropriations and pogrom-like attacks that drove many of them to suicide. Also Egon Friedell , who was on 11 March 1938 at Odon von Horváth had written: "Anyway, I'm always in every sense ready," took by jumping from the window of life, as a Gestapo officers came to pick him up.

During the November pogrom ("Reichskristallnacht") Jews and Jewish institutions such as synagogues were victims of violent attacks in Vienna, Klagenfurt, Linz, Graz, Salzburg, Innsbruck and several cities in Lower Austria. A total of 27 people were killed, including Richard Berger , the director of the Jewish Community for Tyrol and Vorarlberg in Innsbruck. About 6,500 Jews were arrested, half of whom were deported to German concentration camps , mainly to the Dachau concentration camp near Munich.

One year after the “Anschluss” there were still around 91,000 so-called “full Jews” and 22,000 “mixed race” living in Vienna. From 1940 the Jews who remained in the “Ostmark” were deported in large numbers to the Theresienstadt concentration camp or one of the ghettos in occupied Poland. Baldur von Schirach, as Gauleiter of Vienna responsible for it, described this as his "contribution to European culture". On November 1, 1942, the Viennese religious community was dissolved. Over 59,000 rental apartments in Vienna had been "Aryanized" by the end of the war. The crimes in the Shoah cost the lives of around 65,500 Jewish Austrians - 62,000 of these could be recorded by name, - over 120,000 were able to emigrate.

The Aspangbahnhof memorial commemorates the more than 40 deportation trains from Vienna, each carrying a thousand Jewish Viennese, from October 20, 1939 to 1942, to the concentration and extermination camps, at that time vaguely described as going to the East , with information on the number of victims. From 1943, these trains departed from the Nordbahnhof (Praterstern station). Individual Austrians tried during National Socialism to help their Jewish fellow citizens, sometimes at the risk of their lives. The memorial Yad Vashem recorded to date 90 Austrians / -Innen with the title of Righteous Among the Nations from.

Second republic

After the end of the war, between 2000 and 5000 Jews lived in Austria - around 1000 to 2000 of them survived the war in Vienna as members of the Council of Elders of the Vienna Jewish Community , in “protected marriages” or as “ submarines ”. The rest were able to survive in concentration camps.

There was almost nothing left of the strictly Orthodox Judaism . The Israelitische Kultusgemeinde (IKG), which was newly established in April 1945 from the council of elders installed by the Nazis, had the main aim of looking after the old and the sick and helping the few returnees from exile and camps to integrate. Convinced that there would no longer be a Jewish community in Vienna, all activities were of a provisional nature: prayers were held in a small room above the closed city ​​temple , land was sold to the Vienna community, and the IKG archives were brought to Jerusalem in 1952 .

At the same time, survivors from the liberated concentration camps and refugees from the new communist dictatorships in Poland , Hungary and Romania who lost their homeland through National Socialism and were unable to return to their countries of origin because of communism, so-called displaced persons, came to Vienna . Many of them viewed Vienna as a gateway to the West, as a stopover on the way to Palestine or the USA. Up to 1955, between 250,000 and 300,000 Jewish displaced persons lived in DP camps in Austria, which were mainly supplied by the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee . The largest DP camp in Austria was housed in the former Rothschild hospital on the Gürtel . Around 3,000 of these new immigrants stayed in Vienna and built up a new existence, most of them as textile traders in the empty bars of the displaced. In addition to Vienna, Israelite religious communities also formed in Graz , Linz , Salzburg and Innsbruck .

Most of these refugees also lost contact with religion during the persecution . Up until the 1980s there were only a few Jews in Vienna (mostly immigrants from Belgium and the USA) who were clearly recognizable as Orthodox on the street with sidelocks and caftans .

After the Hungarian uprising in 1956, 17,000 Jews from Hungary fled to Austria. In 1972, Austria received the Austrian Jewish Museum in Eisenstadt, the first Jewish museum after 1945. In 1975, the Bukhari community began to be constituted in Vienna ( Sefardisches Zentrum Wien ). Since the 1980s, a diverse, independent Jewish life has flourished again, which is characterized by the establishment of schools, community centers, support organizations, sports clubs, numerous cultural activities, etc. One of the main tasks of the Jewish Welcome Service , which was founded in 1980, is reconciliation between the Jews displaced in Austria and Austrian non-Jews during the Nazi regime, as well as creating a better understanding between Jews and non-Jews.

In 1972 the Maimonides Center , Vienna's Jewish retirement home, was expanded on the site of the girls' boarding school expropriated in 1942. In 1980 an elementary school could be re-established, initially in Seitenstettengasse, which moved back to Castellezgasse in 1988 and also received an upper secondary school. In autumn 2008, this Zwi Perez Chajes school moved from Castellezgasse to Simon-Wiesenthal-Gasse next to the exhibition center on the Prater . This school is part of a complex of Jewish kindergarten, elementary school and grammar school for around 600 children and is located near the Hakoah sports center in the Prater, which reopened in March 2008 , an education center and a retirement home ( ZPC campus ) . The liberal community of Or Chadasch has existed since 1990 . The immigration of people of Jewish origin from the territory of the former Soviet Union , which began in 1991, has strengthened the numerically weak Jewish community. In 1989 the Jewish Institute for Adult Education was established at the adult education center. The Sefardische Zentrum Tempelgasse officially opened in 1992 , and in 1993, on the initiative of Helmut Zilk , the Jewish Museum Vienna . In 1994 the "Psychosocial Center" ESRA (German "Help"), headed by Alexander Friedmann , was opened. In 1997 the pogrom memorial was erected on Innsbruck's Landhausplatz to commemorate the victims of the November pogroms in 1938.

The orthodox Lauder Chabad opened the Jewish Pedagogical Academy for Teacher Training ( PÄDAK ) in 1997 , a school center near Augarten ( Lauder Chabad Campus ) in 1999 , and in 2003 (accredited in 2007) the Lauder Business School , the first Jewish university in Austrian history, in Döbling. In 1998 the Institute for the Jewish History of Austria (INJOEST) in St. Pölten was set up in cooperation with the University of Vienna and the Jewish Vocational Education Center  (JBBZ), a comprehensive vocational training academy for immigrants that is unique in Europe, followed by the Museum Judenplatz in 2000 . Today there is also the orthodox teacher training institute, the Vienna Academy for Higher Rabbinical Studies, and an ultra-orthodox Talmud school Machsike Hadass (also for girls).

Memorial to the victims of the Shoah
Stumbling blocks for an elderly couple from Klagenfurt

Even public signs were set: 2000 were Holocaust Memorial by Rachel Whiteread on Judenplatz revealed. In August 2006, stumbling blocks were laid for the first time in Mödling for Austrian victims of the Shoah, including Hedy Blum , who was murdered at the age of 11, and her mother. In the years that followed, several hundred stumbling blocks were laid in the city of Salzburg , Graz , Wiener Neustadt , Neunkirchen , Klagenfurt , Hohenems , Hallein and other places.

In the 2001 census (the last in which religious affiliation was officially recorded), 8140 Jews were counted in Austria, 6988 of whom were resident in Vienna. However, the IKG Vienna assumes around 15,000 Jews in Austria, some data also speak of up to 20,000.

In 2008 Vienna had four kosher grocery stores, two bakeries, four butchers, four restaurants, two snack bars, two catering companies and a Jewish bookstore - signs of a small but functioning Jewish everyday life.

See also

literature

to Austria:

  • Wolfgang Häusler : The revolution of 1848 and the Austrian Jews. Austrian Jewish Museum, Eisenstadt 1974.
  • Martha Keil , Klaus Lohrmann (ed.): Studies on the history of the Jews in Austria. Philo VG, Bodenheim 1997, ISBN 3-8257-0087-9 .
  • Klaus Lohrmann (Ed.): 1000 Years of Austrian Judaism. Roetzer, Eisenstadt 1982, ISBN 3-85374-096-0 (exhibition catalog).
  • Klaus Lohrmann: Jewish law and Jewish policy in medieval Austria. Böhlau, Vienna 1990, ISBN 3-205-05286-2 .
  • Nikolaus Vielmetti: The Austrian Judaism.
  • Eveline Brugger: From the settlement to the expulsion. Jews in Austria in the Middle Ages. In: History of the Jews in Austria. Austrian History Vol. 15. Ueberreuter, Vienna 2006, ISBN 3-8000-7159-2 .
  • Kurt Schubert : The history of Austrian Jewry . Böhlau, Vienna 2008, ISBN 978-3-205-77700-7 .
  • Hannelore Burger (2014): Home law and citizenship of Austrian Jews from the end of the 18th century to the present day ( online , pdf, 4 MB).

to Lower Austria:

  • Robert Streibel : Suddenly they were all gone. The Jews of the "Gau capital Krems" and their fellow citizens. Picus, Vienna 1991, ISBN 3-85452-223-1 .
  • Robert Streibel: The city of Krems in the Third Reich. Everyday chronicle 1938–1945. Picus, Vienna 1993, ISBN 3-85452-248-7 .
  • Christoph Lind: The last Jew left the temple. Jews in Lower Austria 1938–1945. Mandelbaum, Vienna 2004, ISBN 3-85476-141-4 .
  • Werner Sulzgruber : The Jewish community Wiener Neustadt. From its beginnings to its destruction. Mandelbaum, Vienna 2005, ISBN 3-85476-163-5 .
  • Werner Sulzgruber: The Jewish Wiener Neustadt. History and evidence of Jewish life from the 13th to the 20th century. Mandelbaum, Vienna 2010, ISBN 978-3-85476-343-7 .
  • Gregor Gatscher-Riedl : Jewish life in Perchtoldsdorf: From the beginnings in the Middle Ages to the extinction in the Shoah. Writings of the archive of the market community Perchtoldsdorf, Volume 4. Marktgemeinde Perchtoldsdorf 2008, ISBN 978-3-901316-22-7 .

to Upper Austria:

to Vienna:

  • Gerhard Botz et al. a. (Ed.): A destroyed culture. Jewish life and anti-Semitism in Vienna since the 19th century. Czernin, Vienna 2002, ISBN 3-7076-0140-4 .
  • Hans Tietze : The Jews of Vienna. History, economy, culture. Wiener Journal-Verlag, Himberg / Wien 1987, ISBN 3-900379-05-X (reprint of the Leipzig 1933 edition).
  • Gerson Wolf : History of the Jews in Vienna (1145–1876). A. Hölder, Vienna 1876 ( online in the Google Book Search USA ); Reprint: Geyer, Vienna 1974.
  • Evelyn Adunka : The fourth church. The Viennese Jews from 1945 to the present day. Philo, Berlin / Vienna 2000, ISBN 3-8257-0163-8 .
  • Ruth Beckermann (Ed.): Life! Jews in Vienna after 1945. Photographed by Margit Dobronyi. Mandelbaum Verlag, Vienna 2008, ISBN 978-3-85476-251-5 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ The oldest evidence of Jewish life discovered in Austria. In: Online newspaper of the University of Vienna, March 11, 2008.
  2. ^ Gerson Wolf : History of the Jews in Vienna (1156–1876) . Alfred Hölder, Vienna 1876, pp. 1–2
  3. ↑ TIETZE, Hans .: The Jews of Vienna 2nd edition. 1987, p. 13.
  4. ^ Eveline Brugger: The early days of Jewish life in Austria. Uebereuter, p. 123
  5. ↑ Between privilege and persecution. Retrieved May 29, 2020 .
  6. ↑ Michael Brenner, Stefi Jersch-Wenzel, Michael A. Meyer: German-Jewish history in modern times. Vol. 2: Emancipation and Acculturation 1780–1871. Beck, Munich 1996, ISBN 3-406-39703-4 , p. 78 ff.
  7. ↑ Michael Brenner, Stefi Jersch-Wenzel, Michael A. Meyer: German-Jewish history in modern times. Vol. 2: Emancipation and Acculturation 1780–1871. Beck, Munich 1996, ISBN 3-406-39703-4 , p. 63 ff.
  8. ↑ Law of March 21, 1890 regarding the regulation of the external legal relationships of the Israelite religious society (PDF, 492kb)
  9. ↑ Complete legal regulation for external legal relationships of the Israelites in the currently valid version: Federal Law Gazette No. 436/1981, 61/1984, 505/1994
  10. ↑ a b From orphanage to nursing home , maimonides.at
  11. ↑ The history of the Viennese Hakoah ( Memento of the original from July 14, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , hakoah.at @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.hakoah.at
  12. ^ Eveline Brugger, Matha Keil, Albert Lichtblau, Christoph Lind, Barbara Staudinger: History of the Jews in Austria . Ueberreuter, Vienna, ISBN 978-3-8000-7159-3 , p. 461 .
  13. ↑ a b c Ruth Beckermann: The Mazzesinsel. In: Ruth Beckermann (Ed.): The Mazzesinsel - Jews in Vienna's Leopoldstadt 1918–38. Löcker Verlag, Vienna 1984, ISBN 978-3-85409-068-7 , p. 16 f.
  14. ↑ a b History, Zwi Perez Chajes School, zpc.at
  15. ^ A b c Austrian Commission of Historians: Final report of the Commission of Historians of the Republic of Austria. Volume 1. Oldenbourg Verlag, Vienna 2003, pp. 85-87.
  16. ↑ a b Austrian Commission of Historians: Final report of the Commission of Historians of the Republic of Austria. Volume 1. Oldenbourg Verlag, Vienna 2003, pp. 291-293.
  17. ^ A b Association of Bukharian Jews in Austria.
  18. ↑ a b Marijana Milijković: There is no question of a blossom - but something is happening in the Jewish community: The campus in the Prater opens. Der Standard , September 12, 2008, p. 2.
  19. ↑ Jewish Institute for Adult Education ( Memento of the original from July 14, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , on vhs.at. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.vhs.at
  20. ↑ Chabad Austria (chabad.at)
  21. ^ Institute for Jewish History in Austria (injoest.ac.at)
  22. ↑ Jewish Vocational Education Center (jbbz.at)
  23. ↑ Schools and further education , ikg-wien.at
  24. ↑ Statistics Austria census, 2001
  25. ↑ Ariel Muzicant : Austria is different. May 12, 2005. In: Der Standard , May 3, 2005.