Expulsion of the Viennese Jews in 1670

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Inscription above the portal of the Leopold Church, which celebrates the transformation of the “Synagoga perversa” into a church

The expulsion of the Jews from Vienna was ordered by Emperor Leopold I in 1669 and carried out in 1670. Based on the 1st Viennese Gesera 1421, it is also referred to as the Second Viennese Gesera .

prehistory

As a result of a privilege granted by Emperor Ferdinand II , the Viennese Jews were banished from the city in 1624/25 and settled in the newly built ghetto in “Unteren Werd” , part of today's Leopoldstadt . In 1659, Emperor Leopold I confirmed the privileges of the Viennese Jews and in 1663 allowed them to flee to the city if there was a Turkish threat .

The expulsion

The driving force behind the expulsion was the strict Catholic wife of the emperor, Margarita Theresa of Spain . She blamed the Jews for accidents such as the death of their first-born son Ferdinand Wenzel in January 1668 and the fire in the newly built Leopoldine wing of the Hofburg in February 1668. Other instigators were the Bishop of Neutra , Leopold Karl von Kollonitsch (from 1670 Bishop of Wiener Neustadt ), the influential Capuchin and later Bishop of Vienna, Emerich Sinelli , and the emperor's confessor, the Jesuit Philipp Müller.

On June 19, 1669, at the Secret Conference , Emperor Leopold decided to expel all Jews from Austria under the Enns . In an imperial patent dated August 2, 1669, Jews were given a deadline of April 14, 1670 to vacate their houses; the period was extended to July 26, 1670. The Lower Austrian rural Jews had to leave the country by Easter 1671. There are no reports of acts of violence such as the first Vienna Gesera of 1421. Over 1600 people had to leave the city. First the poorest, then the needy, only a small number of rich and influential Jews remained, who did everything to ward off the doom that threatened them too. In a letter of appeal presented to the emperor in September, they tried with all sorts of arguments to reverse the decision. By portraying the misery of the outcasts, they appealed to his pity. They report how old people toil, how many died in robberies, they appealed to his financial interests by listing the large sums that they would have paid off. But neither the requests nor the intervention of influential foreign and domestic persons or even the Holy See brought change. The only solution was conversion, but none and none of the expellees distanced themselves from Judaism. At the beginning of August there were no longer any Jews in Vienna.

Before the Jews left, they managed to persuade the magistrate to take the cemetery in Seegasse under their protection. For this, 4000 guilders were demanded from the city, which the rich brothers Isaak, Israel and Enoch Frankel paid. This was particularly important to her, as her father Jakob Koppel Fränkel , who died on April 17, 1670, was one of the last to be buried there.

The New Synagogue in Vienna's Leopoldstadt, founded in 1650, was demolished in 1670 and the Leopold's Church was built in its place . This was solemnly consecrated to Saint Leopold in 1671 in the presence of the imperial couple with the entire court as well as the Mayor of Vienna Daniel Lazarus Springer and Bishop Wilderich von Walderdorff . The first pastor was Johann Ignaz Arnezhofer, after whom Arnezhoferstraße was named in 1906 . The underlying assumption of the Christian Social City Government at the time that he played an essential role in the expulsion was rejected as unfounded in the 2013 historian report on Vienna's street names.

consequences

The city of Vienna, which had taken on the loss of the Jewish tax, was not able to meet its obligations. Declines in tolls, meat taxes and other income, as well as the loss of rent due to the vacant buildings, made themselves felt. Lower Austrian estates, which had previously been serious enemies of the Jews, now asked for special rules, since agricultural products experienced an enormous drop in prices so that Jews could go about their business again.

Numerous expelled Jews settled under the protection of Paul I Esterházy de Galantha in the seven communities in western Hungary, today's Burgenland . At the invitation of Elector Friedrich Wilhelm , 50 wealthy Jewish families settled in Berlin. The expulsion of the Jews did not last long. Foreign Jews were allowed to visit the annual markets in Krems , Laa , Retz and Mistelbach as early as 1673 . The court factors Samuel Oppenheimer and Samson Wertheimer continued to exert great influence at the imperial court and were able to get more Jews to settle in Vienna towards the end of the 17th century.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Hans Tietze : The Jews of Vienna . 2nd Edition. Wiener Verlag, Vienna 1987, ISBN 3-900379-05-X , p. 71-72 .
  2. ↑ Hans Tietze: The Jews of Vienna . 2nd Edition. Wiener Verlag, Vienna 1987, ISBN 3-900379-05-X , p. 74-75 .
  3. ↑ wien.gv.at

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