Viennese Gesera

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The planned annihilation of the Jewish communities in the Duchy of Austria in 1421 on the orders of Duke Albrecht V , the later Roman-German King Albrecht II, through forced baptism, expulsion and execution by burning is called Wiener Gesera . The name is derived from a Jewish script called "Wiener Gesera" and is also used for the events described therein.

Prehistory: Jewish communities in Austria at the beginning of the 15th century

Duke Albrecht V of Austria (Anonymous, 16th century)
Miniature model of the Gothic synagogue on Vienna's Judenplatz, center of the Jewish community

In the 13th and 14th centuries, the Jews in Austria enjoyed far-reaching protection and security compared to other regions, although there were occasional persecutions here too (for example, in 1338 because of an alleged sacrifice of the host in Pulkau ). In numerous places of the Duchy of Austria (which essentially corresponds to today's Lower and Upper Austria) there were wealthy Jewish communities, the most important were in Vienna , Krems and Wiener Neustadt , which at the time was politically part of the Duchy of Styria . Even today, the street names Judenplatz and Schulhof ( school = synagogue) in Vienna's 1st district remind us that the Jewish part of town was located there. The Jews were excluded from the trade, which was strictly organized in guilds; their main occupation was moneylending and trading. The prosperity of many Jews led to allegations of excessive luxury, especially on the part of Christian debtors.

At the beginning of the 15th century the situation of the Jews in Austria worsened. A decisive event was the fire in Vienna's Jewish quarter, which broke out in the synagogue on November 5, 1406. The cause of the fire is unknown, but there was widespread looting and rioting against the Jews, probably also because of the loss of pledged valuables. The prosperity and economic importance of the Jewish community were severely affected by the fire. It is possible that the Jewish community became involved in the dispute between Dukes Leopold and Ernst over the guardianship of the underage Duke Albrecht, during which the Mayor of Vienna Konrad Vorlauf and the councilors Hans Rockh and Konrad Ramperstorffer were executed on July 11, 1408 . On October 30, 1411, fourteen-year-old Albrecht was declared of age; As a result, the Duke, who always suffered from lack of money, charged the Jewish communities with new taxes, although in 1415 he expressly referred to the nuczpern and varied service of the Jews.

Allegations against the Jews

What induced Duke Albrecht to destroy the Jewish communities can only be guessed at: It was probably a combination of economic, political and religious motives that probably had little to do with the publicly made accusations.

Collaboration with the Hussites

From the summer of 1419 the Hussite Wars ravaged the Kingdom of Bohemia . The neighboring Austria was also affected: Hussite troops also crossed northern Lower Austria and came to Krems. In several documents the Jews are accused of collaborating with the Hussites, e. B. in a declaration by the Vienna Theological Faculty of June 9, 1419. The accusation of the arms trade is repeatedly raised. It can no longer be determined whether some of these allegations were justified. In any case, the fanatical Hussites showed little sympathy for the Jews: For example, on March 16, 1421, after the city was conquered by the Hussites , the Jewish community of Komotau evaded forced baptism through mass suicide .

Ritual murder legends

The allegation of ritual murder , especially of Christian children, was repeatedly raised against Jews and members of various minorities and outsider groups in the Middle Ages and modern times. The events of 1421 are also linked in a number of reports with ritual murder charges , for example in the Fortalitium fidei of the Spanish Franciscan Alphonso de Spina (2nd half of the 15th century) and in Ains Juden buechlins relocation by Johannes Eck (1541). However, all of these reports are secondary; in fact, allegations of ritual murder should not have played a role.

Host sacrilege

The accusation of desecrating the host has served time and again in the Middle Ages and in modern times as a justification and pretext for the persecution of Jews. The official reason for the annihilation, which began in 1420, was an alleged host sacrilege that had been committed in Enns , where a sexton stole the sacrament and sold it to a Jew named Israel and his wife.

The events of 1420/1421

Burning of Jews from Hartmann Schedel's World Chronicle (1493)
Memorial plaque near the former execution site on Gänseweide ( Kegelgasse 40)

On May 23, 1420, on the orders of Duke Albrecht, all Jews in all of Austria (i.e. in all provincial cities and towns) were taken prisoner. After about a month (some sources cite June 21), the destitute Jews were expelled from the country and driven down the Danube in ships, while the wealthy remained in custody. There have been numerous reports of mistreatment and torture, partly to “persuade” the Jews to accept baptism, partly to blackmail statements about hidden valuables. Apparently the conditions of detention got worse from day to day: Due to mistreatment, suicides and poor detention conditions - the winter of 1420/21 was particularly severe - numerous prisoners were killed. Forced baptism was ordered for children under 15 years of age. This measure led to a diplomatic intervention with Pope Martin V , which was at least partially successful: In his bull Licet Iudaeorum omnium , the Pope decreed that in Austria and Venice children under the age of 12 may not be baptized against their and their parents' will Punishment of excommunication for the baptizing priest.

On March 12, 1421, the decree of Duke Albrecht was promulgated, which sentenced the Jews to death. In addition to the general “wickedness” of the Jews, the main reason given is the sacrifice of the host in Enns: because of the act that committed the holy Sacrament other years ago in Enns ... , the above mentioned our gracious mr all Judischait everywhere in his country today managed to judge with the prannt . The execution of the remaining Viennese Jews, 92 men and 120 women, took place on the same day on the Gänseweide in Erdberg (today part of the Weißgerberviertel ). Later the ashes of the cremated were searched for gold and other jewelry.

On April 16, 1421, the Messnerin, who was involved in the alleged host crime in Enns , was burned, probably in the same place as the Jews before.

After the Jews were burned or killed or emigrated, the Duke confiscated the property they had left behind and had the synagogue demolished. The stones from the former synagogue were used to build the University of Vienna.

Viktor Kurrein already dealt with the background of the accusation of the so-called Enns host crime, more precisely its instrumentalization by Duke Albrecht, in a detailed, source-based article in 1931.

Why the St. Laurence Church in Enns was chosen as the site of the alleged sacrifice of the host is illustrated by an extensive study of the Enns background to the events. On the one hand, it shows personal interrelationships and, on the other hand, shows how Duke Albrecht V's recourse to the historical significance of St. Laurence's Church in Enns is to be seen against the background of a papal decision (Martin V) that governed the diocese in spring 1420 Passau, citing the (alleged) history of the St. Laurenz Church in Enns (as the seat of a late antique bishop) from the Salzburg Metropolitan Association. In November 1420, the Passau diocese held the only Passau diocesan synod of the Middle Ages in the St. Laurenz Church in Enns, with legal independence from Salzburg. The entire well-known Austrian clergy (including Thomas Ebendorfer) was present in the St. Laurenz Church in Enns and the story of the host could begin.

Contemporary sources

Scattered references can be found in numerous chronicles and documents, for example in the “Continuation of the Melker Annalen”, but only two sources deal with the events of 1420/1421 in detail.

Ebendorf's chronicle

The most important contemporary Christian source is the report by Thomas Ebendorfers von Haselbach, later rector of the University of Vienna, in his Chronica Austriae . The report in German translation reads:

“After his return, a general rumor spread that in Enns the Jews had committed a great sacrilege against the venerable sacrament of the Eucharist. For it was said that the very rich Jew Israel at Enns came from the wife of the doorkeeper there, who was subject to him, from the parish church of St. Lawrence , which stood apart from the usual visit of the people, after Easter of the same year many small pieces of the sacrament received (or bought), and that he intended them to be mocked by his co-religionists; which sacrilege the woman mentioned earlier admitted after being questioned. The Jew Israel, however, with his wife and the other accomplices and suspects of this crime persistently tried to deny it, although the priests were certain that a theft had been committed from the sacrament. That is why on one day and at the same hour they were put into captivity by Duke Albrecht in all parts of Austria, their goods were confiscated, and after the commons had been removed, the more respected among them were withheld. But because a particularly harsh winter set in at the time (so that the prisoners could no longer bear their situation), some of them fell from wounds they inflicted on each other, while others did not hesitate to lay hands on themselves: theirs Number also counted the woman from the aforementioned Israel, who strangled herself with her own cloth while the thief professed, and another from Tulln, who took her own life with a knife. Still others, desperate as they were, in order that they would not be subjected to the yoke (of Christianity), to the shame of their own faith and that of their fathers - or the mockery of Christians, brought themselves to death by snares and thongs at nighttime; so the women in Mödling and Perchtoldsdorf . Others, driven by stubborn anger, took their wives and relatives' lives even more pitifully by force, covering the faces of the elderly by cutting open their veins; their bodies were taken to a donkey burial . But some who were given holy baptism remained in the faith; but others, on returning to their spouts, fell under different titles. But those who chose their faith as the asylum of their salvation were entirely destroyed by fire on March 12th of the year 1421, on St. Gregorius Day, in Erdburg on a meadow next to the Danube. So that some Jews did not dare to live in Austria in the future, they were subjected to an eternal ban. "

The "Wiener Gesera"

Remains of the destroyed synagogue on Judenplatz

The most important Jewish source is known under the name "Wiener Gesera". "Gesera" (from Hebrew גזירה) initially means judgment or regulation in general. In the course of time and especially in the Middle Ages, however, it took on the meaning of an anti-Jewish law or a downright pogrom - this word, which comes from Russian, only came into use much later. The oldest surviving copies of the Viennese Gesera date from the 16th century, but the writing was probably created shortly after the events of 1421. The author may be an Austrian Jew who was expelled to Hungary. The script is in Jewish German, that is, in the German language in Hebrew characters and with numerous specifically Jewish formulations and expressions. The Jewish German versions that have survived are almost certainly translations from Hebrew. Despite the naturally somewhat one-sided view of the author, the Wiener Gesera is a reliable source; numerous details (such as the number of victims in the cremation in Erdberg) are only given here. The list of 17 Jewish communities affected by Duke Albrecht's edict is also informative:

A number of Jewish communities whose destruction is known from other sources (e.g. Mödling, Perchtoldsdorf and Tulln ) are not mentioned in the Wiener Gesera; the reasons for this are unknown.

consequences

Jewish life in the Duchy of Austria was largely, but not completely, destroyed. Numerous documents report the valuables, houses, land, etc. stolen from the Jews, which were sold or given away to Christians. In 1423 Duke Albrecht also took over the government in Moravia , whereupon the persecution of Jews also took place there, for example in 1426 the Jews were expelled from Iglau . In Styria, ruled by Duke Ernst, the Jews remained unmolested. Albrecht's son Ladislaus Postumus continued his father's anti-Jewish policy and expelled the Jews from Olomouc , Brno , Znaim , Breslau and other places in Moravia and Silesia. The persecution only came to an end under Duke Friedrich V , who later became Emperor Friedrich III.

The Jordanhaus on Judenplatz

Relief and inscription on the Jordanhaus on Vienna's Judenplatz

A visible memorial to the Viennese Gesera is the Jordanhaus on Judenplatz, named after an owner in the late 15th century . In the course of a renovation, he installed a relief with the baptism of Jesus , including a Latin inscription in elegiac distiches , which celebrates the "angry flame" that purged the "crimes of the Hebrew dogs" in 1421:

Flumine Jordani terguntur labe malisque
 corpora cum cedit, quod latet omne nephas.
Sic flamma assurgens totam furibunda per urbem 1421
 Hebraeum purgat crimina saeva canum.
Deucalioneis mundus purgatur from undis
 Sicque iterum poenas igne furiente luit.
("Through the floods of the Jordan the bodies were cleansed of filth and evil. Everything that is hidden and sinful gives way. So the flame of hatred rose in 1421, raged through the whole city and atoned for the terrible crimes of the Hebrew dogs. As they did then If the world was cleansed by the flood, all punishments are served by the raging fire. ")

The inscription - in Gothic script that is difficult to read and placed relatively high up - went unnoticed for a long time. It was only in the course of the discussions about the erection of the memorial on Judenplatz that there were considerations about what to do with the plaque, and it was decided to leave it in place as a memorial.

literature

  • Petr Elbel, Wolfram Ziegler: On the black suntag one martens the same jews, all the cryptic vill guets on under the earth ... The Viennese Gesera: a new consideration, in: "Avigdor, Benesch, Gitl". Jews in Bohemia, Moravia and Silesia in the Middle Ages. Samuel Steinherz in memory (1857 Güssing - 1942 Theresienstadt), ed. from. Helmut Teufel, Pavel Kocman, Milan Řepa (Brno - Prague - Essen 2016) pp. 201-286 (online at academia)
  • Artur Goldmann: The Jewish Book of the Scheffstrasse in Vienna (1389-1420) . Braumüller, Vienna et al. 1908 ( online at archive.org - sources and research on the history of the Jews in German-Austria. Vol. 1), (Contains the text of the “Wiener Geserah” as an appendix).
  • Samuel Krauss : The Viennese Geserah from 1421 . Braumüller, Vienna et al. 1920 ( online at archive.org ).
  • Viktor Kurrein: The sexton from Enns. A contribution to the history of the Jews of Upper Austria . In: Journal for the History of the Jews in Germany (ZGJD), Vol. 3 (1931), pp. 171–179 ( online ).
  • Alphons Lhotsky (Ed.): Scriptores rerum Germanicarum, Nova series 13: Thomas Ebendorfer, Chronica Austriae. Berlin / Zurich 1967 ( Monumenta Germaniae Historica , digitized version ).
  • Norbert Haslhofer: Politics with Enns History 1419-1421. Church policy in Passau and Jewish policy in Vienna. Background of the Viennese Geserah. Norderstedt: 2019 (Research on the history of the city of Enns in the Middle Ages 2) ISBN 978-3-7528-6701-5 .

Remarks

  1. ↑ Schedel does not mention the events of 1421. The woodcut is used three times and illustrates events from the years 1298, 1337 and 1492, during which the dreary, jamery and desolate people of the Jews ... were blown away ; in two cases the charge was host sacrilege.
  2. ↑ there too
  3. ↑ Viktor Kurrein: The sexton of Enns. A contribution to the history of the Jews of Upper Austria . In: Journal for the History of the Jews in Germany , Vol. 3 (1931), pp. 171–179.
  4. ^ Norbert Haslhofer: Politics with Enns History 1419-1421. Passau church policy and Vienna Jewish policy, background of the Vienna Geserah. Research on the history of the city of Enns in the Middle Ages 2. Norderstedt 2019, ISBN 978-3-7528-6701-5 .
  5. ^ Continuatio Mellicensis . In: Georg Heinrich Pertz u. a. (Ed.): Scriptores (in Folio) 9: Chronica et annales aevi Salici. Hannover 1851, p. 517 ( Monumenta Germaniae Historica , digitized version )
  6. ↑ According to Krauss, pp. 69–70. Latin text in Alphons Lhotsky (ed.): Scriptores rerum Germanicarum, Nova series 13: Thomas Ebendorfer, Chronica Austriae. Berlin / Zurich 1967, pp. 370–371 ( Monumenta Germaniae Historica , digitized version )
  7. ↑ It is unclear who is meant by this: after Krauss Kaiser Sigismund , after Lhotsky Duke Albrecht.
  8. ↑ 1419?
  9. ↑ Jer 22.19  EU
  10. ↑ Prov. 26.11  EU
  11. ↑ It can no longer be clearly determined which of the numerous places with this or a similar name is meant.