History of the Jews in Austria
Encyclopedia
The history of the Jews in Austria likely originates in an exodus
of Jews
from the Roman occupation of Israel. During the course of many centuries, the political status of the community rose and fell many times: during certain periods, the Jewish community prospered and enjoyed political equality, and during other periods, the Jewish community suffered pogrom
s, deportation
s and antisemitism. The Holocaust
drastically reduced the Jewish community in Austria and only 8,140 Jews remained in Austria according to the 2001 census, but other estimates place the current figure at 9,000, 15,000 and 20,000 people.
(Hear, O Israel! The Lord is our God, the Lord is one) inscribed on it in the grave of a Jewish infant in Halbturn
. It is considered to be the earliest surviving evidence of a Jewish presence in what is now Austria. It is hypothesized that the first Jews immigrated to Austria following the Roman legion
s after the Roman occupation of Israel. It is theorized that the Roman legions who participated in the occupation and came back after the First Jewish–Roman War brought back Jewish prisoners, though this presumption has no concrete evidence.
and from the Rhineland
.
At the start of the 13th century, the Jewish community started to flourish. One of the main reasons for the prosperity was the recognition by Frederick II, Holy Roman Emperor
that the Jews were a separate ethnic and religious group, and were not bound to the laws that targeted the Christian population. Following this assumption, in July 1244, the emperor published a bill of rights for Jews, which encouraged them to work in the money lending business, encouraged the immigration of additional Jews to the area, and promised protection and autonomous rights, such as the right to judge themselves and the right to collect taxes. This bill of rights affected other kingdoms in Europe
such as Hungary
, Poland
, Lithuania
, Silesia
and Bohemia
, which had a high concentrations of Jews.
During this period, the Jewish population mainly dealt with commerce
and the collection of taxes and also gained key positions in many other aspects of life in Austria. In 1204, the first documented synagogue in Austria was constructed. In addition, Jews went through a period of religious prosperity and a group of notable rabbis settled in Vienna and were later referred to as "the wise men of Vienna". The group established a beth midrash
and it was considered to be the largest Talmudic school in Europe during that period.
The prosperity of the Jewish community caused increased jealousy from the Christian population and hostility from the church. In 1282, when the area became controlled by the Catholic House of Habsburg, Austria stopped being a religious center for the Jews.
Jews were largely hated because they acted as tax collector
s and moneylender
s. The earliest evidence of Jews collecting taxes appears in a document from 1320. During the same time, riots occurred against the Jews in the area. The Jewish population continued to decline in middle of the 14th century and at the start of the 15th century during the regime of Albert the Third
and Leopold III
. This period was characterized in the cancellations of many debts that would have been collected by Jews, the confiscation of Jewish assets, and the creation of economic limitations against them.
movement of Jan Hus
in Bohemia, the condition of the Jewish population worsened as a result of accusations that the movement was associated with the Jewish community. In 1420, the status of the Jewish community hit a low point when a Jew from Upper Austria
was charged with the desecration of the sacramental bread
. This led Albert V to order the imprisonment of all of the Jews in Austria. Two hundred ten Jews were burnt alive in public and the rest were deported from Austria, leaving their belongings behind. In 1469, the deportation order was canceled by Frederick the Third
, who was known for his good relationship with the Jews and was even referred to at times as the "King of the Jews". He allowed Jews to return and settle in all the cities of Styria and Carinthia
. Under his regime, the Jews gained a short period of peace (between 1440 and 1493).
in 1556, though he also opposed the persecution of the Jews, he levied excessive taxes and ordered them to wear a mark of disgrace. Between 1564 and 1619, in the period of the regimes of Maximilian the first
, Rudolf the Second
and Matthias
, the fanaticism of the Society of Jesus
prevailed and the condition of the Jews worsened even more. Later on, during the regime of Ferdinand the Second
in Austria, which in spite of that like his grandfather he opposed the persecution of the Jews and even permitted constructing a synagogue, he demanded a huge amount of tax from the Jewish population.
The nadir of the Jewish community in Austria arrived during the period of the regime of Leopold the First
, a period in which Jews were persecuted frequently and were deported from different areas, including a deportation from Vienna in 1670, but gradually returned after several years. Jews also had to bear different laws—one of which permitted only first-born children to marry, in order to stop the increase of the Jewish population. Although Leopold the First treated the Jewish population severely, he had Samson Wertheimer
, a Jewish economic advisor, working for him.
A Sabbateans movement, which was established during the same period of time, also reached the Jewish community in Austria, especially due to the rough condition of the Jews there, and many of them immigrated to the land of Israel in the footsteps of Sabbatai Zevi
.
After the period of the religious fanaticism towards the Jewish population of the region, started a period of relative tolerance towards the Jewish population, which was less noticeable during the regime of Maria Theresa of Austria
, and its peak was during period of the regime of Franz Joseph I of Austria
, which was very liked by the Jewish population.
Upon the partition of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth
in 1772, the Kingdom of Galicia and Lodomeria
, or simply "Galicia", became the largest, most populous, and northernmost province of the Austrian Empire. As a result of this, many Jews were added to the Austrian Empire and the empress, Maria Theresa, quickly legislated different laws aimed at regulating their rights and canceled Jewish autonomy in order to put the authority over the Jews in her hands instead.
Although the empress was known for her hatred of Jews, several Jews did work for her at her court. The empress made it mandatory that the Jewish population would start going to the general elementary schools, and in addition permitted them joining universities. Jewish schools did not exist yet during that time.
After Maria Theresa's death in 1780, her son Joseph II, Holy Roman Emperor
succeeded her and started working on the integration of the Jewish population into Austrian society. The emperor determined that they would be obligated to enlist to the army, and established governmental schools for the Jewish population. The 1782 Edict of Tolerance
canceled different limitations that had been placed upon the Jewish population previously, such as the restriction to live only in predetermined locations and the limitation to certain professions. They were now allowed to establish factories, hire Christian servants and study at higher education institutions, but all this only on the condition that Jews would be obligated to attend school, that they would use German only in the official documents instead of Hebrew and Yiddish, that dorsal tax would be forbidden, that the trials held within the community would be condensed, and that those who would not get an education would not be able to marry before the age of 25. The emperor also declared that the Jewish population would establish Jewish schools for their children, but they opposed that because he forbade them organizing within the community and establishing public institutions. In the aftermath of different resistances, also from the Jewish party, which opposed the many conditions held upon them, and also from the Christian party, which opposed many of the rights given to the Jewish population, the decree was not fully implemented.
Upon his death in 1790, Joseph II was succeeded by his brother, Leopold II
. After only two years of this regime, he was succeeded by his son Francis II
, who continued working on the integration of the Jewish population in the Austrian society, but he was more moderate than his uncle. In 1812, a Jewish Sunday school was opened in Vienna. During the same period of time a number of limitations were placed on the Jewish population, such as the obligation to study in Christian schools and to pray in German.
Between 1848 and 1938, the Jewish Austrian population enjoyed a period of prosperity beginning with the start of regime of Franz Joseph I of Austria
as the Emperor of the Austria–Hungary Empire, and dissolved gradually after the death of the emperor up to the annexation of Austria to Germany by the Nazis, a process that lead to the start of the Holocaust in Austria.
Emperor Franz Joseph I of Austria bestowed on the Jewish population equality of rights saying, "the civil rights and the country's policy is not contingent in the people's religion". The emperor was well liked by the Jewish population, which, as a token of appreciation, wrote prayers and songs about him that were printed in Jewish prayer books. In 1849 the emperor canceled the prohibition against the Jewish population organizing within the community, and in 1852 new regulations of the Jewish community were set. In 1867 the Jewish population formally received full equal rights.
In 1869 the emperor visited Jerusalem and was greeted in great admiration by the Jewish population there. The emperor established a fund aimed at financing the establishment of Jewish institutions and in addition established the Talmudic school for rabbis in Budapest. During the 1890s several Jews were elected to the Austrian parliament.
During the regime of Franz Joseph and after, Austria's Jewish population contributed greatly to Austrian culture despite their small percentage in the population. Contributions came from Jewish lawyers, journalists (among them Theodor Herzl
), authors, playwrights, poets, doctors, bankers, businessmen and artists. Vienna became a cultural Jewish center, and became a center of education, culture and Zionism. Theodor Herzl, the father of Zionism, studied in the University of Vienna, and was the editor of the feuilleton
of the Neue Freie Presse
, a very influential newspaper at that time. Another Jew, Felix Salten
, succeeded Herzl as the editor of the feuilleton.
Other notable influential Jews contributing greatly to Austrian culture included composers Gustav Mahler
, Arnold Schoenberg
, and the authors Stefan Zweig
, Arthur Schnitzler
, Hugo von Hofmannsthal
(his grandfather was Jewish), Karl Kraus
, Elias Canetti
, Joseph Roth
, Vicki Baum
and the doctors Sigmund Freud
, Viktor Frankl
and Alfred Adler
, the philosophers Martin Buber
, Karl Popper
, and many others.
The prosperity period also affected the sports field: the Jewish sports club Hakoah Vienna was established in 1909 and excelled in football, swimming
and athletics
.
With Jewish prosperity and equality, several Jewish scholars converted to Christianity in a desire to assimilate into Austrian society. Among them were Karl Kraus
and Otto Weininger
.
During this period, Vienna elected an antisemitic mayor, Karl Lueger
. The emperor, Franz Joseph, was opposed to the appointment, but after Lueger was elected three consecutive times, the emperor was compelled to accept his election according to the regulations. During the period of his authority Lueger removed Jews from positions in the city administration and forbade them from working in the factories located in Vienna until his death in 1910.
The intertwining of the Jewish population and the attitude of the emperor towards them could also be seen in of the general state of the empire. From the middle of the 19th century there started to be a lot of pressures from the different nationals living in multinational House of Habsburg empire: the national minorities (such as the Hungarians, Czechs and Croatians) began demanding more and more collective rights; among German speakers, many started feeling more connected to Germany, which was strengthening. Under these circumstances, the Jewish population was especially notable for their loyalty to the empire and their admiration of the emperor.
Circa 1918, about 300,000 Jews in Austria were scattered in 33 different settlements. Most of them (about 200,000) lived in the capital city of Vienna
.
The history of Austria during the First Republic
was strongly influenced by Jews. Many of the leading heads of the Social Democratic Party of Austria
and especially the leaders of the Austromarxism
were assimilated Jews, for example Victor Adler
, Otto Bauer
, Gustav Eckstein, Julius Deutsch
and also the reformer of the school system in Vienna, Hugo Breitner. Due to the Social Democratic Party beging the only party in Austria that accepted Jews as members and also in leading positions, several Jewish parties that were founded after 1918 in Vienna, where about 10% of the population was Jewish, had no chance for gaining bigger parts of the Jewish population. Districts with high Jewish population rates, such as Leopoldstadt
, the only districts where Jews formed about the half of the population, and the neighbouring districts Alsergrund
and Brigittenau
, where up to a third of the population was Jewish, had usually higher percentage rates of voters for the social democratic party than classical "worker"-districts.
Also the cultural contribution of Jews reached its peak. Many famous writers, film and theatre directors (for example Max Reinhardt
, Fritz Lang
, Richard Oswald
, Fred Zinnemann
and Otto Preminger
) actors (i.e. Peter Lorre
, Paul Muni
) and producers (i.e. Jacob Fleck
, Oscar Pilzer, Arnold Pressburger), architects and (set) designer (i.e. Artur Berger
, Harry Horner, Oskar Strnad
, Ernst Deutsch-Dryden), comedians (Kabarett, for example: Heinrich Eisenbach, Fritz Grünbaum
, Karl Farkas
, Georg Kreisler
, Hermann Leopoldi, Armin Berg), musicians and composers (i.e. Fritz Kreisler
, Hans Julius Salten, Erich Wolfgang Korngold
, Max Steiner
) were Jewish Austrians. In 1933, many Austrian Jews, who had worked and lived in Germany for years, returned to Austria, including many who fled Nazi restrictions on Jews working in the film industry.
In 1934, the Austrian Civil War
broke out. The new regime was conservative-fascist and leaders of the Social Democratic Party got arrested or had to flee. But, except for Jews strongly engaged in the Social Democratic Party, the regime, which thought itself as pro-Austrian and anti-national socialism, brought no worsening for the Jewish population.
The census of 1934 counted 191,481 Jews in Austria—of them 176,034 living in Vienna and the most of the rest in Lower Austria
(7,716) and Burgenland
(3,632), where also notable Jewish communities existed. Of the other Bundesländer, only Styria (2,195) also counted more than 1,000 Jews. The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum estimates 250,000 Jews in Austria in 1933.
In 1936, the previously strong Austrian film industry, which had developed its own "emigrant-film"-movement, had to accept the German restrictions forbidding Jews from working in the film industry. Emigration among film artists then rose sharply with Los Angeles
becoming the major destination. The main emigration wave did not start until March 1938, when Austria was annexed by Germany, and November 1938, when nearly all synagogues of Austria were destroyed (more than 100, of them about 30 to 40 built as dedicated synagogues, 25 of them in Vienna).
The prosperity period ended abruptly with the annexation Austria to Nazi Germany
in 1938 (the "Anschluss
"). At the time of the annexation, the Jewish population in Austria consisted of 181,882 people, of them 167,249 in Vienna—but thousands of Jews already emigrated the years before. Including people with one Jewish parent or at least one Jewish grandmother or grandfather, who were also persecuted by the Nazis, the number of Jews and Jewish ancestry accounted 201,000 to 214,000 people.
The Nazis entered Austria without any major resistance, and were accepted approvingly by many Austrians. Immediately with their entrance into Austria the Nazis started instituting anti-Jewish policies throughout the country. They expelled the Jewish population from all cultural, economic and social life in Austria and were humiliated as they were commanded to perform different humiliating tasks, without any consideration of differential of age, social position or sex.
In the same year as the annexation, "the Night of Broken Glass" (Kristallnacht
) was carried out in Austria, in response to the Jewish refugee, Herschel Grynszpan
, assassinating the German diplomat Ernst vom Rath
in France. As a result, Jewish Synagogues and buildings all over Austria were shattered and robbed throughout the country by the Hitler Youth
and by the SA
, as well as many homes of the Jewish population. During that night 27 Jews were killed.
After the Anschluss many Jews tried to emigrate out of Austria. The immigration center was in the capital of Austria, Vienna, and the people leaving were required to have visas
and documents approving their departure in order to get out of the country. They were required to leave everything of value in Austria. To leave the country, high "taxes" had to be paid. Emigrants hurried to collect only their most important belongings and the departure fees and had to leave behind them everything else. Most Jews who remained ended up being killed in the Holocaust.
During the period of the Holocaust, the general Chinese consul Feng-Shan Ho was stationed in Vienna. While risking his own life and his career, Feng-Shan managed to rescue thousands of Jews seeking to escape the Nazis by, with the aid of his catholic Viennese staff, rapidly approving thousands of visas for Jewish emigrants who were in a rush to flee. Among them were possibly the Austrian filmmakers Jacob
and Luise Fleck
, who got one of the last visas for China in 1940 and who then produced films with Chinese filmmakers in Shanghai
. Ho's actions were recognized posthumously when he was awarded the title Righteous among the Nations
by the Israel
i organization Yad Vashem
in 2001.
In 1939 the Nazis initiated the annihilation process of the Jewish population. The most notable persons of the community, about 6,000, were sent to the Dachau and Buchenwald concentration camp
s. The main concentration camp in Austria was the Mauthausen Concentration Camp
, which was located next to the city Linz
. Many other Jews were sent to the concentration camps in Theresienstadt and Łódź and from there to the Auschwitz concentration camp
. In the summer of 1939 hundreds of factories and Jewish stores were shut down by the Austrian government. In October 1941 Jews were forbidden to exit the boundaries of Austria. The total number of Jews who managed to exit Austria is about 28,000. Part of the Vienna Jews was sent to the transit camp Nisko
in Poland. In the end of the winter of 1941, an additional 4,500 Jews were sent from Vienna to different concentration and extermination camps in Poland (mainly to Izbica Kujawska
and to other ghettos in the Lublin
area). In June 1941, a direct delivery exited the city to the Sobibor extermination camp
, which had around one thousand Jews. In the fall of 1942, the Nazis sent more Jews to the ghettos to the towns of the cities they occupied in the Soviet Union
: Riga
, Kaunas
, Vilnius
and Minsk
. Those Jews were murdered by Nazi soldiers mainly by gunshots.
By October 1942 Austria had only about 2,000 to 5,000 Jews left. About 1,900 of them were sent out of the country during the next two years, and the rest remained in hiding. Many of the ones who managed to survive the Holocaust were culturally assimilated
. The total number of the Austrian Jewish population murdered during the Holocaust is about 65,500 people, 62,000 of them known by name. The rest of the Jewish population of Austria, excluding up to 5,000 who managed to survive in Austria, emigrated—about 135,000 people of Jewish religion or Jewish ancestry, compared to the number in 1938. But thousands of Austrian Jews emigrated before 1938.
Until 1955, about 250,000 to 300,000 "displaced persons" lived in Austria. About 3,000 of them stayed in Austria and formed the new Jewish community. After the Holocaust, the Jews throughout Europe who managed to survive were concentrated in the DP camps
in Austria in order to get their identification. The survivors who had nowhere to return to remained in the camps, and were helped by groups of volunteers who came from Israel. Part of the Jews in the DP camps eventually immigrated to Israel, and many others returned to Germany and Austria. In October 2000 the Judenplatz Holocaust Memorial
was built in Vienna in memory of the Austrian Jews killed in the Holocaust.
One of the notable prisoners of the Mauthausen concentration camp
was Simon Wiesenthal
, who after his release worked together with the United States army in order to locate Nazi war criminals.
During the Hungarian Revolution of 1956 about 200,000 Hungarians fled over Austria to the west, among them 17,000 Jews. Seventy-thousand Hungarians stayed in Austria, a number of Jews among them. One of the best known of them is the political scientist and publicist Paul Lendvai
.
After the Holocaust the Jewish community in Austria was rebuilt, although it was much smaller. In the 1950s an immigration wave from the Soviet Union moved to Austria. After the fall of the Iron Curtain
, there has been a renewed influx of Jewish population from the former Soviet Union
. The current Austrian Jewish population is around 12,000–15,000—most of them living in Vienna
and Graz
and Salzburg
. About 800 of them are Holocaust survivors who lived in Austria before 1938 and about 1500 of them are immigrants from countries from the former Soviet Union
.
In July 1991 the Austrian government recognized its role in the crimes of the Third Reich
during World War II
. In 1993, the Austrian government reconstructed the Jewish synagogue in Innsbruck
, which was destroyed during Kristallnacht
, and in 1994 they reconstructed the Jewish library in Vienna, which was then reopened.
Neo-Nazism
and antisemitism did not vanish entirely from public life in Austria. In the 1990s many threat letters were sent to politicians and reporters, and some Austrian public figures have occasionally shown sympathy to Nazism.
Kurt Waldheim
was appointed as the Austrian president in 1986 despite serving as an officer in the Wehrmacht
during the Second World War. He remained the president of Austria until 1992. During his term he was considered a persona non grata
in many countries.
The Austrian government was sued for Austria's involvement in the Holocaust and required to compensate its Jewish survivors. Initially the government postponed the compensation matters, until the United States started putting pressure on the matter as well. In November 2005 the Austrian government sent out compensation letters to 19,300 Austrian Holocaust survivors. The total amount that Austria put into the compensations was over $2 million, which they paid the Holocaust survivors themselves, to the businesses that were damaged, and for the stolen bank accounts, etc. In addition, the Austrian government also transferred $40 million to the Austria Jewish fund.
The biggest Jewish presence in Austria today is in its capital Vienna, consisting of synagogues, a Jewish retirement home, the Jewish Museum
(founded in 1993), and different community institutions. Austrian Jews are of many different sects, including Haredi
and Reform Jews
. The Jewish community also has a lot of activities arranged by the Chabad
movement, which is in charge of managing kindergartens, schools, a community center and even a university. In addition there are also active branches of the Bnei Akiva
and the Hashomer Hatzair
youth movements. Today, the biggest minority among the Jewish community in Vienna originates from Georgia
, and the second biggest Jewish minority originates from Bukhara
, each with separate synagogues and a large community center called "The Spanish center".
There were very few Jews in Austria in the post-war years, however some of them became very prominent in Austrian society, such Bruno Kreisky
, who was the Chancellor of Austria
between 1970 until 1983, the artist and architect Friedensreich Hundertwasser
and Jewish politicians such as Elisabeth Pittermann, a member of the Parliament of Austria
from the Social Democratic Party of Austria
and Peter Sichrovsky
, who was formerly a member of the Freedom Party of Austria
and a representative in the European Parliament
.
Latent antisemitism is an issue in several rural areas of the country. Special attention gained several issues in the holiday resort Serfaus
, where possible Jews were denied from hotel bookings, based on racial bias
. Within the inhabitance of the village, there are reported issues of hostility towards those who accommodate Jews.
Jewish diaspora
The Jewish diaspora is the English term used to describe the Galut גלות , or 'exile', of the Jews from the region of the Kingdom of Judah and Roman Iudaea and later emigration from wider Eretz Israel....
of Jews
Jews
The Jews , also known as the Jewish people, are a nation and ethnoreligious group originating in the Israelites or Hebrews of the Ancient Near East. The Jewish ethnicity, nationality, and religion are strongly interrelated, as Judaism is the traditional faith of the Jewish nation...
from the Roman occupation of Israel. During the course of many centuries, the political status of the community rose and fell many times: during certain periods, the Jewish community prospered and enjoyed political equality, and during other periods, the Jewish community suffered pogrom
Pogrom
A pogrom is a form of violent riot, a mob attack directed against a minority group, and characterized by killings and destruction of their homes and properties, businesses, and religious centres...
s, deportation
Deportation
Deportation means the expulsion of a person or group of people from a place or country. Today it often refers to the expulsion of foreign nationals whereas the expulsion of nationals is called banishment, exile, or penal transportation...
s and antisemitism. The Holocaust
The Holocaust
The Holocaust , also known as the Shoah , was the genocide of approximately six million European Jews and millions of others during World War II, a programme of systematic state-sponsored murder by Nazi...
drastically reduced the Jewish community in Austria and only 8,140 Jews remained in Austria according to the 2001 census, but other estimates place the current figure at 9,000, 15,000 and 20,000 people.
History
| Jewish population of Vienna according to census and particular area |
|||||||
| Year | total pop. | Jews | % | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1857 | 476,220 | 2617 | 1.3 | ||||
| 1869 | 607,510 | 40,277 | 6.6 | ||||
| 1880 | 726,105 | 73,222 | 10.1 | ||||
| 1890 | 817,300 | 99,444 | 12.1 | ||||
| 1890* | 1,341,190 | 118,495 | 8.8 | ||||
| 1900 | 1,674,957 | 146,926 | 8.7 | ||||
| 1910 | 2,031,420 | 175,294 | 8.6 | ||||
| 1923 | 1,865,780 | 201,513 | 10.8 | ||||
| 1934 | 1,935,881 | 176,034 | 9.1 | ||||
| 1951 | 1,616,125 | 9,000 | 0.6 | ||||
| 1961 | 1,627,566 | 8354 | 0.5 | ||||
| 1971 | 1,619,855 | 7747 | 0.5 | ||||
| 1981 | 1,531,346 | 6527 | 0.4 | ||||
| 1991 | 1,539,848 | 6554 | 0.4 | ||||
| 2001 | 1,550,123 | 6988 | 0.5 | ||||
| * = after expansion of Vienna | |||||||
Antiquity
Jews have been in Austria since at least the 3rd century. In 2008 a team of archeologists discovered a third century CE amulet in the form of a gold scroll with the words of the Jewish prayer Shema YisraelShema Yisrael
Shema Yisrael are the first two words of a section of the Torah that is a centerpiece of the morning and evening Jewish prayer services...
(Hear, O Israel! The Lord is our God, the Lord is one) inscribed on it in the grave of a Jewish infant in Halbturn
Halbturn
Halbturn is a town in the district of Neusiedl am See in Burgenland in Austria. The village borders Hungary to the east and is near Andau, Gols and Mönchof.thumb|left|Castle Halbturn...
. It is considered to be the earliest surviving evidence of a Jewish presence in what is now Austria. It is hypothesized that the first Jews immigrated to Austria following the Roman legion
Roman legion
A Roman legion normally indicates the basic ancient Roman army unit recruited specifically from Roman citizens. The organization of legions varied greatly over time but they were typically composed of perhaps 5,000 soldiers, divided into maniples and later into "cohorts"...
s after the Roman occupation of Israel. It is theorized that the Roman legions who participated in the occupation and came back after the First Jewish–Roman War brought back Jewish prisoners, though this presumption has no concrete evidence.
The Middle Ages
A document from the 10th century that determined rights of equality between the Jewish and Christian merchants in Danube implies a Jewish population in Vienna at this point, though again, there is no concrete proof. The existence of a Jewish community in the area is only known for sure after the start of the 12th century, when two synagogues were created. In the same century, the Jewish settlement in Vienna increased with the absorption of Jewish settlers from BavariaBavaria
Bavaria, formally the Free State of Bavaria is a state of Germany, located in the southeast of Germany. With an area of , it is the largest state by area, forming almost 20% of the total land area of Germany...
and from the Rhineland
Rhineland
Historically, the Rhinelands refers to a loosely-defined region embracing the land on either bank of the River Rhine in central Europe....
.
At the start of the 13th century, the Jewish community started to flourish. One of the main reasons for the prosperity was the recognition by Frederick II, Holy Roman Emperor
Frederick II, Holy Roman Emperor
Frederick II , was one of the most powerful Holy Roman Emperors of the Middle Ages and head of the House of Hohenstaufen. His political and cultural ambitions, based in Sicily and stretching through Italy to Germany, and even to Jerusalem, were enormous...
that the Jews were a separate ethnic and religious group, and were not bound to the laws that targeted the Christian population. Following this assumption, in July 1244, the emperor published a bill of rights for Jews, which encouraged them to work in the money lending business, encouraged the immigration of additional Jews to the area, and promised protection and autonomous rights, such as the right to judge themselves and the right to collect taxes. This bill of rights affected other kingdoms in Europe
Europe
Europe is, by convention, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally 'divided' from Asia to its east by the watershed divides of the Ural and Caucasus Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian and Black Seas, and the waterways connecting...
such as Hungary
Hungary
Hungary , officially the Republic of Hungary , is a landlocked country in Central Europe. It is situated in the Carpathian Basin and is bordered by Slovakia to the north, Ukraine and Romania to the east, Serbia and Croatia to the south, Slovenia to the southwest and Austria to the west. The...
, Poland
Poland
Poland , officially the Republic of Poland , is a country in Central Europe bordered by Germany to the west; the Czech Republic and Slovakia to the south; Ukraine, Belarus and Lithuania to the east; and the Baltic Sea and Kaliningrad Oblast, a Russian exclave, to the north...
, Lithuania
Lithuania
Lithuania , officially the Republic of Lithuania is a country in Northern Europe, the biggest of the three Baltic states. It is situated along the southeastern shore of the Baltic Sea, whereby to the west lie Sweden and Denmark...
, Silesia
Silesia
Silesia is a historical region of Central Europe located mostly in Poland, with smaller parts also in the Czech Republic, and Germany.Silesia is rich in mineral and natural resources, and includes several important industrial areas. Silesia's largest city and historical capital is Wrocław...
and Bohemia
Bohemia
Bohemia is a historical region in central Europe, occupying the western two-thirds of the traditional Czech Lands. It is located in the contemporary Czech Republic with its capital in Prague...
, which had a high concentrations of Jews.
During this period, the Jewish population mainly dealt with commerce
Commerce
While business refers to the value-creating activities of an organization for profit, commerce means the whole system of an economy that constitutes an environment for business. The system includes legal, economic, political, social, cultural, and technological systems that are in operation in any...
and the collection of taxes and also gained key positions in many other aspects of life in Austria. In 1204, the first documented synagogue in Austria was constructed. In addition, Jews went through a period of religious prosperity and a group of notable rabbis settled in Vienna and were later referred to as "the wise men of Vienna". The group established a beth midrash
Beth midrash
Beth Midrash refers to a study hall, whether in a synagogue, yeshiva, kollel, or other building. It is distinct from a synagogue, although many synagogues are also used as batei midrash and vice versa....
and it was considered to be the largest Talmudic school in Europe during that period.
The prosperity of the Jewish community caused increased jealousy from the Christian population and hostility from the church. In 1282, when the area became controlled by the Catholic House of Habsburg, Austria stopped being a religious center for the Jews.
Jews were largely hated because they acted as tax collector
Tax collector
A tax collector is a person who collects unpaid taxes from other people or corporations. Tax collectors are often portrayed in fiction as being evil, and in the modern world share a somewhat similar stereotype to that of lawyers....
s and moneylender
Moneylender
A moneylender is a person or group who offers small personal loans at high rates of interest.-See also:* Microfinance - provision of financial services to low-income individuals....
s. The earliest evidence of Jews collecting taxes appears in a document from 1320. During the same time, riots occurred against the Jews in the area. The Jewish population continued to decline in middle of the 14th century and at the start of the 15th century during the regime of Albert the Third
Albert III, Duke of Austria
Albert III of Austria , known as Albert with the Pigtail , was a duke of Austria and a member of the House of Habsburg.-Life:...
and Leopold III
Leopold III, Duke of Austria
Duke Leopold III of Austria from the Habsburg family, was Duke of Austria from 1365 to 1379, and Duke of Styria and Carinthia in 1365–1386.-Life:...
. This period was characterized in the cancellations of many debts that would have been collected by Jews, the confiscation of Jewish assets, and the creation of economic limitations against them.
Deportation from Austria
In middle of the 15th century, following the establishment of the anti-CatholicAnti-Catholicism
Anti-Catholicism is a generic term for discrimination, hostility or prejudice directed against Catholicism, and especially against the Catholic Church, its clergy or its adherents...
movement of Jan Hus
Jan Hus
Jan Hus , often referred to in English as John Hus or John Huss, was a Czech priest, philosopher, reformer, and master at Charles University in Prague...
in Bohemia, the condition of the Jewish population worsened as a result of accusations that the movement was associated with the Jewish community. In 1420, the status of the Jewish community hit a low point when a Jew from Upper Austria
Upper Austria
Upper Austria is one of the nine states or Bundesländer of Austria. Its capital is Linz. Upper Austria borders on Germany and the Czech Republic, as well as on the other Austrian states of Lower Austria, Styria, and Salzburg...
was charged with the desecration of the sacramental bread
Sacramental bread
Sacramental bread, sometimes called the lamb, altar bread, host or simply Communion bread, is the bread which is used in the Christian ritual of the Eucharist.-Eastern Catholic and Orthodox:...
. This led Albert V to order the imprisonment of all of the Jews in Austria. Two hundred ten Jews were burnt alive in public and the rest were deported from Austria, leaving their belongings behind. In 1469, the deportation order was canceled by Frederick the Third
Frederick III, Holy Roman Emperor
Frederick the Peaceful KG was Duke of Austria as Frederick V from 1424, the successor of Albert II as German King as Frederick IV from 1440, and Holy Roman Emperor as Frederick III from 1452...
, who was known for his good relationship with the Jews and was even referred to at times as the "King of the Jews". He allowed Jews to return and settle in all the cities of Styria and Carinthia
Carinthia (state)
Carinthia is the southernmost Austrian state or Land. Situated within the Eastern Alps it is chiefly noted for its mountains and lakes.The main language is German. Its regional dialects belong to the Southern Austro-Bavarian group...
. Under his regime, the Jews gained a short period of peace (between 1440 and 1493).
The rise of religious fanaticism of the Society of Jesus
The relative period of peace did not last long, and with the start of the regime of Ferdinand the FirstFerdinand I, Holy Roman Emperor
Ferdinand I was Holy Roman Emperor from 1558 and king of Bohemia and Hungary from 1526 until his death. Before his accession, he ruled the Austrian hereditary lands of the Habsburgs in the name of his elder brother, Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor.The key events during his reign were the contest...
in 1556, though he also opposed the persecution of the Jews, he levied excessive taxes and ordered them to wear a mark of disgrace. Between 1564 and 1619, in the period of the regimes of Maximilian the first
Maximilian I, Holy Roman Emperor
Maximilian I , the son of Frederick III, Holy Roman Emperor and Eleanor of Portugal, was King of the Romans from 1486 and Holy Roman Emperor from 1493 until his death, though he was never in fact crowned by the Pope, the journey to Rome always being too risky...
, Rudolf the Second
Rudolf II, Holy Roman Emperor
Rudolf II was Holy Roman Emperor , King of Hungary and Croatia , King of Bohemia and Archduke of Austria...
and Matthias
Matthias, Holy Roman Emperor
Matthias of Austria was Holy Roman Emperor from 1612, King of Hungary and Croatia from 1608 and King of Bohemia from 1611...
, the fanaticism of the Society of Jesus
Society of Jesus
The Society of Jesus is a Catholic male religious order that follows the teachings of the Catholic Church. The members are called Jesuits, and are also known colloquially as "God's Army" and as "The Company," these being references to founder Ignatius of Loyola's military background and a...
prevailed and the condition of the Jews worsened even more. Later on, during the regime of Ferdinand the Second
Ferdinand II, Holy Roman Emperor
Ferdinand II , a member of the House of Habsburg, was Holy Roman Emperor , King of Bohemia , and King of Hungary . His rule coincided with the Thirty Years' War.- Life :...
in Austria, which in spite of that like his grandfather he opposed the persecution of the Jews and even permitted constructing a synagogue, he demanded a huge amount of tax from the Jewish population.
The nadir of the Jewish community in Austria arrived during the period of the regime of Leopold the First
Leopold I, Holy Roman Emperor
| style="float:right;" | Leopold I was a Holy Roman Emperor, King of Hungary and King of Bohemia. A member of the Habsburg family, he was the second son of Emperor Ferdinand III and his first wife, Maria Anna of Spain. His maternal grandparents were Philip III of Spain and Margaret of Austria...
, a period in which Jews were persecuted frequently and were deported from different areas, including a deportation from Vienna in 1670, but gradually returned after several years. Jews also had to bear different laws—one of which permitted only first-born children to marry, in order to stop the increase of the Jewish population. Although Leopold the First treated the Jewish population severely, he had Samson Wertheimer
Samson Wertheimer
Samson Wertheimer was chief rabbi of Hungary and Moravia, and rabbi of Eisenstadt. He was also an Austrian financier, court Jew and Shtadlan to Austrian Emperor Leopold I.-Family:...
, a Jewish economic advisor, working for him.
A Sabbateans movement, which was established during the same period of time, also reached the Jewish community in Austria, especially due to the rough condition of the Jews there, and many of them immigrated to the land of Israel in the footsteps of Sabbatai Zevi
Sabbatai Zevi
Sabbatai Zevi, , was a Sephardic Rabbi and kabbalist who claimed to be the long-awaited Jewish Messiah. He was the founder of the Jewish Sabbatean movement...
.
Change in the attitude towards the Jews
Maria Theresa of Austria
Maria Theresa Walburga Amalia Christina was the only female ruler of the Habsburg dominions and the last of the House of Habsburg. She was the sovereign of Austria, Hungary, Croatia, Bohemia, Mantua, Milan, Lodomeria and Galicia, the Austrian Netherlands and Parma...
, and its peak was during period of the regime of Franz Joseph I of Austria
Franz Joseph I of Austria
Franz Joseph I or Francis Joseph I was Emperor of Austria, King of Bohemia, King of Croatia, Apostolic King of Hungary, King of Galicia and Lodomeria and Grand Duke of Cracow from 1848 until his death in 1916.In the December of 1848, Emperor Ferdinand I of Austria abdicated the throne as part of...
, which was very liked by the Jewish population.
Upon the partition of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth
Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth
The Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth was a dualistic state of Poland and Lithuania ruled by a common monarch. It was the largest and one of the most populous countries of 16th- and 17th‑century Europe with some and a multi-ethnic population of 11 million at its peak in the early 17th century...
in 1772, the Kingdom of Galicia and Lodomeria
Kingdom of Galicia and Lodomeria
The Kingdom of Galicia and Lodomeria was a crownland of the Habsburg Monarchy, the Austrian Empire, and Austria–Hungary from 1772 to 1918 .This historical region in eastern Central Europe is currently divided between Poland and Ukraine...
, or simply "Galicia", became the largest, most populous, and northernmost province of the Austrian Empire. As a result of this, many Jews were added to the Austrian Empire and the empress, Maria Theresa, quickly legislated different laws aimed at regulating their rights and canceled Jewish autonomy in order to put the authority over the Jews in her hands instead.
Although the empress was known for her hatred of Jews, several Jews did work for her at her court. The empress made it mandatory that the Jewish population would start going to the general elementary schools, and in addition permitted them joining universities. Jewish schools did not exist yet during that time.
After Maria Theresa's death in 1780, her son Joseph II, Holy Roman Emperor
Joseph II, Holy Roman Emperor
Joseph II was Holy Roman Emperor from 1765 to 1790 and ruler of the Habsburg lands from 1780 to 1790. He was the eldest son of Empress Maria Theresa and her husband, Francis I...
succeeded her and started working on the integration of the Jewish population into Austrian society. The emperor determined that they would be obligated to enlist to the army, and established governmental schools for the Jewish population. The 1782 Edict of Tolerance
1782 Edict of Tolerance
The 1782 Edict of Tolerance was a religious reform of Joseph II during the time he was emperor of the Habsburg Monarchy as part of his policy of Josephinism, a series of drastic reforms to remodel Austria in the form of the ideal Enlightened state. Joseph II's enlightened despotism included the...
canceled different limitations that had been placed upon the Jewish population previously, such as the restriction to live only in predetermined locations and the limitation to certain professions. They were now allowed to establish factories, hire Christian servants and study at higher education institutions, but all this only on the condition that Jews would be obligated to attend school, that they would use German only in the official documents instead of Hebrew and Yiddish, that dorsal tax would be forbidden, that the trials held within the community would be condensed, and that those who would not get an education would not be able to marry before the age of 25. The emperor also declared that the Jewish population would establish Jewish schools for their children, but they opposed that because he forbade them organizing within the community and establishing public institutions. In the aftermath of different resistances, also from the Jewish party, which opposed the many conditions held upon them, and also from the Christian party, which opposed many of the rights given to the Jewish population, the decree was not fully implemented.
Upon his death in 1790, Joseph II was succeeded by his brother, Leopold II
Leopold II, Holy Roman Emperor
Leopold II , born Peter Leopold Joseph Anton Joachim Pius Gotthard, was Holy Roman Emperor and King of Hungary and Bohemia from 1790 to 1792, Archduke of Austria and Grand Duke of Tuscany from 1765 to 1790. He was a son of Emperor Francis I and his wife, Empress Maria Theresa...
. After only two years of this regime, he was succeeded by his son Francis II
Francis II, Holy Roman Emperor
Francis II was the last Holy Roman Emperor, ruling from 1792 until 6 August 1806, when he dissolved the Empire after the disastrous defeat of the Third Coalition by Napoleon at the Battle of Austerlitz...
, who continued working on the integration of the Jewish population in the Austrian society, but he was more moderate than his uncle. In 1812, a Jewish Sunday school was opened in Vienna. During the same period of time a number of limitations were placed on the Jewish population, such as the obligation to study in Christian schools and to pray in German.
Prosperity
Franz Joseph I of Austria
Franz Joseph I or Francis Joseph I was Emperor of Austria, King of Bohemia, King of Croatia, Apostolic King of Hungary, King of Galicia and Lodomeria and Grand Duke of Cracow from 1848 until his death in 1916.In the December of 1848, Emperor Ferdinand I of Austria abdicated the throne as part of...
as the Emperor of the Austria–Hungary Empire, and dissolved gradually after the death of the emperor up to the annexation of Austria to Germany by the Nazis, a process that lead to the start of the Holocaust in Austria.
Emperor Franz Joseph I of Austria bestowed on the Jewish population equality of rights saying, "the civil rights and the country's policy is not contingent in the people's religion". The emperor was well liked by the Jewish population, which, as a token of appreciation, wrote prayers and songs about him that were printed in Jewish prayer books. In 1849 the emperor canceled the prohibition against the Jewish population organizing within the community, and in 1852 new regulations of the Jewish community were set. In 1867 the Jewish population formally received full equal rights.
In 1869 the emperor visited Jerusalem and was greeted in great admiration by the Jewish population there. The emperor established a fund aimed at financing the establishment of Jewish institutions and in addition established the Talmudic school for rabbis in Budapest. During the 1890s several Jews were elected to the Austrian parliament.
During the regime of Franz Joseph and after, Austria's Jewish population contributed greatly to Austrian culture despite their small percentage in the population. Contributions came from Jewish lawyers, journalists (among them Theodor Herzl
Theodor Herzl
Theodor Herzl , born Benjamin Ze’ev Herzl was an Ashkenazi Jew Austro-Hungarian journalist and the father of modern political Zionism and in effect the State of Israel.-Early life:...
), authors, playwrights, poets, doctors, bankers, businessmen and artists. Vienna became a cultural Jewish center, and became a center of education, culture and Zionism. Theodor Herzl, the father of Zionism, studied in the University of Vienna, and was the editor of the feuilleton
Feuilleton
Feuilleton was originally a kind of supplement attached to the political portion of French newspapers, consisting chiefly of non-political news and gossip, literature and art criticism, a chronicle of the latest fashions, and epigrams, charades and other literary trifles...
of the Neue Freie Presse
Neue Freie Presse
Neue Freie Presse known locally as "Die Presse" was a Viennese newspaper founded by Adolf Werthner together with the journalists Max Friedländer and Michael Etienne on 1 September 1864...
, a very influential newspaper at that time. Another Jew, Felix Salten
Felix Salten
Felix Salten was an Austrian author and critic in Vienna. His most famous work is Bambi .-Life:...
, succeeded Herzl as the editor of the feuilleton.
Gustav Mahler
Gustav Mahler was a late-Romantic Austrian composer and one of the leading conductors of his generation. He was born in the village of Kalischt, Bohemia, in what was then Austria-Hungary, now Kaliště in the Czech Republic...
, Arnold Schoenberg
Arnold Schoenberg
Arnold Schoenberg was an Austrian composer, associated with the expressionist movement in German poetry and art, and leader of the Second Viennese School...
, and the authors Stefan Zweig
Stefan Zweig
Stefan Zweig was an Austrian novelist, playwright, journalist and biographer. At the height of his literary career, in the 1920s and 1930s, he was one of the most famous writers in the world.- Biography :...
, Arthur Schnitzler
Arthur Schnitzler
Dr. Arthur Schnitzler was an Austrian author and dramatist.- Biography :Arthur Schnitzler, son of a prominent Hungarian-Jewish laryngologist Johann Schnitzler and Luise Markbreiter , was born in Praterstraße 16, Leopoldstadt, Vienna, in the Austro-Hungarian...
, Hugo von Hofmannsthal
Hugo von Hofmannsthal
Hugo Laurenz August Hofmann von Hofmannsthal ; , was an Austrian novelist, librettist, poet, dramatist, narrator, and essayist.-Early life:...
(his grandfather was Jewish), Karl Kraus
Karl Kraus
Karl Kraus was an Austrian writer and journalist, known as a satirist, essayist, aphorist, playwright and poet. He is regarded as one of the foremost German-language satirists of the 20th century, especially for his witty criticism of the press, German culture, and German and Austrian...
, Elias Canetti
Elias Canetti
Elias Canetti was a Bulgarian-born modernist novelist, playwright, memoirist, and non-fiction writer. He wrote in German and won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1981, "for writings marked by a broad outlook, a wealth of ideas and artistic power".-Life:...
, Joseph Roth
Joseph Roth
Joseph Roth, born Moses Joseph Roth , was an Austrian journalist and novelist, best known for his family saga Radetzky March about the decline and fall of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and for his novel of Jewish life, Job as well as the seminal essay 'Juden auf Wanderschaft' translated in...
, Vicki Baum
Vicki Baum
Hedwig Baum was an Austrian writer. She is known for Menschen im Hotel , one of her first international successes....
and the doctors Sigmund Freud
Sigmund Freud
Sigmund Freud , born Sigismund Schlomo Freud , was an Austrian neurologist who founded the discipline of psychoanalysis...
, Viktor Frankl
Viktor Frankl
Viktor Emil Frankl M.D., Ph.D. was an Austrian neurologist and psychiatrist as well as a Holocaust survivor. Frankl was the founder of logotherapy, which is a form of Existential Analysis, the "Third Viennese School of Psychotherapy"...
and Alfred Adler
Alfred Adler
Alfred Adler was an Austrian medical doctor, psychotherapist, and founder of the school of individual psychology. In collaboration with Sigmund Freud and a small group of Freud's colleagues, Adler was among the co-founders of the psychoanalytic movement as a core member of the Vienna...
, the philosophers Martin Buber
Martin Buber
Martin Buber was an Austrian-born Jewish philosopher best known for his philosophy of dialogue, a form of religious existentialism centered on the distinction between the I-Thou relationship and the I-It relationship....
, Karl Popper
Karl Popper
Sir Karl Raimund Popper, CH FRS FBA was an Austro-British philosopher and a professor at the London School of Economics...
, and many others.
The prosperity period also affected the sports field: the Jewish sports club Hakoah Vienna was established in 1909 and excelled in football, swimming
Swimming (sport)
Swimming is a sport governed by the Fédération Internationale de Natation .-History: Competitive swimming in Europe began around 1800 BCE, mostly in the form of the freestyle. In 1873 Steve Bowyer introduced the trudgen to Western swimming competitions, after copying the front crawl used by Native...
and athletics
Track and field
Track and field is a sport comprising various competitive athletic contests based around the activities of running, jumping and throwing. The name of the sport derives from the venue for the competitions: a stadium which features an oval running track surrounding a grassy area...
.
With Jewish prosperity and equality, several Jewish scholars converted to Christianity in a desire to assimilate into Austrian society. Among them were Karl Kraus
Karl Kraus
Karl Kraus was an Austrian writer and journalist, known as a satirist, essayist, aphorist, playwright and poet. He is regarded as one of the foremost German-language satirists of the 20th century, especially for his witty criticism of the press, German culture, and German and Austrian...
and Otto Weininger
Otto Weininger
Otto Weininger was an Austrian philosopher. In 1903, he published the book Geschlecht und Charakter , which gained popularity after his suicide at the age of 23...
.
During this period, Vienna elected an antisemitic mayor, Karl Lueger
Karl Lueger
Karl Lueger was an Austrian politician and mayor of Vienna. The populist and anti-Semitic politics of his Christian Social Party are sometimes viewed as a model for Hitler's Nazism.- Career :...
. The emperor, Franz Joseph, was opposed to the appointment, but after Lueger was elected three consecutive times, the emperor was compelled to accept his election according to the regulations. During the period of his authority Lueger removed Jews from positions in the city administration and forbade them from working in the factories located in Vienna until his death in 1910.
The intertwining of the Jewish population and the attitude of the emperor towards them could also be seen in of the general state of the empire. From the middle of the 19th century there started to be a lot of pressures from the different nationals living in multinational House of Habsburg empire: the national minorities (such as the Hungarians, Czechs and Croatians) began demanding more and more collective rights; among German speakers, many started feeling more connected to Germany, which was strengthening. Under these circumstances, the Jewish population was especially notable for their loyalty to the empire and their admiration of the emperor.
Circa 1918, about 300,000 Jews in Austria were scattered in 33 different settlements. Most of them (about 200,000) lived in the capital city of Vienna
Vienna
Vienna is the capital and largest city of the Republic of Austria and one of the nine states of Austria. Vienna is Austria's primary city, with a population of about 1.723 million , and is by far the largest city in Austria, as well as its cultural, economic, and political centre...
.
The First Republic and Austrofascism (1918–1934 / 1934–1938)
First Austrian Republic
The Republic of Austria encompasses the period of Austrian history following the signing of the Treaty of Saint-Germain-en-Laye of September 1919, the settlement after the end of World War I which put an end to the Republic of German Austria, continuing up to World War II...
was strongly influenced by Jews. Many of the leading heads of the Social Democratic Party of Austria
Social Democratic Party of Austria
The Social Democratic Party of Austria is one of the oldest political parties in Austria. The SPÖ is one of the two major parties in Austria, and has ties to trade unions and the Austrian Chamber of Labour. The SPÖ is among the few mainstream European social-democratic parties that have preserved...
and especially the leaders of the Austromarxism
Austromarxism
Austromarxism was a Marxist theoretical current, led by Victor Adler, Otto Bauer, Karl Renner and Max Adler, members of the Social Democratic Workers' Party of Austria during the late decades of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy and the First Austrian Republic...
were assimilated Jews, for example Victor Adler
Victor Adler
----Victor Adler was an Austrian Social Democratic leader.Born in Prague, Adler received a university degree in Vienna in 1881. He founded the Socialist movement in Austria and created the Marxist journals Gleicheit in 1886 and Arbeiter-Zeitung in 1889...
, Otto Bauer
Otto Bauer
Otto Bauer was an Austrian Social Democrat who is considered one of the leading thinkers of the left socialist Austro-Marxist tendency...
, Gustav Eckstein, Julius Deutsch
Julius Deutsch
Julius Deutsch was a politician in the Austrian social democratic party....
and also the reformer of the school system in Vienna, Hugo Breitner. Due to the Social Democratic Party beging the only party in Austria that accepted Jews as members and also in leading positions, several Jewish parties that were founded after 1918 in Vienna, where about 10% of the population was Jewish, had no chance for gaining bigger parts of the Jewish population. Districts with high Jewish population rates, such as Leopoldstadt
Leopoldstadt
Leopoldstadt is the 2nd municipal District of Vienna . There are inhabitants over . It is situated in the heart of the city and, together with Brigittenau , forms a large island surrounded by the Danube Canal and, to the north, the Danube. It is named after Leopold I, Holy Roman Emperor...
, the only districts where Jews formed about the half of the population, and the neighbouring districts Alsergrund
Alsergrund
Alsergrund is the ninth district of Vienna, Austria . It is located just north of the first, central district, Innere Stadt. Alsergrund was incorporated in 1862, with seven suburbs. The area is densely populated, with a lot of government-built housing. According to the census of 2001, there were...
and Brigittenau
Brigittenau
Brigittenau is the 20th District of Vienna . It is located north of the central districts, north of Leopoldstadt on the same island area between the Danube and the Danube Canal...
, where up to a third of the population was Jewish, had usually higher percentage rates of voters for the social democratic party than classical "worker"-districts.
Also the cultural contribution of Jews reached its peak. Many famous writers, film and theatre directors (for example Max Reinhardt
Max Reinhardt
----Max Reinhardt was an Austrian theater and film director and actor.-Biography:...
, Fritz Lang
Fritz Lang
Friedrich Christian Anton "Fritz" Lang was an Austrian-American filmmaker, screenwriter, and occasional film producer and actor. One of the best known émigrés from Germany's school of Expressionism, he was dubbed the "Master of Darkness" by the British Film Institute...
, Richard Oswald
Richard Oswald
Richard Oswald was an Austrian director, producer, and screenwriter.Richard Oswald, born in Vienna as Richard W. Ornstein, began his career as an actor on the Viennese stage. He made his film directorial debut at age 34 with Das Eiserne Kreuz...
, Fred Zinnemann
Fred Zinnemann
Fred Zinnemann was an Austrian-American film director. He won four Academy Awards and directed films like High Noon, From Here to Eternity and A Man for All Seasons.-Life and career:...
and Otto Preminger
Otto Preminger
Otto Ludwig Preminger was an Austro–Hungarian-American theatre and film director.After moving from the theatre to Hollywood, he directed over 35 feature films in a five-decade career. He rose to prominence for stylish film noir mysteries such as Laura and Fallen Angel...
) actors (i.e. Peter Lorre
Peter Lorre
Peter Lorre was an Austrian-American actor frequently typecast as a sinister foreigner.He caused an international sensation in 1931 with his portrayal of a serial killer who preys on little girls in the German film M...
, Paul Muni
Paul Muni
Paul Muni was an Austrian-Hungarian-born American stage and film actor...
) and producers (i.e. Jacob Fleck
Jacob Fleck
Jacob Fleck was an Austrian film director, screenwriter, film producer and cameraman.-Biography:...
, Oscar Pilzer, Arnold Pressburger), architects and (set) designer (i.e. Artur Berger
Artur Berger
Artur Semyonovich Berger was an Austrian-Soviet film architect and set designer. He was active in Austria between 1920 and 1936, during which time he worked on about 30 feature films...
, Harry Horner, Oskar Strnad
Oskar Strnad
Oskar Strnad was an Austrian architect, sculptor, designer and set designer for films and theatres. Together with Josef Frank he was instrumental in creating the distinctive character of the Wiener Schule der Architektur...
, Ernst Deutsch-Dryden), comedians (Kabarett, for example: Heinrich Eisenbach, Fritz Grünbaum
Fritz Grünbaum
Fritz Grünbaum was an Austrian Jewish cabaret artist, operetta and pop song writer, director, actor and master of ceremonies....
, Karl Farkas
Karl Farkas
Karl Farkas was an Austrian actor and cabaret performer.In accordance with the wishes of his parents, he was to study law, but decided to follow the call of the stage...
, Georg Kreisler
Georg Kreisler
Georg Kreisler was an Austrian-American Viennese-language cabarettist, satirist, composer, and author. He was particularly popular in the 1950s and 1960s. Since 2007 he has lived in Salzburg with his third wife, Barbara Peters...
, Hermann Leopoldi, Armin Berg), musicians and composers (i.e. Fritz Kreisler
Fritz Kreisler
Friedrich "Fritz" Kreisler was an Austrian-born violinist and composer. One of the most famous violin masters of his or any other day, he was known for his sweet tone and expressive phrasing. Like many great violinists of his generation, he produced a characteristic sound which was immediately...
, Hans Julius Salten, Erich Wolfgang Korngold
Erich Wolfgang Korngold
Erich Wolfgang Korngold was an Austro-Hungarian film and romantic music composer. While his compositional style was considered well out of vogue at the time he died, his music has more recently undergone a reevaluation and a gradual reawakening of interest...
, Max Steiner
Max Steiner
Max Steiner was an Austrian composer of music for theatre productions and films. He later became a naturalized citizen of the United States. Trained by the great classical music composers Brahms and Mahler, he was one of the first composers who primarily wrote music for motion pictures, and as...
) were Jewish Austrians. In 1933, many Austrian Jews, who had worked and lived in Germany for years, returned to Austria, including many who fled Nazi restrictions on Jews working in the film industry.
In 1934, the Austrian Civil War
Austrian Civil War
The Austrian Civil War , also known as the February Uprising , is a term sometimes used for a few days of skirmishes between socialist and conservative-fascist forces between 12 February and 16 February 1934, in Austria...
broke out. The new regime was conservative-fascist and leaders of the Social Democratic Party got arrested or had to flee. But, except for Jews strongly engaged in the Social Democratic Party, the regime, which thought itself as pro-Austrian and anti-national socialism, brought no worsening for the Jewish population.
The census of 1934 counted 191,481 Jews in Austria—of them 176,034 living in Vienna and the most of the rest in Lower Austria
Lower Austria
Lower Austria is the northeasternmost state of the nine states in Austria. The capital of Lower Austria since 1986 is Sankt Pölten, the most recently designated capital town in Austria. The capital of Lower Austria had formerly been Vienna, even though Vienna is not officially part of Lower Austria...
(7,716) and Burgenland
Burgenland
Burgenland is the easternmost and least populous state or Land of Austria. It consists of two Statutarstädte and seven districts with in total 171 municipalities. It is 166 km long from north to south but much narrower from west to east...
(3,632), where also notable Jewish communities existed. Of the other Bundesländer, only Styria (2,195) also counted more than 1,000 Jews. The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum estimates 250,000 Jews in Austria in 1933.
In 1936, the previously strong Austrian film industry, which had developed its own "emigrant-film"-movement, had to accept the German restrictions forbidding Jews from working in the film industry. Emigration among film artists then rose sharply with Los Angeles
Los Ángeles
Los Ángeles is the capital of the province of Biobío, in the commune of the same name, in Region VIII , in the center-south of Chile. It is located between the Laja and Biobío rivers. The population is 123,445 inhabitants...
becoming the major destination. The main emigration wave did not start until March 1938, when Austria was annexed by Germany, and November 1938, when nearly all synagogues of Austria were destroyed (more than 100, of them about 30 to 40 built as dedicated synagogues, 25 of them in Vienna).
The Holocaust in Austria
Nazi Germany
Nazi Germany , also known as the Third Reich , but officially called German Reich from 1933 to 1943 and Greater German Reich from 26 June 1943 onward, is the name commonly used to refer to the state of Germany from 1933 to 1945, when it was a totalitarian dictatorship ruled by...
in 1938 (the "Anschluss
Anschluss
The Anschluss , also known as the ', was the occupation and annexation of Austria into Nazi Germany in 1938....
"). At the time of the annexation, the Jewish population in Austria consisted of 181,882 people, of them 167,249 in Vienna—but thousands of Jews already emigrated the years before. Including people with one Jewish parent or at least one Jewish grandmother or grandfather, who were also persecuted by the Nazis, the number of Jews and Jewish ancestry accounted 201,000 to 214,000 people.
The Nazis entered Austria without any major resistance, and were accepted approvingly by many Austrians. Immediately with their entrance into Austria the Nazis started instituting anti-Jewish policies throughout the country. They expelled the Jewish population from all cultural, economic and social life in Austria and were humiliated as they were commanded to perform different humiliating tasks, without any consideration of differential of age, social position or sex.
In the same year as the annexation, "the Night of Broken Glass" (Kristallnacht
Kristallnacht
Kristallnacht, also referred to as the Night of Broken Glass, and also Reichskristallnacht, Pogromnacht, and Novemberpogrome, was a pogrom or series of attacks against Jews throughout Nazi Germany and parts of Austria on 9–10 November 1938.Jewish homes were ransacked, as were shops, towns and...
) was carried out in Austria, in response to the Jewish refugee, Herschel Grynszpan
Herschel Grynszpan
Herschel Feibel Grynszpan was a Polish Jew and political assassin. Grynszpan's assassination of the German diplomat Ernst vom Rath on November 7, 1938, after the deportation of his family, provided the excuse for the Nazi Kristallnacht, the antisemitic pogrom of November 9–10, 1938...
, assassinating the German diplomat Ernst vom Rath
Ernst vom Rath
Ernst Eduard vom Rath was a German diplomat, remembered for his assassination in Paris in 1938 by a Jewish youth, Herschel Grynszpan. The assassination triggered Kristallnacht, the "Night of Broken Glass"....
in France. As a result, Jewish Synagogues and buildings all over Austria were shattered and robbed throughout the country by the Hitler Youth
Hitler Youth
The Hitler Youth was a paramilitary organization of the Nazi Party. It existed from 1922 to 1945. The HJ was the second oldest paramilitary Nazi group, founded one year after its adult counterpart, the Sturmabteilung...
and by the SA
Sturmabteilung
The Sturmabteilung functioned as a paramilitary organization of the National Socialist German Workers' Party . It played a key role in Adolf Hitler's rise to power in the 1920s and 1930s...
, as well as many homes of the Jewish population. During that night 27 Jews were killed.
After the Anschluss many Jews tried to emigrate out of Austria. The immigration center was in the capital of Austria, Vienna, and the people leaving were required to have visas
Visa (document)
A visa is a document showing that a person is authorized to enter the territory for which it was issued, subject to permission of an immigration official at the time of actual entry. The authorization may be a document, but more commonly it is a stamp endorsed in the applicant's passport...
and documents approving their departure in order to get out of the country. They were required to leave everything of value in Austria. To leave the country, high "taxes" had to be paid. Emigrants hurried to collect only their most important belongings and the departure fees and had to leave behind them everything else. Most Jews who remained ended up being killed in the Holocaust.
During the period of the Holocaust, the general Chinese consul Feng-Shan Ho was stationed in Vienna. While risking his own life and his career, Feng-Shan managed to rescue thousands of Jews seeking to escape the Nazis by, with the aid of his catholic Viennese staff, rapidly approving thousands of visas for Jewish emigrants who were in a rush to flee. Among them were possibly the Austrian filmmakers Jacob
Jacob Fleck
Jacob Fleck was an Austrian film director, screenwriter, film producer and cameraman.-Biography:...
and Luise Fleck
Luise Fleck
Luise Fleck, also known as Luise Kolm or Luise Kolm-Fleck, née Louise or Luise Veltée , was an Austrian film director, and the second ever female film director in the world, after Alice Guy-Blaché...
, who got one of the last visas for China in 1940 and who then produced films with Chinese filmmakers in Shanghai
Shanghai
Shanghai is the largest city by population in China and the largest city proper in the world. It is one of the four province-level municipalities in the People's Republic of China, with a total population of over 23 million as of 2010...
. Ho's actions were recognized posthumously when he was awarded the title Righteous among the Nations
Righteous Among the Nations
Righteous among the Nations of the world's nations"), also translated as Righteous Gentiles is an honorific used by the State of Israel to describe non-Jews who risked their lives during the Holocaust to save Jews from extermination by the Nazis....
by the Israel
Israel
The State of Israel is a parliamentary republic located in the Middle East, along the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea...
i organization Yad Vashem
Yad Vashem
Yad Vashem is Israel's official memorial to the Jewish victims of the Holocaust, established in 1953 through the Yad Vashem Law passed by the Knesset, Israel's parliament....
in 2001.
In 1939 the Nazis initiated the annihilation process of the Jewish population. The most notable persons of the community, about 6,000, were sent to the Dachau and Buchenwald concentration camp
Buchenwald concentration camp
Buchenwald concentration camp was a German Nazi concentration camp established on the Ettersberg near Weimar, Germany, in July 1937, one of the first and the largest of the concentration camps on German soil.Camp prisoners from all over Europe and Russia—Jews, non-Jewish Poles and Slovenes,...
s. The main concentration camp in Austria was the Mauthausen Concentration Camp
Mauthausen-Gusen concentration camp
Mauthausen Concentration Camp grew to become a large group of Nazi concentration camps that was built around the villages of Mauthausen and Gusen in Upper Austria, roughly east of the city of Linz.Initially a single camp at Mauthausen, it expanded over time and by the summer of 1940, the...
, which was located next to the city Linz
Linz
Linz is the third-largest city of Austria and capital of the state of Upper Austria . It is located in the north centre of Austria, approximately south of the Czech border, on both sides of the river Danube. The population of the city is , and that of the Greater Linz conurbation is about...
. Many other Jews were sent to the concentration camps in Theresienstadt and Łódź and from there to the Auschwitz concentration camp
Auschwitz concentration camp
Concentration camp Auschwitz was a network of Nazi concentration and extermination camps built and operated by the Third Reich in Polish areas annexed by Nazi Germany during World War II...
. In the summer of 1939 hundreds of factories and Jewish stores were shut down by the Austrian government. In October 1941 Jews were forbidden to exit the boundaries of Austria. The total number of Jews who managed to exit Austria is about 28,000. Part of the Vienna Jews was sent to the transit camp Nisko
Nisko
Nisko is a town in Nisko County, Subcarpathian Voivodeship, Poland on the San River, with a population of 15,534 inhabitants, as of 2 June 2009...
in Poland. In the end of the winter of 1941, an additional 4,500 Jews were sent from Vienna to different concentration and extermination camps in Poland (mainly to Izbica Kujawska
Izbica Kujawska
Izbica Kujawska is a town in central Poland with 2,808 inhabitants . It is situated in the Kuyavian-Pomeranian Voivodeship , having previously been in Włocławek Voivodeship .-External links:*...
and to other ghettos in the Lublin
Lublin
Lublin is the ninth largest city in Poland. It is the capital of Lublin Voivodeship with a population of 350,392 . Lublin is also the largest Polish city east of the Vistula river...
area). In June 1941, a direct delivery exited the city to the Sobibor extermination camp
Sobibór extermination camp
Sobibor was a Nazi German extermination camp located on the outskirts of the town of Sobibór, Lublin Voivodeship of occupied Poland as part of Operation Reinhard; the official German name was SS-Sonderkommando Sobibor...
, which had around one thousand Jews. In the fall of 1942, the Nazis sent more Jews to the ghettos to the towns of the cities they occupied in the Soviet Union
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....
: Riga
Riga
Riga is the capital and largest city of Latvia. With 702,891 inhabitants Riga is the largest city of the Baltic states, one of the largest cities in Northern Europe and home to more than one third of Latvia's population. The city is an important seaport and a major industrial, commercial,...
, Kaunas
Kaunas
Kaunas is the second-largest city in Lithuania and has historically been a leading centre of Lithuanian economic, academic, and cultural life. Kaunas was the biggest city and the center of a powiat in Trakai Voivodeship of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania since 1413. During Russian Empire occupation...
, Vilnius
Vilnius
Vilnius is the capital of Lithuania, and its largest city, with a population of 560,190 as of 2010. It is the seat of the Vilnius city municipality and of the Vilnius district municipality. It is also the capital of Vilnius County...
and Minsk
Minsk
- Ecological situation :The ecological situation is monitored by Republican Center of Radioactive and Environmental Control .During 2003–2008 the overall weight of contaminants increased from 186,000 to 247,400 tons. The change of gas as industrial fuel to mazut for financial reasons has worsened...
. Those Jews were murdered by Nazi soldiers mainly by gunshots.
Cultural assimilation
Cultural assimilation is a socio-political response to demographic multi-ethnicity that supports or promotes the assimilation of ethnic minorities into the dominant culture. The term assimilation is often used with regard to immigrants and various ethnic groups who have settled in a new land. New...
. The total number of the Austrian Jewish population murdered during the Holocaust is about 65,500 people, 62,000 of them known by name. The rest of the Jewish population of Austria, excluding up to 5,000 who managed to survive in Austria, emigrated—about 135,000 people of Jewish religion or Jewish ancestry, compared to the number in 1938. But thousands of Austrian Jews emigrated before 1938.
Until 1955, about 250,000 to 300,000 "displaced persons" lived in Austria. About 3,000 of them stayed in Austria and formed the new Jewish community. After the Holocaust, the Jews throughout Europe who managed to survive were concentrated in the DP camps
Displaced persons camp
A displaced persons camp or DP camp is a temporary facility for displaced persons coerced into forced migration. The term is mainly used for camps established after World War II in West Germany and in Austria, as well as in the United Kingdom, primarily for refugees from Eastern Europe and for the...
in Austria in order to get their identification. The survivors who had nowhere to return to remained in the camps, and were helped by groups of volunteers who came from Israel. Part of the Jews in the DP camps eventually immigrated to Israel, and many others returned to Germany and Austria. In October 2000 the Judenplatz Holocaust Memorial
Judenplatz Holocaust Memorial
The Judenplatz Holocaust Memorial also known as the Nameless Library stands in Judenplatz in the first district of Vienna. It is the central memorial for the Austrian victims of the Holocaust and was designed by the British artist Rachel Whiteread....
was built in Vienna in memory of the Austrian Jews killed in the Holocaust.
One of the notable prisoners of the Mauthausen concentration camp
Mauthausen-Gusen concentration camp
Mauthausen Concentration Camp grew to become a large group of Nazi concentration camps that was built around the villages of Mauthausen and Gusen in Upper Austria, roughly east of the city of Linz.Initially a single camp at Mauthausen, it expanded over time and by the summer of 1940, the...
was Simon Wiesenthal
Simon Wiesenthal
Simon Wiesenthal KBE was an Austrian Holocaust survivor who became famous after World War II for his work as a Nazi hunter....
, who after his release worked together with the United States army in order to locate Nazi war criminals.
During the Hungarian Revolution of 1956 about 200,000 Hungarians fled over Austria to the west, among them 17,000 Jews. Seventy-thousand Hungarians stayed in Austria, a number of Jews among them. One of the best known of them is the political scientist and publicist Paul Lendvai
Paul Lendvai
Paul Lendvai is a Hungarian-born journalist who became an Austrian citizen. After various communist party activities in Hungary, he went to Austria in 1957, working as an author and journalist.- Biography :...
.
The Jewish community in Austria today
Iron Curtain
The concept of the Iron Curtain symbolized the ideological fighting and physical boundary dividing Europe into two separate areas from the end of World War II in 1945 until the end of the Cold War in 1989...
, there has been a renewed influx of Jewish population from the former Soviet Union
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....
. The current Austrian Jewish population is around 12,000–15,000—most of them living in Vienna
Vienna
Vienna is the capital and largest city of the Republic of Austria and one of the nine states of Austria. Vienna is Austria's primary city, with a population of about 1.723 million , and is by far the largest city in Austria, as well as its cultural, economic, and political centre...
and Graz
Graz
The more recent population figures do not give the whole picture as only people with principal residence status are counted and people with secondary residence status are not. Most of the people with secondary residence status in Graz are students...
and Salzburg
Salzburg
-Population development:In 1935, the population significantly increased when Salzburg absorbed adjacent municipalities. After World War II, numerous refugees found a new home in the city. New residential space was created for American soldiers of the postwar Occupation, and could be used for...
. About 800 of them are Holocaust survivors who lived in Austria before 1938 and about 1500 of them are immigrants from countries from the former Soviet Union
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....
.
In July 1991 the Austrian government recognized its role in the crimes of the Third Reich
Nazi Germany
Nazi Germany , also known as the Third Reich , but officially called German Reich from 1933 to 1943 and Greater German Reich from 26 June 1943 onward, is the name commonly used to refer to the state of Germany from 1933 to 1945, when it was a totalitarian dictatorship ruled by...
during World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
. In 1993, the Austrian government reconstructed the Jewish synagogue in Innsbruck
Innsbruck
- Main sights :- Buildings :*Golden Roof*Kaiserliche Hofburg *Hofkirche with the cenotaph of Maximilian I, Holy Roman Emperor*Altes Landhaus...
, which was destroyed during Kristallnacht
Kristallnacht
Kristallnacht, also referred to as the Night of Broken Glass, and also Reichskristallnacht, Pogromnacht, and Novemberpogrome, was a pogrom or series of attacks against Jews throughout Nazi Germany and parts of Austria on 9–10 November 1938.Jewish homes were ransacked, as were shops, towns and...
, and in 1994 they reconstructed the Jewish library in Vienna, which was then reopened.
Neo-Nazism
Neo-Nazism
Neo-Nazism consists of post-World War II social or political movements seeking to revive Nazism or some variant thereof.The term neo-Nazism can also refer to the ideology of these movements....
and antisemitism did not vanish entirely from public life in Austria. In the 1990s many threat letters were sent to politicians and reporters, and some Austrian public figures have occasionally shown sympathy to Nazism.
Kurt Waldheim
Kurt Waldheim
Kurt Josef Waldheim was an Austrian diplomat and politician. Waldheim was the fourth Secretary-General of the United Nations from 1972 to 1981, and the ninth President of Austria, from 1986 to 1992...
was appointed as the Austrian president in 1986 despite serving as an officer in the Wehrmacht
Wehrmacht
The Wehrmacht – from , to defend and , the might/power) were the unified armed forces of Nazi Germany from 1935 to 1945. It consisted of the Heer , the Kriegsmarine and the Luftwaffe .-Origin and use of the term:...
during the Second World War. He remained the president of Austria until 1992. During his term he was considered a persona non grata
Persona non grata
Persona non grata , literally meaning "an unwelcome person", is a legal term used in diplomacy that indicates a proscription against a person entering the country...
in many countries.
The biggest Jewish presence in Austria today is in its capital Vienna, consisting of synagogues, a Jewish retirement home, the Jewish Museum
Jewish Museum Vienna
The Jüdisches Museum Wien, or the Jewish Museum Vienna, is a museum of Jewish history, life and religion in Austria. The present museum was founded in 1988 in the Palais Eskeles in the Dorotheergasse, Vienna, and has distinguished itself by a very active programme of exhibitions.- History :The...
(founded in 1993), and different community institutions. Austrian Jews are of many different sects, including Haredi
Haredi Judaism
Haredi or Charedi/Chareidi Judaism is the most conservative form of Orthodox Judaism, often referred to as ultra-Orthodox. A follower of Haredi Judaism is called a Haredi ....
and Reform Jews
Reform Judaism
Reform Judaism refers to various beliefs, practices and organizations associated with the Reform Jewish movement in North America, the United Kingdom and elsewhere. In general, it maintains that Judaism and Jewish traditions should be modernized and should be compatible with participation in the...
. The Jewish community also has a lot of activities arranged by the Chabad
Chabad
Chabad or Chabad-Lubavitch is a major branch of Hasidic Judaism.Chabad may also refer to:*Chabad-Strashelye, a defunct branch of the Chabad school of Hasidic Judaism*Chabad-Kapust or Kapust, a defunct branch of the Chabad school of Hasidic Judaism...
movement, which is in charge of managing kindergartens, schools, a community center and even a university. In addition there are also active branches of the Bnei Akiva
Bnei Akiva
Bnei Akiva is the largest religious Zionist youth movement in the world, with over 125,000 members in 37 countries. It was established in Mandate Palestine in 1929.-History:...
and the Hashomer Hatzair
Hashomer Hatzair
Hashomer Hatzair is a Socialist–Zionist youth movement founded in 1913 in Galicia, Austria-Hungary, and was also the name of the group's political party in the Yishuv in the pre-1948 British Mandate of Palestine...
youth movements. Today, the biggest minority among the Jewish community in Vienna originates from Georgia
Georgia (country)
Georgia is a sovereign state in the Caucasus region of Eurasia. Located at the crossroads of Western Asia and Eastern Europe, it is bounded to the west by the Black Sea, to the north by Russia, to the southwest by Turkey, to the south by Armenia, and to the southeast by Azerbaijan. The capital of...
, and the second biggest Jewish minority originates from Bukhara
Bukhara
Bukhara , from the Soghdian βuxārak , is the capital of the Bukhara Province of Uzbekistan. The nation's fifth-largest city, it has a population of 263,400 . The region around Bukhara has been inhabited for at least five millennia, and the city has existed for half that time...
, each with separate synagogues and a large community center called "The Spanish center".
There were very few Jews in Austria in the post-war years, however some of them became very prominent in Austrian society, such Bruno Kreisky
Bruno Kreisky
Bruno Kreisky was an Austrian politician who served as Foreign Minister from 1959 to 1966 and as Chancellor from 1970 to 1983. Aged 72 at the end of his chancellorship, he was the oldest acting Chancellor after World War II....
, who was the Chancellor of Austria
Chancellor of Austria
The Federal Chancellor is the head of government in Austria. Its deputy is the Vice-Chancellor. Before 1918, the equivalent office was the Minister-President of Austria. The Federal Chancellor is considered to be the most powerful political position in Austrian politics.-Appointment:The...
between 1970 until 1983, the artist and architect Friedensreich Hundertwasser
Friedensreich Hundertwasser
Friedensreich Regentag Dunkelbunt Hundertwasser was an Austrian painter and architect. Born Friedrich Stowasser in Vienna, he became one of the best-known contemporary Austrian artists, although controversial, by the end of the 20th century.-Life:Hundertwasser's father Ernst Stowasser died three...
and Jewish politicians such as Elisabeth Pittermann, a member of the Parliament of Austria
Parliament of Austria
In the Parliament of Austria is vested the legislative power of the Republic of Austria. The institution consists of two chambers,* the National Council and* the Federal Council ....
from the Social Democratic Party of Austria
Social Democratic Party of Austria
The Social Democratic Party of Austria is one of the oldest political parties in Austria. The SPÖ is one of the two major parties in Austria, and has ties to trade unions and the Austrian Chamber of Labour. The SPÖ is among the few mainstream European social-democratic parties that have preserved...
and Peter Sichrovsky
Peter Sichrovsky
Peter Sichrovsky is an Austrian journalist, writer, former politician and Member of the European Parliament. He belonged to the Freedom Party of Austria during his two terms in the European Parliament, although he was officially non-attached.- Early life :Peter Sichrovsky was born in Vienna, Austria...
, who was formerly a member of the Freedom Party of Austria
Freedom Party of Austria
The Freedom Party of Austria is a political party in Austria. Ideologically, the party is a direct descendant of the German national liberal camp, which dates back to the 1848 revolutions. The FPÖ itself was founded in 1956 as the successor to the short-lived Federation of Independents , which had...
and a representative in the European Parliament
European Parliament
The European Parliament is the directly elected parliamentary institution of the European Union . Together with the Council of the European Union and the Commission, it exercises the legislative function of the EU and it has been described as one of the most powerful legislatures in the world...
.
Latent antisemitism is an issue in several rural areas of the country. Special attention gained several issues in the holiday resort Serfaus
Serfaus
Serfaus is a municipality in the district of Landeck in Tyrol, Austria. It is located at , with a population of 1,091 .-Geography:Serfaus is a small town located on a plateau in the upper Inn valley in Tyrol, Austria. It is well known for its connection to the Ski-Area "Serfaus-Fiss-Ladis" and its...
, where possible Jews were denied from hotel bookings, based on racial bias
Racism
Racism is the belief that inherent different traits in human racial groups justify discrimination. In the modern English language, the term "racism" is used predominantly as a pejorative epithet. It is applied especially to the practice or advocacy of racial discrimination of a pernicious nature...
. Within the inhabitance of the village, there are reported issues of hostility towards those who accommodate Jews.
See also
- List of Austrian Jews
- Jewish history of SalzburgJewish history of SalzburgThe history of the Jews in Salzburg, Austria goes back several millennia. Despite being a non-secular province with a Catholic Archbishop as the head of the state, Salzburg has a long record of Jewish history....
- History of the Jews in ViennaHistory of the Jews in ViennaThe history of the Jews in Vienna, Austria, goes back over eight hundred years. There is evidence of a Jewish presence in Vienna from the 12th century onwards....
Literature
- Eveline Brugger, Birgit Wiedl. Regesten zur Geschichte der Juden im Mittelalter. Band 1: Von den Anfängen bis 1338. Institut für Geschichte der Juden in Österreich. StudienVerlag, Innsbruck. 2005. ISBN 3-7065-4018-5).
- Michaela Feurstein, Gerhard Milchram. Jüdisches Wien. Boehlau Verlag, Vienna. 2001. ISBN 3-205-99094-3
- Josef Fraenkel (ed.). "The Jews of Austria: Essays on their Life, History and Destruction". Valentine Mitchell & Co., London. 1967. ISBN 85303-000-6
- Sabine Hödl, Peter Rauscher, Barbara Staudinger (ed.) Hofjuden und Landjuden. Jüdisches Leben in der Frühen Neuzeit. Philo Verlag, Vienna. 2004. ISBN 3-8257-0352-5
- Martha Keil, Elke Forisch, Ernst Scheiber. (ed.) Denkmale. Jüdische Friedhöfe in Wien, Niederösterreich und Burgenland Club Niederösterreich, St. Pölten. 2006. ISBN 3-9502149-0-9.
- Christoph Lind. "Der letzte Jude hat den Tempel verlassen": Juden in Niederösterreich 1938–1945. Mandelbaum Verlag, Vienna. 2004. ISBN 3-85476-141-4
- Barbara Staudinger. "Gantze Dörffer voll Juden": Juden in Niederösterreich 1496-1670. Mandelbaum Verlag, Vienna. 2005. ISBN 3-85476-165-1
- Thomas E. Schärf. Jüdisches Leben in Baden: Von den Anfängen bis zur Gegenwart. Mandelbaum Verlag, Vienna. 2005. ISBN 3-85476-164-3
- Werner Sulzgruber. Die jüdische Gemeinde Wiener Neustadt: Von ihren Anfängen bis zu ihrer Zerstörung. Mandelbaum Verlag, Vienna. 2005. ISBN 3-85476-163-5
- Nicht in einem Bett - Juden und Christen in Mittelalter und Frühneuzeit. Reihe: Juden in Mitteleuropa, Ausgabe 2005.
External links
- Jews in Austria from the Middle Ages to 1970. How the kings played with Jewish emancipations and expulsions - Toleranzedict - emancipation - holocaust - victim theory after 1945 (from Encyclopaedia Judaica)
- Institute for the History of Jews in Austria
- Holocaust Victims' Information and Support Center
- Republic of Austria|Historikerkommission
- Jewish community of Vienna
- DAVID newsletter
- Ordinary exile |Austrian Jewish refugees in France and Belgium
- Databases of Austrian Jewish refugees in France and Belgium