Abstract
Writing at the turn of the century, the Austrian Jewish scholar Jakob Thon argued that the Jews of the western half of the Dual Monarchy were German Jews, while the Jews of Galicia formed an integral part of East European Jewry.1 In asserting that Western Austrian Jews were German, Thon meant that they had adopted German language and culture in the nineteenth century. Like the Jews in Germany, Western Austrian Jews had improved their socio-economic status, adopted modern education, and appeared indistinguishable from the rest of the middle class. They had ‘assimilated’, or acculturated (to use a more accurate sociological term). Austrian Jews formed one community with German Jews even if Austria had been excluded from Bismarck’s Reich.
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Notes
Jakob Thon, Die Juden in Oesterreich (Berlin: Bureau of Jewish Statistics, 1908), p. 4.
See William O. McCagg, Jr, A History of Habsburg Jews, 1670–1918 (Bloomington, Ind., 1989), pp. 123–39.
On Austrian Jews generally see Wolfdieter Bihl, ‘Die Juden’, in Adam Wandruszka and Peter Urbanitsch (eds), Die Habsburger Monarchie, 1848–1918, vol. 3 (Vienna, 1980), pp. 880–948. For an interesting, albeit idiosyn-cratic, view of Austrian Jewry see McCagg, A History of Habsburg Jews.
On Galician Jewry see Siegfried Fleischer, ‘Enquête über die Lage der jüdischen Bevölkerung Galiziens’, in Alfred Nossig (ed.), Jüdische Statistik (Berlin, 1903);
Raphael Mahler, ‘The Economic Background of Jewish Emigration from Galicia to the United States’, YIVO Annual of Jewish Social Science, vol. 7 (1952), pp. 255–67; idem, Hasidism and the Jewish Enlightenment: Their Confrontation in Galicia and Poland in the First Half of the Nineteenth Century (Philadelphia, 1985)
Ezra Mendelsohn, Zionism in Poland, 1915— 1926: The Formative Years (New Haven and London, 1981); and McCagg, A History of Habsburg Jews, pp. 105–22 and 182–7.
On the Jews of Bohemia see Hillel J. Kieval, The Making of Czech Jewry: National Conflict and Jewish Society in Bohemia, 1870–1918 (New York and Oxford, 1988)
Gary B. Cohen, The Politics of Ethnic Survival: Germans in Prague, 1861–1914 (Princeton, NJ, 1981); idem, ‘Jews in German Society: Prague, 1860–1914’, Central European vol. 10 (1977), pp.28–54
Ruth Kestenberg-Gladstein, ‘The Jews between Czechs and Germans in the Historic Lands, 1848–1918’, The Jews of Czechoslovakia, vol. I (Philadelphia, 1968), pp. 21–71.
On the Jews of Moravia, see Theodor Haas, Die Juden in Mähren: Darstellung der Rechtsgeschichte und Statistik unter besonderer Berücksichtigung des 19. Jahrhunderts (Brünn, 1908)
Hugo Gold (ed.), Die Juden und Judengemeinden Mährens in Vergangenheit und Gegenwart (Brünn, 1929). A new study of Moravian Jewry is a scholarly desideratum.
For a social history of the Jews of Vienna, see Marsha L. Rozenblit, The Jews of Vienna, 1867–1914: Assimilation and Identity (Albany, NY, 1983). Population statistics presented here are based on a study of a sample of Jewish brides and grooms, mothers and fathers, and Jewish taxpayers in Vienna between 1855 and 1910. For details, see Rozenblit, The Jews of Vienna. For a comprehensive study of all aspects of Jewish identity in Vienna see
Robert S. Wistrich, The Jews of Vienna in the Age of Franz Joseph (Oxford, 1989).
Jan Havránek, ‘The Development of Czech Nationalism’, Austrian History Yearbook, vol. 3, pt 2 (1967), pp. 223–60
Andrew G. Whiteside, The Socialism of Fools: Georg Ritter von Schönerer and Austrian Pan-Germanism (Berkeley. Los Angeles, London, 1975).
Wistrich, The Jews of Vienna, pp. 131–63; Robert S. Wistrich, ‘The Modernization of Viennese Jewry: The Impact of German Culture in a Multi-Ethnic State’, in Jacob Katz (ed.), Toward Modernity: The European Jewish Model (New Brunswick, NJ and Oxford, 1987), pp. 43–70
Peter G.J.Pulzer, ‘The Austrian Liberals and the Jewish Question, 1867–1914’, Journal of Central European Affairs, vol. 23 (1963), pp. 131–42
Kestenberg-Gladstein, ‘The Jews’, pp. 32–4,43–5; Hans Kohn, ‘Before 1918 in the Historic Lands’, in The Jews of Czechoslovakia (Philadelphia, 1968), pp. 17–18; Coehn, ‘Jews in German Society’, esp. pp. 310–16. Although Kieval argues for the growing Czechification of Bohemian Jewry, his book provides ample evidence of the continued German language loyalties of Bohemian Jewry; see The Making of Czech Jewry, esp. pp. 60–3.
The literature on Jews in Austrian culture is vast. See especially Hans Kohn, Karl Kraus, Arthur Schnitzler, Otto Weininger: Aus dem jüdischen Wien der Jahrhundertwende (Tübingen, 1962)
Harry Zohn, Wiener Juden in der deutschen Literatur (Tel Aviv, 1964)
and most recently, Steven Beller, Vienna and the Jews, 1867–1938: A Cultural History (Cambridge, 1989).
For an evocative description of the world of Viennese culture generally see Carl Schorske, Fin-de-Siècle Vienna: Politics and Culture (New York, 1980)
Stefan Zweig, The World of Yesterday (New York, 1943).
George Clare, Last Waltz in Vienna: The Rise and Destruction of a Family, 1842–1942 (New York, 1982), p. 86.
Isak Noa Mannheimer, Gottesdienstliche Vorträge gehalten im israelitischen Bethause in Wien, S. Hammerschlag (ed.), 2 vols (Vienna, 1876), esp. vol. I, pp. 48–66, vol. II, pp. 20–37, 78–100
Adolf Jellinek, Bezêlem Elohim: Fünf Reden über die israelitische Menschenlehre und Weltanschauung (Vienna, 1871), p. 51; idem, Der jüdische Stamm; Ethnographische Studien (Vienna, 1869); idem, Zeitstimmen, vol. 1 (Vienna, 1870), pp. 41–52, 88, 96; idem, Predigten, vol. 1 (Vienna, 1862), pp. 201–14
Moritz Güdemann, Jerusalem, die Opfer und die Orgel; Predigt, am Sabbath, 25. Adar 5631 (18 März 1871) (Vienna, 1871); idem, Sechs Predigten im Leopoldstädter Tempel zu Wien (Vienna, 1867), pp. 11–18, 34–43. On Güdemann’s opposition to Herzlian Zionism see his Aus meinem Leben, un-published memoir, Leo Baeck Institute, New York, pp. 185–95 (typescript version) and his Nationaljudenthum (Leipzig and Vienna, 1897). For a fuller description of the views of these men see Marsha L. Rozenblit, ‘Jewish Identity and the Modern Rabbi: The Cases of Isak Noa Mannheimer, Adolf Jellinek, and Moritz Güdemann in Nineteenth-Century Vienna’, Leo Baeck Institute Yearbook, 35 (1990).
For a fuller discussion see Rozenblit, Jews of Vienna, pp. 161–78; and Adolf Gaisbauer, Davidstern und Doppeladler: Zionismus und jüdischer Nationalismus in österreich, 1882–1918 (Vienna, Cologne, Graz, 1988).
Josef S. Bloch, My Reminiscences (Vienna and Berlin, 1923), p. 182]. Because of some of Bloch’s language and his obvious Jewish pride, some scholars have labelled him a Jewish nationalist. A reading of his memoirs and the newspaper he edited, Dr. Bloch’s Oesterreichische Wochenschrift, reveals that he es-chewed Zionism and Jewish nationalism but articulated a strong sense of Jewish ethnic pride. See Wistrich, The Jews of Vienna, pp. 270–309.
Michael A. Meyer, Response to Modernity: A History of the Reform Movement in Judaism (New York and Oxford, 1988), pp. 10–61; 143–51.
Ibid., chs 2–5. See also Jakob J. Petuchowski, Prayerbook Reform in Europe: The Liturgy of European Liberal and Reform Judaism (New York, 1968).
‘Liturgie 1872’, Central Archives for the History of the Jewish People, AW 1257. For a detailed discussion of this episode see Marsha L. Rozenblit, The Struggle Over Religious Reform in Nineteenth-Century Vienna’, AJS Review, vol. 14, no. 2 (Fall 1989), pp. 179–221.
See, for example Adolf Jellinek, Predigten, vol. 2 (Vienna, 1863), pp. 155–78; and Güdemann, Jerusalem, die Opfer und die Orgel.
See Jack Wertheimer, Unwelcome Strangers: East European Jews in Imperial Germany (New York and Oxford, 1987)
Trude Maurer, Ostjuden in Deutschland 1918–1933 (Hamburg, 1986).
See Peter Pulzer, The Rise of Political Antisemitism in Germany and Austria, rev. edn (Cambridge, Mass., 1988)
John Boyer, Political Radicalism in Late Imperial Vienna: Origins of the Christian Social Movement 1848–1897 (Chicago and London, 1981)
Richard S. Geehr, Karl Lueger: Mayor of Fin de Siècle Vienna (Detroit, 1990).
For a recent study of Viennese Jewry in the interwar period, see Harriet Freidenreich, Jewish Politics in Vienna, 1918–1938 (Bloomington, Ind., 1991).
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Rozenblit, M.L. (1992). The Jews of Germany and Austria: A Comparative Perspective. In: Wistrich, R.S. (eds) Austrians and Jews in the Twentieth Century. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-22378-7_1
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