History of the Jews in Vienna
The 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.
At the end of the 19th century and the start of the 20th century, Vienna was one of the most prominent centres of Jewish culture in Europe, but during the period of Nazi rule in Austria, Vienna's Jewish population was almost entirely deported and murdered in the Holocaust. Since 1945, Jewish culture and society have gradually been recovering in the city.
History
Middle Ages
The first named Jewish individual was Schlom, Duke Frederick I’s Münzmeister, installed in 1194. Schlom and his family would later be murdered in a pogrom by crusaders. In 1238, emperor Frederick II granted the Jews a privilege, and the existence of community institutions such as a synagogue, hospital and slaughterhouse can be proven from the 14th century onwards. Vienna’s city law empowered a special Judenrichter to adjudicate in disputes between Christians and Jews, but this judge was not empowered to rule in conflicts between two Jewish parties, unless one party filed a complaint with him.The first Jews lived in the area near the Seitenstettengasse; from around 1280, they also lived around the modern-day Judenplatz. The centre of Jewish cultural and religious life was located here from the 13th to the 15th century, until the Vienna Gesera of 1420/21, when Albert V ordered the annihilation of the city’s Jews, leading to their murder, expulsion, and in some cases collective suicide.
Early Modern (16th–18th centuries)
In the year 1512, 12 Jewish families lived in Vienna. Although there was a ban until 1624 on new settlement, this was repeatedly circumvented through the granting of exceptions, to the point that a new cemetery was established in the Seegasse in 1582. Jews’ rights were further restricted in 1637, leading to the second expulsion of Vienna's Jewish population in 1669/70 under Leopold I. A formerly Jewish neighborhood was then renamed, and remains, "Leopoldstadt."Following the Thirty Year's War and wars with the Ottomans, including the second Ottoman siege of Vienna, dire financial straits led to Austrian emperors relying on the aid of Jewish bankers, in particular Samuel Oppenheimer and Samson Wertheimer. Samuel Oppenheimer was appointed as a financier to the court in 1683; he was also responsible for the restoration of the cemetery. Oppenheimer was able to help Samson Wertheimer from Worms to come to Vienna in 1684. Wertheimer was later named Court Jew, but he could not perform his duties as a Rabbi in Vienna and therefore left for Eisenstadt, part of the Siebengemeinden, where Jews were welcomed under Paul I, 1st Prince Esterházy of Galántha.
From 1736, there was a small Sephardic population in Vienna, which had its own religious community with a synagogue at the time of Maria Theresa. The majority Ashkenazi population only obtained the same status much later under Franz Joseph I.
Influenced by the Enlightenment, emperor Joseph II decreed his Edict of Tolerance in 1782, which granted civil rights to Jews in Austria. They were however still forbidden to form a religious community and to hold religious services in public.
Restoration (19th century)
In 1824, Michael Lazar Biedermann's recommendation led to Rabbi Isaak Mannheimer being brought from Copenhagen to Vienna. As there was still officially no Jewish religious community, Mannheimer was employed as the “Director of the imperially approved public Israelite religious school of Vienna”. Mannheimer realised cautious reforms in Vienna without provoking a schism within the Jewish population, such as those that occurred in the majority of Jewish communities in Europe in the 19th century. With Lazar Horowitz, who was summoned to Vienna as a Rabbi in 1828, Mannheimer agitated for the abolition of the discriminatory Jewish Oath. The merchant Isaak Löw Hofmann also played a leading role in Vienna's Jewish community from 1806 until his death in 1849.On 12 December 1825, Mannheimer laid the foundation stone for the Stadttempel in the Seitensteingasse. The synagogue, which had been designed by Joseph Kornhäusel, was sanctified by Mannheimer on 9 April 1826. In the same year, Salomon Sulzer from Hohenems was appointed hazzan at the synagogue, where he served for 56 years.
Jewish intellectuals participated in the Revolution of 1848.The new elected Imperial Diet, meeting for the first time in July 1848, included four Jewish deputies, three of whom were elected from Vienna.
In 1867, under Emperor Franz Joseph I, Jews gained equal recognition under the law. As a consequence of equal recognition, the Jewish community in Vienna grew rapidly: in 1860, the Jewish community in Vienna numbered 6,200; in 1870, that number had already risen to 40,200, and at the turn of the century, to 147,000. Vienna's 2nd district, Leopoldstadt, developed into the centre of Vienna's Jewish life at this time. The Jewish population in this area of the city soon represented half of the entire population in the district. The neighbouring districts of Brigittenau and Alsergrund equally had high proportions of Jews. The Jews that lived in these areas made up the majority of Vienna's Jewish population and belonged for the most part to the lower or middle classes – they were manual labourers, craftsmen, small-scale businessmen and traders. Wealthy Jews lived for the most part in the villa suburbs of Döbling and Hietzing, and in the city centre, the Innere Stadt.
Theodor Herzl responded to the increasing spread of Antisemitism during this period with the founding of political Zionism. At the same time however, the Jewish community was led predominantly by assimilated Jews.
Collapse of the Habsburg monarchy and First Republic (1910s–1930s)
After the outbreak of World War I and the first Austrian defeats on the eastern front, an exodus of 350,000 refugees began in the eastern regions of the empire. Amongst the refugees were some 50,000 to 70,000 Jews, who all arrived at Vienna's northern railway station in Leopoldstadt.Although around half of these new arrivals returned to their homes once the situation had calmed down on the eastern front, the entire Jewish community in Vienna and its relations with Vienna's Christian population were put to the test by these events. The refugees were poverty-stricken, but work was hard to come by and factories were unwilling to employ the refugees. The situation has been described thus: “While the Germans were condemning the Jews in the east to forced labour, the Austrians were condemning them to forced unemployment”. Many of the refugees tried to earn their daily bread as peddlers or salesmen, and many charity organisations sprung up to coordinate clothes donations and other campaigns, but the “Ostjuden” were the victims of many negative prejudices and because of their poverty were more frequently the targets of antisemitic attacks than wealthy assimilated Jews. It was not made easy for them to establish themselves in Vienna.
With the fall of the Habsburg Monarchy in 1918, Jews could move freely throughout Austria-Hungary. The community in Vienna numbered around 200,000. The majority of Viennese Jews lived in this neighborhood, which had served as the Jewish ghetto prior to the 1670 expulsion by Emperor Leopold. The neighborhood's Jewish population later recovered, and by the interwar years was nicknamed Mazzesinsel.
At this time, Vienna's Jews were divided into two groups. On the one hand, there were the Jews who had either lived for a long time in Vienna or who had been born there and who assimilated into Christian society. On the other hand, there were Orthodox Jews, who wished to live in line with traditional beliefs and practices. The community's voting habits also reveals a division; while the majority, made up for the most part of assimilated Jews, voted for the social democrats, others voted for Jewish parties, which disputed elections both in the empire and in the First Republic and which concentrated their campaign advertising on fighting the social democrats for votes. Over time, almost all Jews came to vote for the social democrats, because the Jewish parties were seen as not strong enough, while all other parties were antisemitic and refused to accept Jewish members.
Image:Antisemitisches Wahlplakat CSP 1920.jpg|thumb|left|An antisemitic campaign placard used by the Christian Social Party during the 1920 elections in Austria.
Antisemitism became ever more pronounced during the first republic. In Jewish quarters, in particular in Leopoldstadt, antisemitic organisations distributed their flyers and newspapers aimed at turning the Christian population against their Jewish neighbours. A protest at the Praterstern organised by socialists and communists against such provocation ended in violence. When the German-nationalist Josef Mohapl was stabbed to death by an apolitical attacker who already had a criminal record, right-wing newspapers dubbed this the “Christian pogrom in Leopoldstadt”, and from this moment onwards, Nazi hooligans were to be seen in Leopoldstadt. One of the first attacks on prominent establishments that these groups instigated was the destruction of the well-known “Café Produktenbörse” in December 1929. The attack on a prayer room in the Café Sperlhof in 1932 was particularly violent; praying Jews were beaten and the attackers laid waste to the building.
Many Jews joined socialist and/or Zionist organisations, the largest of which were Hashomer Hatzair, Poale Zion and the Jewish Socialist Workers’ Youth. In the 1930s, some socialist, Jewish and Zionist movements united in committees for action, to organise street patrols and to take action against “Hakenkreuzler”, who were attacking Jews. The first such group was the “Jüdische Selbstwehr”. The paramilitary organisation Betar also had members in Vienna.
After a century of progress towards Jewish emancipation, antisemitic attacks encouraged by the Christian Social Party, the Greater German People's Party and the Nazis became more common between the two World Wars. Hugo Bettauer was amongst those who recognised the signs of the time. The film “The City Without Jews” is based on his novel with the same title.