The Culture of Viennese Jewry at the Fin De Siècle (Part II)

VOLUME 13 NO.2 FEBRUARY 2013 journal The Association of Jewish Refugees The culture of Viennese Jewry at the fin de siècle (Part II) rom 1848, and especially from least outside the Leopoldstadt, the Second classes, especially into the self-employed 1867, Jews from elsewhere in District. commercial and entrepreneurial class, the F the Austro-Hungarian Empire The acculturation of Vienna’s Jews was liberal professions and the new class of flocked to Vienna, with its opportunities among the fastest and most thoroughgoing white-collar salaried staff created by mod- for economic and social betterment, for in Europe; Viennese Jewry had the highest ern commercial and financial enterprises. life in a modern metropolis, and for a rate of conversion of any European city. Jews had been active as bankers and widening of horizons far beyond those of However, Jews did not assimilate entirely financiers in Vienna well before 1848. They the traditional Jewish communities of the into Viennese society, to the extent of had also traditionally acted as middlemen East. The creation of Vienna as a modern losing their separate identity and being between the urban and rural markets in city was symbolised by the building of seen as indistinguishable from other Eastern Europe, and were to some extent the Ringstrasse, which had begun in Austrians. They tended to go to the already urbanised. They were thus well the 1850s but came to exemplify the same schools, to cluster together at the adapted, as traders and merchants, to the emergence of a new, liberal, modernised University of Vienna (where they were liberal, free-market economy that they capital. For Jews at this time, Vienna encountered on their arrival in Vienna seemed to hold the prospect of almost during the heyday of liberal economic limitless opportunities, and part of their doctrine. Over three generations, Jews response was the remarkable cultural could rise from being small traders or efflorescence created by the city’s Jewish shopkeepers to more prosperous and community. higher-status occupations in commerce or The most obvious feature of that as independent entrepreneurs, and then community was its sheer dynamism, into the liberal professions (law, medicine, reflected in its rapid growth. From a journalism, academia) or the world of small, semi-legal settlement of Jews, the culture and the arts. community increased by leaps and bounds The Burgtheater on Vienna’s Ringstrasse, The residential patterns of the built 1888 until it reached nearly 200,000, about one Jews of Vienna were as distinctive as tenth of the city’s population. In 1847, the banned from such student bodies as their professional profile. They mostly Jewish population of Vienna was estimated fraternities by the 1890s), to live in the settled in clearly defined areas of the at some 4,000, about 1 per cent of the city’s same districts and to enter the same city, where the concentration of Jews total population. That number increased professions. The particular culture and allowed a distinctive type of Viennese to some 40,000 by 1869, to 118,000 in achievements of Viennese Jewry were Jewish community to develop. The three 1890 and to 175,000 in 1910; the city’s those of an assimilated Jewry, but one areas concerned were the Innenstadt total population also increased, but ‘only’ that preserved its social and communal (inner city), the wealthy First District about fivefold. identity. within the Ringstrasse; the Second The dynamism of the community was Jews came to Vienna in three succes- District, the Leopoldstadt, known as also reflected in its eagerness to integrate sive waves: from Bohemia and Moravia, the ‘Mazzesinsel’ (‘matzoh island’) on into Viennese life and society. Viennese from Hungary, and lastly from Galicia account of its concentration of traditional Jewry contained a high proportion of (Austrian Poland). These immigrant Jews Jews recently arrived from the East, often emancipated, secularised Jews who had developed a distinctive occupational pro- still poor, religiously observant and true discarded the traditional lifestyle and file. Many, especially in the Leopoldstadt, to traditional dress and lifestyle; and religious practice of their forefathers and remained poor. But the patterns of Jewish the Ninth District, Alsergrund, which adopted the German-speaking culture of economic activity were radically different became home to the new middle class of Vienna; significantly, Vienna produced from those of non-Jewish Viennese, in Jews active in the liberal professions and relatively little Yiddish culture, and that Jews rose in far greater numbers, as white-collar employees in the larger Yiddish was not spoken widely there, at proportionally speaking, into the middle continued overleaf AJR JOURNAL FEBRUARY 2013 The culture of Viennese Jewry (Part II) continued Reception at the private enterprises (but not the public the Erzherzog-Rainer-Gymnasium and the Austrian Embassy service, where Jews were notably few). Sophien-Gymnasium, where Jews made There were Jews in other areas, such up between two-thirds and three-quarters To commemorate the 75th Anniversary of the Anschluss as Mariahilf and Neubau (the Sixth and of the students. Even among the poorer Seventh Districts) and the leafy outlying Jews of the Leopoldstadt, a powerful Wednesday 13 March 2013 districts of Währing and Döbling (the impetus towards social and economic at 6.30 pm Eighteenth and Nineteenth Districts). betterment through education was at His Excellency Ambassador Though there was an established pat- work. Though the Austrian educational Emil Brix will host a reception for AJR members tern of upwardly mobile Jews leaving the system was a closed system that made Refreshments will be provided. Leopoldstadt for more prosperous areas it difficult for children from lower-class For catering and security purposes, inhabited by a more assimilated commu- families to rise in society, Jews were places must be reserved. nity, the Jewish population of the Second exceptional in being able to use that The AJR will be providing transport. District was continually replenished by system to propel themselves into the Pick-up points and timings will be immigration. The patterns of Jewish resi- higher reaches of society. confirmed once all applications dence clearly bear out the middle-class From the Gymnasien, Jews proceeded are received. profile of the community: Jews were thin in large numbers to the University of Please contact Susan Harrod on the ground in working-class areas, just Vienna, where they were famously over- on 020 8385 3078 or at as they were relatively few among those represented in such fields as law, medi- [email protected] Viennese employed in heavy manual cine and the arts and humanities; it was labour. In this they were quite unlike the the celebrated professor of medicine the Haskalah, the Jewish Enlightenment other great immigrant group, the Czechs, Billroth who publicly introduced anti- of the late eighteenth century, and the who remained anchored in Vienna’s Semitic discourse into academic life at the opening up of the narrow world of the industrial proletariat. University of Vienna by protesting at the Eastern Jews to the liberal, humanist Education was the escalator that bore number of Jews from the East. By 1910, culture of the German-speaking world. so many of Vienna’s Jews up into the Jews made up 37.5 per cent of students From this sprang the veneration shown professional middle classes. This is evident in the Faculty of Law, 21.6 per cent in the by Jews towards such figures as Goethe from the very marked over-representation Faculty of Philosophy, and 51.2 per cent in and Schiller, Kant and Beethoven, which of Jewish students at Vienna’s Gymnasien; the Faculty of Medicine. The result of the impelled much of Central European Jewry the Gymnasium (grammar school) was mass influx of Jewish students into these to embrace German-language culture so the elite educational institution that academic disciplines was that Jews went enthusiastically. opened the way to university entrance, on into the middle-class professions and From the 1870s, Vienna’s Jews were to a degree in law or medicine, to a white-collar salaried employment, where confronted by the growth of a new, racial career in education or to the skills and they played a leading role as consumers anti-Semitism, both in the form of the qualifications that enabled young Jews of culture. Some, like the many noted Pan-Germanism advocated by Georg to embark on careers largely closed to Jewish writers, artists, scholars and other von Schönerer and in the specifically the proletariat or lower middle class. intellectuals, became creators of culture, Viennese phenomenon of Karl Lueger’s Only establishments which put up giving rise to the phenomenon of Vien- Christian Social Party, which swept specific barriers could keep Jews out: the nese Jewish culture. to electoral success in the 1890s. The Benedictine-run Schottengymnasium with The success of Jews in the fields of assimilated Jews responded by creating its religious bias and the Theresianum, education and culture can in part be ex- the Österreichisch-Israelitische Union, which catered for the scions of the plained by the tradition of learning long affirming their rights as Austrian citizens; aristocracy. Otherwise, Jewish students established among the People of the Book. those who despaired of assimilation flooded into the Gymnasien, like the To this should be added the impact of espoused Zionism or Jewish nationalism. prestigious Akademisches

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