[Review of the book The Jews of Vienna and the First World War; Reconstructing a National Identity: The Jews of Habsburg Austria during World War I] Journal of Modern History 2003 Healy, Maureen *Reviewing Author Originally published by The University of Chicago Press and can be found at: http://www.jstor.org/page/journal/jmodernhistory/about.html Citation: Healy, M. (2003, September). [Review of the books The Jews of Vienna and the First World War; Reconstructing a National Identity: The Jews of Habsburg Austria during World War I]. Journal of Modern History, 75(3), 731-735. Available from JSTOR website: http://www.jstor.org/stable/full/10.1086/380277 Book Reviews 731 tice. Not surprisingly,it was scorned both by Catholics such as the emperor's court preacher,Martin Eisengrein, and the more zealous gnesio-Lutheranswho were drifting into Lower Austria. Maximilian's critics savagely attacked his court, which they claimed was full of religious half-breedswho belonged neitherto Rome nor Wittenberg nor Geneva. This well-writtenbiography is a matureand judicious work of history, a productof a long and distinguished career devoted to the early modern Habsburgs.Fichtner has brought together archival evidence from collections in Spain, Germany, the Czech Republic, and Austria in compiling this portraitof Maximilian. She has uncovered some marvelous passages from the emperor's correspondencethat reveal the man be- hind the office. Upon hearing rumors of his sister-in-law's marital infidelity, Maxi- milian lashed out againsther with a memorablebarb: "Would that the bitch were stuffed in a sack and nowhere to be found" (p. 130). At the same time Fichtner effectively synthesizes a substantialbody of secondaryliterature. While never losing the readerin an overly technical discussion, she presentsan excellent overview of the nuts and bolts of runningan empire. Her work in Vienna's Hofkammerarchivis reflectedin the lucid survey of the financial challenges Maximilian faced when assuming the throne. In an equally clear fashion, she lays out the often perplexinglycomplicated imperial bureau- cracy the emperorstruggled to master. My only reservation, and this equivocal at best, concerns the metaphorof failure that frames the biography.Fichtner is in partreacting to a revisionist literaturethat has arguedthat the Empire was politically more robustand healthierthan both its contem- poraryand latercritics allowed. This study of Maximilianis certainlya timely reminder "thatimperial governancehad seriously dysfunctionalfeatures, beginning with uncer- taintyover the locus and extent of the emperor'sauthority" (p. 223). But still we should not forget thatMaximilian's reign was partof a surprisinglylong periodof peace within the Empire. Though disliked by many, the 1555 compromise settlement at Augsburg held for sixty-three years. Maximilian, to be sure, was often passive and ineffective, but the confessional violence of the Low Countriesand Francedid not spill over into central Europe, and at times the emperor's interventionactually did work, as a new study by Jason Lavery reminds us in the case of the Baltic (Germany's Northern Challenge [Boston, 2002]). Ultimately, it was not the muddlingof Maximilianbut the firm and decisive leadershipof FerdinandII that would lead to war. This point aside, Paula Fichtnerhas produceda well-balanced and accessible study that should remain the standardfor many years to come. HOWARD LOUTHAN Universityof Florida The Jews of Vienna and the First World War. By David Rechter. London:Littman Library of Jewish Civilization, 2001. Pp. xiii + 218. $45.00. Reconstructing a National Identity: The Jews of Habsburg Austria during World War I. By Marsha L. Rozenblit. Studies in Jewish History. Edited by Jehuda Reinharz. Oxford:Oxford University Press, 2001. Pp. xiv + 257. $49.95. These two titles seek to explain how World War I and the collapse of Austria-Hungary affected Jews living in the multinationalHabsburg state. They bringtogether two well- developed fields that have heretofore spoken past one another:the history of Jews in 732 Book Reviews imperial Austria and the political and cultural history of World War I. Appearing at the same time and with ostensibly similar topics, the books are in fact quite different in scope and source base. David Rechter has produceda history of Jewish politics in one city using the writings of communityleaders, while MarshaRozenblit casts a wider net, using elite and popularaccounts by AustrianJews to show how they understood their Austriannessand their Jewishness in wartime. Rechter has written a tightly focused study of the contours of Jewish Vienna from the perspective of its main political camps-the liberals, nationalists,and Orthodox. Although the book focuses on Vienna, from it we learn a great deal about Austrian Jewry more generally, in part because Galicia physically came to Vienna in the form of over one hundredthousand wartime refugees. The wartimeencounters Rechter doc- uments between the refugees and native Viennese Jews reinforce the findings of other historians in the field: a cultural, religious, and linguistic east-west divide existed among HabsburgJews. The story throughoutthe war is one of the communityfailing to achieve unity. Thus, the seemingly straightforwardtitle of Rechter'sbook, TheJews of Vienna,conceals within it an ambiguity that is one of the significantfindings of the study: there was little agreementon who these Jews were. He finds "no Jewish con- sensus as to what exactly Jews were-a nation, an ethnic group, a religiouscommunity, or some combinationof these" (p. 9). Staunch dynastic patriotismwas one point on which Viennese Jews across the po- litical spectrum did agree. Rechter notes that loyalty to Austria was "often the only common denominatorto the most disparateand mutuallyhostile Jewish points of view" (p. 23). An eloquentwriter, Rechter often findsjust the rightturn of phrase;he describes this consensus on Austria as "wall-to-wall Jewish patriotism"(p. 25). While Jews remainedkaisertreu throughout the war, we learnthat the kaisers did not always remain judentreu. In 1914, when the Galician Jewish refugees first arrivedin Vienna, Franz Joseph made a point of extending supportto them. Rechter notes that state authorities saw in refugee welfare work an opportunityto promoteAustrian patriotism; such work could showcase the peoples of the empire aiding each other as Austrians.But wartime censorship policies also showed a state ambivalence about combating antisemitism. From early 1915, antisemitic articles began to circulate more freely, while Jewish responses were censored. By 1918, daily antisemitic ramblings in the press went un- censored, suggesting that authoritiesof the state no longer had the will (or ability) to protectits most loyal subjects. In well-orderedchapters on refugee welfare work, youth organizations,and the at- tempts to create an AustrianJewish Congress, Rechter's study deftly outlines the lib- eral, nationalist, and Orthodox Jewish leaders' political strategies. The nationalists, whetherZionists or supportersof diasporanationalism, projected "a vocal and unam- biguously Jewish point of view," while the other two groups stuck to "theirgenerally reactive mode of politics" (p. 31). One of the great strengthsof Rechter's approachis that we see the complex argumentsabout the Jews' place in society hashed out in the minute dealings of city politics. This approachhas drawbacks,however. By focusing on these men and their home-frontpolitical maneuverings,Rechter neglects other seg- ments of "the Jews of Vienna." The book's cover photographshows Jewish soldiers in Vienna attending services in the Stadttempelin 1915. Who were these men? Did four years of military service change their views of what it meant to be Jewish and/or Austrian?How did they relate to their fellow Jews who spent the war on the home front? While we hear about the returnof soldiers in 1918 and the extraordinaryrole they played in creating a Jewish militia, "one partof probablythe most extensive and impressivenetwork of armedJewish self-defence in EuropeanJewish history"(p. 178), Book Reviews 733 we learn nothing of the wartime experiences of Viennese Jewish soldiers. A growing historiographyexists on men's combat experiences in World War I and the estrange- ment that developed between soldiers and home-front men. Attention to these topics might have offered Rechter yet another vantage point from which to examine frag- mentationamong Viennese Jews. The book's second blind spot concerns women. With the exception of a paragraph on women and charity,and passing referencesto the welfare work of the Zionist Anitta Mifller,Jewish Vienna seems to consist solely of men. This is a strangeoversight in a book whose setting is the wartime home front. Rechter writes, "Welfare,in fact, was the sole public Jewish arenain which women were expected to participateand permitted to lead" (p. 85). But this work was not the only public realmin which women mattered. The authornotes both that Viennese antisemites"found a new lease on life" with the arrivalof the wartimerefugees and that the refugees comprisedmostly "women,chil- dren, and the elderly" (p. 93). Pursuingthis connection between women and antisem- itism duringthe war years-women as the victims and also as perpetratorsof antisem- itism-would have distinguished Rechter's study from several other works on HabsburgJewry that have similarly neglected women as historical actors. In a final chapter,"A Jewish Revolution,"Rechter addressespostwar