The Jews of Vienna in the Age of Franz Joseph (review)

Abstract

92 SHOFAR The Jews ofVienna in the Age of Franz Joseph, by Robert S. Wistrich. New York: Oxford University Press, 1989. 696 pp. n.p.I. Vienna's Jews around the turn of the twentieth century have been the subject of several major studies during the past few years. Books by William McCagg, Paul Hofmann, George Berkley, Marsha Rozenblit, Steven Beller, and the second edition of Peter Pulzer's classic, The Rise ofAnti-Semitism in Gennany and Austria, have all contributed to our knowledge of Europe's third largest (in 1910) and most culturally creative Jewish community. Of these recent works, Robert Wistrich's Jews of Vienna in the Age of Franz Joseph is by far the most impressive in its sheer size and incredibly thorough research. Wistrich's title is unnecessarily modest both geographically and chronologically. Although the book's focus is certainly on Vienna, which was a magnet for Austria-Hungary's most talented Jews, Jews in the rest of the Monarchy are by no means ignored. Likewise, the author provides a generous introduction into the history of Austrian Jewry before the reign of the Emperor-King Franz Joseph. On the other hand, Wistrich has not attempted to be absolutely comprehensive in his coverage of Austrian Jewish history between 1848 and 1914. Topically rather than chronologically organized , The Jews of Vienna concentrates far more on political, intellectual, and cultural trends than it does on social developments. Above all it deals with the question of Jewish identity and how Austrian Jews-especially Jewish intellectuals such as Karl Kraus, Otto Weininger, Sigmund Freud, Arthur Schnitzler, Stefan Zweig, and Joseph Roth-attempted to cope with a bewildering number of dramatic changes and challenges in the second half of the nineteenth century and early years of the twentieth century. These included emancipation, secularization, urbanization, industrialization, democracy, and above all the rise of modern, political antisemitism. . The most common response to these various forms of modernization was assimilation, perhaps best articulated by Adolf Jellinek in his mouthpiece , Die Neuzeit. But for Jellinek and most other Viennese Jews, assimilation did not mean the total abandonment of Jewish traditions and identity; rather it meant that Jews should be no different from other Austrians in their speech, clothing, manners, and social behavior. Above all, they should be loyal sons of the Habsburg fatherland. Such assimilationists generally favored the German Liberal party which stood for representative government, secularism, and free-trade capitalism. After 1895, however, the German Liberals were conspicuously silent and indifferent to the rise of antisemitism, thus causing most Viennese Jews to transfer their loyalties to the Social Democratic party. Volume 9, No.2 l-Vinter 1991 93 Wistrich believes that the rise of the antisemitic Christian Social party and the appointment of its leader, Karl Lueger, as mayor of Vienna in 1897 were far more significant than antisemitic developments in neighboring Germany or Hungary. Although Austrian antisemitism was a prerequisite for both the first great Zionist leader, Nathan Birnbaum, and Zionism's most famous and successful exponent, Theodor Herzl, the great majority of preWorld War I Viennese Jews rejected Zionism and preferred fighting antisemitism through the Austrian Israelite Union, founded in 1886 by Rabbi Joseph Samuel Bloch. The activities of the Union, especially its Defense Bureau , prove that assimilationist Jews did not blindly resign themselves to antisemitic rule. On the contrary, the Union was a forum for the forceful expression ofJewish pride and identity. As for Herzl, his rejection of assimilation and passionate espousal of Zionism did not result from anyone antisemitic event, not even the Dreyfus affair which he witnessed in Paris. Herzl differed sharply from the assimilationists in maintaining that modern antisemitism was a product of emancipation and Jewish-Gentile economic competition; it was not a mere remnant of the pre-emancipation age as Jewish liberals believed. Unfortunately, Herzl's conclusion, that Jews could never assimilate, was all too eagerly exploited by antisemites, as the co-editor and proprietor of the Neue Freie Presse, Eduard Bacher, warned the Zionist leader already in February 1896. There is little to criticize in Wistrich's masterful study. The judgments of the author, an Associate Professor of Modern European and Jewish History at Hebrew University, are...