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Authors: Bruce F. Pauley

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Page 55

ism a household word and established a movement which eventually created a Jewish state in Palestine. In many respects Herzl was an unlikely hero of Jewish nationalism. Born in Budapest, he attended German-language schools and entered adulthood as an ardent partisan of assimilation into German-Austrian culture. Although he was for a time an attorney, his real ambition was to be a famous playwright and in fact he wrote several moderately successful plays. However, he ultimately found much greater success as a journalist for the
Neue Freie Presse
. His degree of assimilation was manifested in his never having his son circumcised and in marrying a Jewish woman with very Nordic features. During the Christmas season he and his family gathered around a Christmas tree to sing carols. Herzl even loved to tell self-effacing jokes, once writing his parents a postcard from Ostend, Belgium, saying: "Many Viennese and Budapest Jews on the beach. The rest of the holidaymakers very pleasant."

43

Although Herzl's expulsion from his fraternity in 1882 must have dampened his enthusiasm for assimilation, it was not until he attended the treason trial of Alfred Dreyfus in Paris in 1895 as a newspaper reporter that he abandoned the idea altogether. He had become accustomed to Viennese antiSemitism, but it came as a depressing shock that in Paris, the classic land of freedom and a birthplace of Jewish emancipation, politicians in the French Parliament could call for the prevention of Jewish "infiltration" in much the same way as Schönerer had done a few years before in the Reichsrat. Two days after witnessing these anti-Semitic speeches, Herzl learned that Karl Lueger had just won a majority in Vienna's city council for the first time. Herzl was now convinced that Jews neither could nor should assimilate and that antiSemitism, far from being a mere vestige of the Middle Ages, was a product of emancipation.
44
Soon after his return to Vienna, Herzl published his epoch-making book
Der Judenstaat
(
The Jewish State
) in which he in effect repeated Nathan Birnbaum's call for a state exclusively for Jews. Coming as it did from the literary editor of the
Neue Freie Presse
, however, the book created far more of a stir than Birnbaum had ever managed to make. Although Herzl was more specific than Birnbaum about the logistics of creating such a statethe need for a congress of Jewish representatives, for money, for engineers and techniciansnowhere in his book did he insist on Palestine as the location of this state; he even mentioned Argentina as a possibility. Herzl also differed from Birnbaum in trying to avoid arguments over the nature of Jewish culture and the role of Jewish tradition and religion. In fact, there was to be nothing especially Jewish about the Jewish state he hoped to create; there would be no common language, not even Hebrew. The state was to be an open, pluralist society, but not a particularly Jewish one.
45

 

Page 56

Given the type and location of the Jewish state Herzl advocated, it is a supreme irony that, with the exception of university students and some middleclass young people in Bohemia and Moravia, his ideas found favor almost exclusively among religious Jews from Eastern Europe; even among these people, however, the reception was at first lukewarm because Herzl had said nothing about a Jewish cultural renaissance and claimed no special virtues for the Jewish race. From the politically and religiously liberal (
maskilim
) assimilated Jews in Western Europe (Westjuden) the reaction was one of scorn and ridicule. They believed that assimilation had made great strides in the last century and felt more in common with their non-Jewish compatriots than they did with Jews from Eastern Europe, North Africa, or Yemen. Herzl represented a threat to their complete acceptance into gentile society. In Vienna assimilated Jews regarded Herzl's ideas as "the fantasies of a madman who mistook himself for the Messiah." Not even Herzl's friends took his plan seriously, and he soon came to regard assimilated Jews as his worst enemies. He also resented Josef Bloch's willingness to have his (Herzl's) ideas discussed in the
Oesterreichische Wochenschrift
by non-Zionists. Herzl, therefore, founded his own Zionist organ,
Die Welt
.

46

Although Herzl's plans were far from universally popular outside Austria, they did at least receive the backing of some influential supporters. In Vienna, on the other hand, aside from Jewish university students, they were almost completely rejected, at least prior to Herzl's death in 1905. In 1902, for example, there were only 862 dues-paying Zionists in the Austrian capital despite the presence of the headquarters of the international organization. In elections held by the Viennese Kultusgemeinde the Zionists appeared to do fairly well, winning 27 percent of the vote in 1902, 32 percent in 1906, 22 percent in 1908, and 34 percent in 1912. However, these figures are misleading. Between 1900 and 1912 as few as 10.5 percent of the Gemeinde's 13,000 to 18,000 dues-paying members actually voted in communal elections. The nonvoters were almost certainly assimilated Jews who had no interest in the politics of the Jewish community; if they had voted it would not have been for the Zionists. On the other hand, the restrictive franchise no doubt did exclude some potential Zionist voters. However, by the same token, even among the active supporters of Zionism in Austria and elsewhere in Europe prior to 1914 (or even up to 1933), 99 percent had no intention of actually emigrating to Palestine.
47

 

Page 57
Conversions, Intermarriage, and the Declining Sense of Jewish Identity

The modest progress of the Zionists in Vienna and the apathetic attitude most Viennese Jews took toward communal elections illustrates the weak sense of Jewish identity felt by most Jews in Vienna and in other parts of Central and Western Europe in the early twentieth century. Although even the more acculturated Austrian Jews tended to socialize mainly with other Jews, thousands belonged to no Jewish organizations and did not take part in the activities of their Kultusgemeinde. Younger Jews in the West were by the early twentieth century much more attracted to the messianic appeal of socialism than they were to Jewish community politics. Whereas most Jews, even in Western Europe, would have agreed as late as the mid-nineteenth century that they were a separate nation, by 1914 assimilated Western Jews considered themselves to be members of the surrounding gentile nationality. On the other hand, the passionate rejection of this notion by antiSemites forced most Jews to retain at least some sense of Jewish identity, however ambiguous or weak.

48

Although the evidence is not clear-cut, the rapid integration of Jews into German-Austrian culture after their emancipation in 1848, the relatively high rate of Jewish conversions to Christianity or at least to a "confessionless" status, and the large number of Jewish-Christian marriages probably all resulted from this declining sense of Jewish identity. It was also the most likely road to total assimilation and a complete loss of Jewish identity. Even the mundane desire to avoid paying taxes to the Jewish Kultusgemeinde should not be overlooked as a motivation for renouncing their ancestral faith for some Jews.
49
Until the 1880s the number of Jews who left the Jewish community was small and was compensated by a nearly equal number of Christians who converted to Judaism, mostly through marriage. This situation changed drastically, however, in the last decades of the century, and nowhere in Austria more so than in the capital. Between 1868, when records began to be kept, and 1900, the number of Jewish conversions to Christianity in Vienna increased eighty times with the largest number of conversions taking place in 1883, 1893, and 1900. Between 1891 and 1914, 12,000 Jews left the religion of their forefathers, or slightly less than 0.5 percent per annum. By the eve of the world war something like 20,000 Viennese had formally left the Jewish fold either by conversion or by a declaration of no religious affiliation.
50
The most likely candidates for conversion were young, single males between the ages of twenty and thirty; their most likely motivation was either to marry a Christian or to increase their chances of gaining a government job; baptism

 

Page 58

was still a de facto though not a de jure requirement for the highest civil (but not military) positions. For example, there were few professors at the University of Vienna who were religious Jews before the world war but many who were baptized Jews. Converts were frequently university students, members of the free professions, or highlevel business employees. For example, marriages between wealthy Jewish men and beautiful Christian women were particularly common as were marriages between Jewish women and Christian army officers. Until 1903 slightly more than half of the converts (53.6 percent) chose Roman Catholicism, just under a quarter (23.1 percent) became Protestants, whereas the remainder (19.9 percent) were affiliated with no religion. Of all the Viennese who declared themselves confessionless between 1886 and 1903, just over one-third (33.9 percent) were of Jewish origins. By 1900 four to five times as many Jews converted to Christianity as the other way around.

51

The conversion rate in Vienna was by far the highest in the monarchy, or for that matter anywhere in Europe. The conversion rate for the 28,000 Jews of Prague was only one-fifth as great as in Vienna and only half as many Jews married gentiles, no doubt in large measure because there was less social interaction among Jews and gentiles in the Bohemian capital than in the Kaiserstadt.
52
However, none of the statistics for Jewish conversions in Austria can be taken entirely at their face value. Around 1900, 38 Viennese Jews per 10,000 converted annually compared to only 13 in Berlin, but the discrepancy may have been in part a product of differing marriage laws. In prewar Austria, in contrast to Prussia, marriage between Jews and Christians was illegal. This law could be evaded only if one or the other of the potential marriage partners either converted to his or her future spouse's religion or ceased any religious affiliation whatsoever. Before the war the Jewish partner was more likely to convert to Christianity; after the war it was more common for the prospective Jewish bridegroom or bride to renounce any religious affiliation. Further encouraging conversions in Austria was a law requiring children under fourteen to have the same religion as their parents. In Prussia, on the other hand, parents could have their children baptized while remaining Jews themselves. It is therefore doubtful whether the desire for assimilation was any greater in Vienna than it was in Berlin.
53
Whatever the motivation, however, the conversions certainly accelerated assimilation and blurred distinctions between Jews and Christians.
Jews who hoped that converting to Christianity or renouncing their faith would remove the last social and psychological barriers to full integration into Austrian society were likely to be disappointed. The long-time Austrian diplomat, Hans J. J. Thalberg, who converted to Protestantism as a child, wrote

 

Page 59

in his memoirs that "nothing had changed as a result of my baptism. On the contrary, baptism was a social obstacle because I belonged neither to the one group nor to the other."

54
On the other hand, the relations of converted Jews with their former coreligionists were certainly not as bad as they had been prior to the nineteenth century when apostate Jews were considered as good as dead.
55
Jewish newspapers did publish the names of Jews who had renounced their religion, but this act appears not to have discouraged further renunciations, and may even had encouraged them by demonstrating how common such decisions were and showing that many worthy people were doing it.
56

Although most Austrian Jews by 1914 no longer considered themselves to be members of a separate Jewish nationality but instead German-Austrians (or occasionally, Czech-, Polish-, or Italian-Austrians), it should not be assumed that they had no sense of Jewish identity at all. AntiSemitism, particularly the racial variety, constantly reminded them of their religious roots. Moreover, on the positive side, there were literally hundreds of Jewish social, educational, political, cultural, and economic organizations, especially in Vienna (more than in any other city in the world), which made it possible for even the most westernized Jew to associate on a daily basis with other Jews. These organizations also, no doubt, substantially reduced the number of mixed marriages, at least in Vienna where less than 10 percent of the Jews married non-Jews. By sharp contrast, in Graz, with its relatively small Jewish population, two-thirds of the Jewish marriages were with non-Jews, although half of the Christian partnersusually womenthen converted to Judaism.
57
The Outlook in 1914
After two decades of virulent antiSemitism at the end of the nineteenth century, the prospects of Austrian Jews on the eve of the First World War looked almost as bright as they had shortly before 1880. Overt acts and statements of antiSemitism were becoming increasingly rare, at least among Germanspeaking Austrians. The Christian Social Party, which had so frightened Austrian Jews seventeen years before, had lost its leader and much of its electoral support, especially in Vienna. Georg von Schönerer was a political has-been. Jews were prospering both economically and intellectually as never before. Intermarriage between Jews and Christians had become fairly commonplace, and many Jews had ceased practicing their religion, had renounced it, or had even converted to Christianity.
On the other hand, however alarming conversions were to the Jewish com-
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