From Prejudice to Persecution: A History of Austrian Anti-Semitism (24 page)

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Authors: Bruce F. Pauley

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Page 76

Complicating the sense of identity for Austrian Jews were the Bolshevik revolutions in Russia and Hungary and the prospect of a new Jewish homeland in Palestine. The questions of identity and their future role in the Austrian state were to cause hostile feelings among the Jews themselves, which lasted to the very day of the German annexation of Austria in 1938 and made it impossible for them to present the antiSemites with a common front. The wartime renaissance of antiSemitism and the arrival of so many unassimilated Galician Jewish refugees in the Austrian capital were strong stimuli to the growth of Zionism.

3
As early as April 1918 a Zionist delegation demanded that the Austrian government recognize Jews as a separate nationality with proportional representation for themselves in the Reichsrat.
4
By October the Zionists were insisting on national self-determination in accordance with the principles laid down during the war by the Entente. They asked for a homeland in Palestine and a separate national assembly for those Jews remaining in Austria.

The Zionists failed to gain recognition for themselves as a separate nation in Austria; nor did the new Austrian constitution grant them their own national assembly. However, the Treaty of St. Germain concluded by the Allies with Austria in September 1919 did contain minority clauses that promised Jews equal treatment. The Paris Peace Conference also recognized the right of Jews to establish a homeland in Palestine. If a minority of Austrian Jews, especially Galician immigrants and university students, enthusiastically supported the rapidly growing Zionist movement, the othersassimilated and Orthodox Jews, who until 1932 constituted the majorityardently opposed it, not just during and immediately after the First World War, but also during the entire First Republic. Assimilationists feared that Theodor Herzl's idea that Jews were a separate nation would simply confirm the prejudices of antiSemites who had long argued that Jews were foreigners deserving no civil rights.
For some Austrian Jews, especially those who had recently arrived from Galicia or Bukovina, the search for a new identity produced an interest in left-wing or even revolutionary politics, much to the alarm of Austrian conservatives. During the war a Jewish youth group called Shomer (Guardian), whose members were mostly Galician students and workers, evolved from a scouting organization into a revolutionary youth movement. Influenced by the Russian revolutions, it tried in 1917 to get workers to sabotage war production.
5
Far more important as a radical left-wing organization, however, was the Viennese section of the international Zionist workers' organization known as Poale Zion (Workers of Zion).
The membership of Poale Zion also included many Galician and even Russian Jews, who were strengthened during the war by the flight of much of their

 

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leadership from Galicia to Vienna. These leaders, however, were mostly intellectuals with no real following. Like the Shomer they were influenced by the Russian revolutions and opposed both nationalism and the war. In a more general way they were often rebellious young people who sought to compensate for the petite bourgeois values of their parents by attempting to be proletarian in their outlook. After the war some of them joined Socialist groups or even the Communist Party as a means of rejecting their Jewish heritage.

6

The Shomer and the Poale Zion were strongest in the Leopoldstadt with its large Jewish and working-class population. Their resistance to the war and to the prowar policy of the Social Democratic Party existed from the start of the fighting. By January 1918 the seemingly endless war, hunger, and overcrowded housing drove nearly one million Austrian workers to go on a general strike, a strike in which a disproportionately large number of those arrested (for distributing leaflets) were Jews and members of the Poale Zion. So important, in fact, was Jewish participation in the January strike that imperial officials jumped to the conclusion that the whole revolutionary movement was part of an international Jewish conspiracy; thereafter, they no longer tried to hinder counterrevolutionary anti-Semitic propaganda.
7
However, even if Jewish participation in the January strike was comparatively high, most Jews were not industrial workers and therefore did not support the strike. For that matter even the official organ of the Socialist Party, the
Arbeiter-Zeitung
, worked to contain it. And the overwhelming majority of the Jewish population of Austria remained devoted to the Habsburg Monarchy to the very end. These facts, however, did not prevent antiSemites from holding Jews responsible for the monarchy's downfall.
8
The same could be said for the Communist revolutions in Russia and Austria's neighbors, Bavaria and Hungary; in all three places a high percentage of the revolutionaries were of Jewish origins. In Russia this was not surprising. Although the Communists persecuted Judaism as a religion, they granted secularized Jews equal rights, were officially opposed to antiSemitism, created an autonomous district for Jews in Siberia, and allowed Jews to hold high offices in the party.
9
Nevertheless, as noted in Chapter 1, only 7 percent of the Communists' membership was Jewish in 1924, even though Jews made up 11 percent of the population of Soviet cities where most of the party's membership was located.
In Hungary Jewish involvement was even more modest in absolute numbers. All 5,000 revolutionariesJews and gentiles combinedrepresented only 1 percent of Hungary's 500,000 Jews.
10
Nevertheless, Austrian antiSemites were fond of quoting Hungarian clergymen, such as a bishop named

 

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Dr. Ottokar Prochaska, who said that Hungarian Jews had "walked over the mass graves of Christian soldiers in order to make a revolution and trampled Christendom with Social Democracy."

11

In addition to Jewish involvement in the Russian, Bavarian, and Hungarian revolutions, Jews were overrepresented in the Austrian Social Democratic Party. Indeed, the Jewish drift toward Socialism before the war accelerated after 1918, resulting in about 75 percent of the Viennese Jews voting for the Socialists after the world war (although this figure is less startling than it may appear when compared with the 54 to 60 percent of the general Viennese population that voted for the Socialists).
12
About 80 percent of the Socialist intellectuals were Jewish: most members of the Socialist university students' organization, nearly all the Socialist lawyers and physicians, and about 90 percent of the editors of the
Arbeiter-Zeitung
.
13
The explanation for this phenomenon is not hard to find. As has already been observed, the Liberal Party began disintegrating in the mid-1890s and by 1918 had disappeared almost completely, thus leaving the Austrian Jews in search of a new home. Although the Social Democrats frequently resorted to anti-Semitic rhetoric by attacking "Jewish" capitalism, they at least ignored smaller Jewish businesses and never espoused or practiced racial antiSemitism; nor was antiSemitism ever part of the party's official program. They favored welfare and housing programs beneficial to impoverished Jews and, like the Liberal Party, they ardently believed in progress and education, staunchly opposed tyranny, and supported the separation of church and state. Finally, any Jew who had not converted to Christianity and hoped to hold an office in a major political party had no alternative but to join the Social Democratic Workers' Party. Thus Jewish involvement in the party was both a result and a cause of antiSemitism.
14
Many Austrian Jews were disturbed by the large number of people of Jewish origins among the Bolshevik leadership in Russia, Hungary, and Bavaria and were aware of the implications for themselves.
15
But the Zionist daily newspaper,
Wiener Morgenzeitung
, pointed out that there were also large numbers of Russian, German, and Czech Bolsheviks. The Jews had been more seriously affected by the war than any other people. The
Morgenzeitung
also noted that the Jewish revolutionaries were fighting for other nationalities, not for a specifically Jewish cause.
16
Bourgeois Jews in Austria obviously objected to the Marxism in the Austrian Social Democratic Party, although their objections did not necessarily prevent them from voting for the party's candidates. Bourgeois Jews were also embarrassed by the prominent role which some Jews played in the party. Most of all they resented being held collectively respon-

 

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sible for the actions of those Socialist leaders who had Jewish backgrounds.

17
None of these protestations, however, prevented antiSemites in Austria, as well as Germany and elsewhere, from habitually equating Jews with Marxism and revolution.
18

Postwar Political and Economic Crises
This Jewish involvement in revolutionary movements and left-wing politics coincided with Austria's defeat in the world war and the punitive Peace Treaty of St. Germain. At the same time, the food, housing, and fuel shortages as well as a staggering inflation reached their zenith in the first few postwar years. These circumstances combined to produce a need to find a scapegoat. The Jews, above all the Ostjuden, were for many Austrians the most obvious targets, especially now that Austria had lost nearly all of its other minorities. Even Viennese-born Jews sometimes joined in the chorus of complaints.
19
The Treaty of St. Germain was similar to the Treaty of Versailles, except harsher. In contrast to Germany, which lost only about 10 percent of its territory and population, Austria was forced to cede all but 23 percent of the territory of just the Austrian half of the AustroHungarian Monarchy, and all but 26 percent of its former population. Not only did Austria lose all of its outlying and predominantly non-German-speaking provinces, but also territories inhabited by about 3.5 million German-Austrians. The majority of these lost Austrians lived in northern parts of Bohemia and Moravia as well as in Austrian Silesia. But another 650,000 were left in compact areas just beyond the new Austrian borders in southern Czechoslovakia, northern Yugoslavia, and the South Tyrol in Italy. Moreover, Austria was denied the right of self-determination by agreeing ''not to alienate its independence" by joining the new German republic. Worst of all, nearly all the 6.5 million inhabitants of the new Austria were left with the firm conviction that what remained of their country could not possibly survive economically, a feeling that to some extent became a self-fulfilling prophecy.
20
Not only panGerman nationalists, who until the end of the war had hoped for an annexationist
Siegfrieden
, but virtually all Austrians, including Austrian Jews, were outraged by the treaty's terms. The treaty's sharpest critics held the Socialist Party responsible, especially the Jewish leader of the party's left wing, Otto Bauer, who as the country's foreign minister was the most important component of the Austrian delegation at the peace conference. Bauer, however, resigned his post on 26 July 1919 because of the refusal of the Allies

 

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to permit the Anschluss with Germany. So it was actually Chancellor Karl Renner, a gentile, who ultimately signed the Treaty of St. Germain.

21

Although all segments of Austrian society were hurt by the loss of Austria's former markets and natural resources, it was middleclass industrialists and civil servants who were the hardest hit. The same was true of the inflation. The bourgeoisie was traditionally the most thrifty of all the segments of Central European society and was therefore the group whose savings for all practical purposes were wiped out. A savings account that before the war would have been enough to buy a small house was worth only a postage stamp by 1922. Rent control, which began during the war and has lasted with some modifications to the present day in Vienna, also hurt middleclass landlords by making rent receipts practically worthless. Probably no other group in Austria was more affected by these economic developments than the Jews, who made up a disproportionately large percentage of the bankers, landlords, and merchants. Inflation hurts lenders and savers the most and was a major cause for the bankruptcy of twelve banks in the early 1920s, ten of which were largely Jewish owned. Yet once again, antiSemites held Jews responsible for the inflation.
22
The favorite whipping boys for all of the problems of early postwar Austria were the Jews, especially the continued presence in Vienna of Jewish refugees from Galicia. The
Wiener Morgenzeitung
described the status of the Ostjuden in Vienna by observing that "since the collapse the good people of Austria have condensed everything into the little word 'Ostjude.' . . . It is a wonderous expression which alleviates every pain and takes away every shame. Complaints over the rising costs of bread, and the falling morals of women, over bad railroad transportation, the lack of coal, the unruliness of school children, and the watering down of milk find their solution: Out with the Ostjuden! Their persecution and banishment have become a popular sport. . . . Not only the honorable German Christians express this hatred, but also Jews."
23
The size of the Jewish refugee community itself became the subject of demagogic speculation. In October 1919 the
Reichspost
estimated that there were a fantastic 600,000 Jews in Austria, or more than double the prewar figure. Not to be outdone, a committee of the Greater German People's Party calculated that the total number of Jews of all types living in Viennarefugees, "natives," Christian converts, and "part Jews" was 583,000 or nearly one-third of the city's population; another 137,000 Jews allegedly lived in the federal states.
24
In December of the same year the
Reichspost
estimated that there were still 100,000 Jewish refugees in the capital city who were living off the charity of the city and state.
25
In August 1920 the paper claimed that the 20,000 fami-

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