Trudy Gold
Jews in Vienna at the Turn of the Century
Trudy Gold - Jews in Vienna at the Turn of the Century
- Well, good morning, good evening, everyone, and back to the story of Vienna. And we’ve had some extraordinary lectures from my colleagues, very much setting the scene of that extraordinary city. And before I get into the role of the Jew in Vienna, what I want to do is just to give you a little bit more of thoughts of some of the great writers on the story of turn of the century Vienna. Now this is of course Karl Kraus, I often quote him, and I’ll be running a session on him later on. He, of course, was the brilliant satirist, and he of course called it an experimental station on the way to the end of the world, because what was Vienna? Just think about it, it’s an imperial city, it’s at the centre of a dysfunctional dynasty, it’s going to be paralysed by conflict between the warring nationalities, it fascinates, it repels, Wasserman called it the European capital of kitsch, the metropolis par excellence of the value vacuum in modern civilization, a lack of ethical substance allied to a bureaucratic and technical lifestyle. And of course, there are those writers, and this is . “In Vienna, the centre of a polyglot empire. we can see in retrospect, the seed bed of the catastrophe that was to overtake central Europe in the 20th century, but it was also the centre of what was the most exciting in modernist culture.” You know, we’ve looked already at Freud, we’re going to be looking at Schnitzler. And they themselves, they understood that beneath this veneer of bourgeois civilization, there were very powerful destructive forces. If you like, there was almost an instinctual underworld, which I’m going to be talking about on Thursday, in a subject that I have I’ve called, I’ve actually called it racial madness. Now, the great tragedy behind all those beautiful coffee houses, the gaiety of the Strauss, and never forget, he actually wrote, “Die Fledermaus,” after Black Friday, when the stock market collapsed, just as he wrote “Blue Danube” to cheer everybody up after the Austro-German War of 1866.
So you have Strauss, you have, when we look at Schnitzler, we’re going to look at works like “La Ronde,” which is really about the decadence and decay of Vienna. The coffee houses that were full because people couldn’t really afford to heat their flats. On one level, you have this incredible, modernist, exciting society, the Vienna of Klimt, the Vienna of Freud, the Vienna of Marla, and I could go on and on and on, people who are going to push modernism. But it’s also the city of a reactionary empire, it’s certainly a very bourgeois place. More than that, it’s also very Catholic. And you have on the papal throne, from 1845 to 1890, one of the most reactionary popes in the history of the Vatican, Pius IX, and he really did believe that the Jew was an evil force within Western civilization. It’s not just for him, the religious, everything he hated, he found in the Jews. And he was quite prepared to talk about it. Let’s have a look at the population figures, please, because this is another reason I think that Vienna is seething. Look at the year 1857, where the population was 476,220. And you see a very small number of Jews, they’re 1.3% of the population. Do you see how it gradually rises up? Because Vienna, this is about industrialization. It’s about being the capital of a multiethnic empire. So anyone who wanted to make a mark on the world or wanted to earn a living, really, they’re going to come to Vienna and they’re going to come from every part of the empire.
And of course, the Jewish population is completely, it becomes one of the most important parts, is from Galicia after after the Hapsburg annexation of Galicia, that had brought over 200,000 Jews into the empire. Now the point is, in 1867, all other Catholic minorities are given rights within the Hapsburg Empire, which included the Jews. So you’ve got the twin notion of now we have the right to live where we choose, we can go into whatever profession we choose, in theory, and Vienna is the great mecca. But it’s not just the Jews, just look at all the other nationalities that would’ve come to the centre, from Hungary, from Czechia, from Slovakia, from Moravia, and I can go on and on and on. So let’s look at the jump by 1890, 815,000, and the Jewish population has leapt to 99,000 people, 12% of the population. Take it to 1900, and you see that the population of Vienna is 1,674,000. The Jewish numbers have gone down a little, but it’s huge. Now, there’s a large number of Jews in Vienna. It hits its peak in terms of Jewish population after the First World War, actually. But just have a look at those figures. So by 1910, when the Jewish population is under 9%, but nevertheless, it’s a very sizable population, 175,000 Jews of a city of over 2 million. So look what’s happened to the city, in basically 50 years, from 476,002 to over 2 million, Vienna becomes the fourth largest city in the world. And those of you who have been to Vienna with its splendid palaces, it’s wide boulevards. And of course, Patrick’s already done a session on the Ringstrasse, those incredible palaces, it is the centre of an empire. And today, that’s why I’ve said so often, to me, it’s almost a city of ghosts. Because after the First World War and the dismemberment of the Hapsburg Empire, Vienna became the capital of a nation of 7 million. So a very great change. And also what happened in 1919, at the end of the First World War, the Austrians did ask for Anschluss. They said, can we share a president with Germany, both the defeated nations?
He would spend six months in Berlin and six months in Vienna. And of course that was denied. So later on, when we look at the 1838 and 1938 Anschluss, when basically Hitler went home and was fated by 90% of the population of Vienna, and later on after the war, which is something William is going to talk about, Austria manages to put herself out as the first victim of Nazism. So I think that’s very, very important that you see these figures. Now the problem was that you’re going to have a success story of the Jewish community beyond their wildest dreams. If you go back to the numbers, if you go back to 1880, when there are 726,000, the numbers are also going to be swelled by Jews escaping from the pogroms of Russia. So there’s going to be a lot of Eastern European Jews, and the Jews coming from Galicia, remember, which had formally been part of Poland, they’re also going to be considered Eastern European by their co-religionists. So it’s a wildly successful story. Now, of course, there were huge Jewish dynasties, if you go back to the time when the Austrian state wanted specially protected Jews, you have dynasties like the Rothschilds, the Hirsch’s, the Tedescos, the Auspitz, the Lieben. There’s a whole group of dynasties and incredibly wealthy Jews. And they are going to play a huge part in the expansion of industry, they’re going to provide funds for the great railway networks, they are at the forefront of modernity. They also develop industry in Prague, in Budapest, the beer industry in Pilsen, the sugar refinery and malt industry of Bohemia, Jews opened the Moravian and Silesian Coalfields, the Vítkovice Steel works, Wittgenstein, who of course had some very interesting sons.
He dominated the steel cartel of the Habsburg Empire with Guttman, who with Rothschild, they actually were the money behind Vítkovice. And also many of them were great philanthropists. And yes, they had their beautiful houses on the Ringstrasse, their incredible palaces, but did they really have power? And this is something I want to consider. And certainly there was another group within the empire, the real nobility as they saw themselves, whose money was in land and who had far greater influence over government and over the aristocracy than others. So it’s important to remember, yes, you have some hugely visible, Jewish success stories, it was enough for Henry Wickham Steed, he’s the Times Vienna correspondent, and I’m going to read you some of his comments on the Jews of Vienna. “Economically, politically, and in general influence, the Jews are the most significant element in the monarchy. The Neue Freie Presse, I’m going to be talking about that in a minute, is owned and edited by Jews. It appears in the first instance, to a distinctly Jewish community, mainly aiming at influencing the stock exchange.” And he also said of Moriz Benedikt, the editor, “Next to him, the emperor is the second most important man in the empire.” And of course his other rival was an interesting man called Moritz Szeps, who by the way, he edited the Wiener Tagblatt, he also owned it, just as Benedikt owns the Neue Freie Presse. And Moritz Szeps was a very close friend of Prince Rudolph. Now, when I talked about the dysfunctional family and I talked about Rudolph’s death at Mayerling, there was another side to Rudolph, he was a great liberal and he did write anonymous articles in Szeps’ newspaper.
And Szeps was very close to him, and this of course really infuriated the right wing, if you like, bureaucrats, who were around Franz Joseph. And another important paper, the most left wing paper in Vienna, was founded and edited by a man called Victor Adler, who according to Wickham Steed, quote, “A quickness of Jewish intelligence in the concentration and purposeness typical of the Jews as a race.” And this is from a Jewish writer, Wassermann, who moved to Vienna from Munich. “All public life is dominated by Jews. They control the banks, the press, the theatre, literature, social organisations, and their omnipresence seems to determine the very tone and colour of Viennese life.” But the point is, he goes on to say, “It was not that the Jews hold actual power, but their spirit animated commercial, intellectual, and artistic circles from which the Austrian aristocracy, officialdom and military families maintained a distasteful distance.” Then he goes on, “Yes, I was amazed at the hosts of Jewish physicians, attorneys, dandies, actors, proletarians, newspapermen and poets.” Now obviously, not all Jews in Vienna were successful. And we’re going to see that there’s quite, particularly amongst the Eastern European Jews, there is great poverty. But nevertheless, for an empire that is falling apart at the seams, as William brilliantly talked about yesterday, they are going to become the focus of discontent. And they, of course, most of them, see themselves as Viennese and they have their synagogues. Can we go on please and have a look at the next slide?
That is the Sephardi Synagogue in Vienna. You’ll remember when I talked about , the Sephardi benefactor. This is the beautiful Sephardi synagogue in Vienna. And then can we see the main Ashkenazi synagogue? Where in those of you who have been to Vienna, can we see the next one? That’s the Sephardi one, and hopefully we will see the Sephardi one. Yeah, that’s a painting of it. And you see how the, and this is where Adolf Jellinek was the main preacher, and of course it was him and Salomon Saltzer, that had really come up with a Viennese ritual, I think you can more or less call it modern orthodoxy. But do you see how they are dressed? They’re dressed in their top hats, it’s a very opulent synagogue. It very much echoes, I suppose, the world that they are living in. Now, we are going to look at some figures which are actually quite extraordinary because I think I need, as it were, to stress the role of the, oh yes, this is quite interesting. Like every Jewish organisation, there’s the donor board, these are the wealthy families. Some of the wealthy families, the ennobled ones, actually, intermarry, but some of them nevertheless, like Meinheimer, you can see his name. They donate and they donate to Jewish causes and also to non-Jewish causes. The Rothschild Hospital was one of the most extraordinary in Vienna. So they’re great philanthropists, but if you just keep it there, Judy, while I look at the economic role of the Jew. And remember what we’ve said before about the Jew as the arbiter of modernity. Think about modernity. Self-service restaurants were opening up, 94% of them were owned by people of Jewish birth.
Now I have to be careful here, who creates the Jew? Was Freud, Freud wasn’t religious, Schnitzler wasn’t religious. Many of these families are not religious, many of them are assimilating. But the point is, when we look at racial madness in Vienna, you’re going to see that by the 1880s, liberalism was out of the window. I should mention that back in 1873, when the stock market collapsed, and more and more people flood to Vienna, this is really the death knell of liberalism in Vienna. And I don’t really think the Jews took that on. Because one of the aspects of Jewish history, that on one level I’ve always admired, is that there is this sense of optimism, the sense that it will actually get better. It turned out to be a tragic illusion. But we got to be very careful about using the hindsight of history. We know what’s going to happen. But if you were living through it, I want to be careful here, because if you were living through it. Just imagine, you are second generation, you’ve come to Vienna from a religious background, because think about it, all Jews who came to Vienna, originally would’ve come from religious backgrounds. You make your money in business, what happens to your son, your daughter? There are a disproportionate number of Jewish women at the University of Vienna, by the way, which is a lovely, interesting aside. What happens to your children? Many of them go into the professions, many of them go into the liberal arts. Vienna is good for you. And if you smell the hostility, we are Viennese, we are real Viennese. And also within the Jewish community, there’s no unity of thought. Yes, you have the arch-capitalists and tragically, Jews are going to be seen as the spawn of capitalism. Karl Marx himself said capitalism was Jewish.
Karl Marx, the grandson of rabbis on both sides, he set the tone. But the leader of Austrian socialism, Adler, was also a Jew. So this is where the problem happens. And this is where tragically, those who believe in blood and race, look at Jewish capitalists, they look at Jewish communists, and they say they’re all conspiring together. And another point, there weren’t many Jewish visual artists, as Patrick’s already told you, but you saw who Klimt painted. Who’d you think were opening up the modern art galleries? Jews, because they’re outside the system. Modernity, and when he comes on to Schiele in his next session, that is even more so. When you look at all the sort of upside of modernity, we might think it exciting, but there was an awful lot of people who hated it. So the furniture business, 85% of those involved in the furniture business, both in the making of furniture and the selling of furniture, were Jews. And of course many of them would’ve been lower middle class. Then you have the shoe trade, 82% Jewish. The new beauty parlours that were opening up, over 80%. So how often do I have to say it, this is about modernity. The private banks, 80% of the private banks in Vienna were owned by Jews. So it is actually quite extraordinary, the wine trade, well that’s no surprise, is it? Because think about it, Jews had always been involved in the wine trade. Now the stock exchange.
As in Paris, called the Jewish Bourse, the stock exchange in Vienna was 75%, members were Jews. In London, it was so much smaller. In Budapest, it was even higher. Textiles, either factories or selling, 75%. Now of the doctors and the dentists, 52% were Jewish, 62% of the lawyers, 55% of the jewellers, 25% of university professors. The university is particularly interesting, and when I look at the rise of Zionism in Vienna, you are going to see it’s actually the seat bed of Zionism before Herzl, or it’s going to be Kadimah, at the University of Vienna, it’s going to be the first Zionist organisation created. And one of the people who founded Kadimah, Nathan Birnbaum, actually coined the phrase, Zionism. So the universities were an absolute hotbed of ideas, but also of right wing ideas, the fraternities, the student fraternities. So you have 25% of the university professors who are Jewish. You also have some very reactionary professors. And in the medical profession, 45, And in the medical faculty, 45% were Jewish. 45% of the hat manufacturers, 26% of the chemists. Somebody once said to me, what on earth did the rest of them do? Well, think about it, so many of the poor who came to Vienna, they were jobbing workers. Ironically, the working class are not really going to desert liberalism and socialism. It’s going to be the lower middle classes that are going to be most hit. Now let me read to you from Adolf Jellinek, remember the wonderful synagogue, you’re looking at the donor board, he actually was the rabbi, but also the main preacher. He was a brilliant orator. But listen to what he had to say. “The Jews of Austria are Austrian first and last. They feel and think as Austrians, they want a great, strong, and mighty Austria.
They know and remember, in boundless gratitude, what the emperor of Austria has granted them, from father to son, and in Jewish prayer houses, it is loudly proclaimed that Franz Joseph, made his Jewish subjects into real human beings and free citizens. Hence, the Jews are thoroughly dynastical, loyally Austrian. The double eagle is for them a symbol of redemption. And the Austrian colours adorned the banners of their freedom.” Franz Joseph was never an anti-Semite. And on the contrary, he was the one after all, who had granted them rights in 1867. So consequently, he is their hero. And remember, compared to what it was 100 years before, and compared with what’s going on in Eastern Europe, this is special. “My son can become a doctor, my son can become a lawyer, my son, God forbid, can even become a playwright.” But this is happening, and he goes on to say, “The Jews in Austria also cannot forget that it was the central parliament, representing the whole of Austria, who voted for the bill of rights, thanks to which all earlier laws of exception were abolished and Jews attained the precious possession of civil equality. The Jews of Austria are therefore, a very important constituent part of a multinational empire, for they are the standard bearers of the Austrian idea of unity.”
Now, do you see how complicated this is? As William explained, you had all these national groups in the empire. In fact, if you look at the figures from the Austrian parliament, it’s actually extraordinary the various numbers of individuals who are from many, many different groups, and they didn’t all speak the same language. And Hitler of course, who came to Vienna in 1907, he called it the babble of the races. And the Austrian Jewish Union had been founded, I suppose in England it would be the equivalent of the Board of Deputies. And this is one of their statements. “It shall be the central headquarters for the defence of our positions. It seeks to crave interest amongst our co-religionists in public affairs and will work ceaselessly to make each Jew into a fighter for this sacred task.” But the sacred task was to prove that they were actually loyal Austrians. And the question you have to ask yourself, what on earth did that mean to be a loyal Austrian? We’ve already begun to look at the facts and I’ll be expanding on that next week, and I know that William will as well. But there were many Jews, there were many Austrian Germans who looked over the border into Germany, particularly after the Franco-Prussian War, which unified Germany, and they actually wanted union with Germany. There were also those who wanted to be Austrian-German, and they wanted to hijack the Slavic elements within the empire. And of course, if you think about the number of Slavic elements, inverted commas, of Jews who actually come to Vienna, it really stirs the pot of anti-Semitism.
Now, and it must be said, that the Orthodox Jews who came from Galicia and Slovakia, they’re very much hired with suspicion by the kind of Jews that you just saw in that brilliant painting. But I must say though, on the point of saying, we are here and we arrived in 1895, the first Jewish museum in the world was founded. It commissioned a very fine Jewish painter, called Isidor Kaufmann, to paint some pictures. And he created fantastic Jewish scenes and he created a Shabbat room at the, actually at the museum. And one of the donors to the museum was in fact Franz Joseph. So let’s go on please, Judy, let’s have a look at some, because obviously we’re talking about nearly 200,000 people. So what I’ve decided to do is to pick out a few individuals who as it were, showed you the diversity of Jewish expression in Vienna. And of course, that is Salomon Rothschild, that is a statue of Salomon Rothschild. His dates are 1774 to 1855. He is the founder of the Austrian Branch. He is one of the five extraordinary sons of Mayer Amschel Rothschild. The best book on the Rothschild by far is of course Nile Ferguson. He comes to Vienna, he marries the daughter of a banker, a woman called Caroline Stern. And he is actually ennobled, when he arrives in Vienna, he can’t own land, he can’t buy a house. So he puts up at a hotel, but gradually he becomes a specialty protected Jew. And it’s his son, Anselm Salomon, who he finances the Nordbahn Railway Network, which is Austria’s first steam railway. He becomes part of the Austrian nobility, and he’s the first Jew to be given honorary citizenship, in 1843, before the edict of 1867. He had extraordinary wealth.
He had extensive properties all over the empire. He invested in art, antiques, he was a huge philanthropist. And he marries Betty. Now, who is Betty? No sorry, his sister was Betty. And who does she marry? She marries the youngest Rothschild, alright, so Salomon’s daughter, Betty, marries James Rothschild, who is the youngest of the Rothschilds. If you remember, the family came from Frankfurt, the eldest one stayed with the father. Nathan came to Manchester and then to London, Salomon went to Vienna, another brother went to Naples. The baby of the family, who changed his name to James, went to Paris, where he married his older brother’s wife, Betty. And can we have a look at the, yes. Now this is how far they went in Austrian society. Here you have a picture of her with Princess Metternich. So the Rothschilds, maybe they are a law unto themselves, but they are mixing with the aristocracy. Baron de Hirsch, he was called Turkenhirsch, he actually had many of his residences in the Hapsburg Empire. And he was the man, why is he called Turkenhirsch? He built the railway from Vienna to Constantinople. He gave away 100 million pounds in his lifetime. We’re talking about people of huge wealth. Now many of the great landowners in Vienna, in Austria, had just as much wealth. But the point is, these are, if you like, parvenus. Now, the Rothschild family, they founded the Vienna Hospital, I’ve already mentioned it, they founded it in 1869.
He was also an incredible art collector. And I think much of that art is now at Waddesdon Manor. He became a member of the Austrian upper house, and he lived as an Austrian prince, and of course, had an incredible palace. Can we have a look at the Rothschild mansion on the Ringstrasse? Yeah, a palace fit for a king. Now let’s have a look at another mansion. That’s the mansion of the Ephrussi, think of the de Waal family. They were Jewish industrialists. The father, the founder, was a man called Charles Joachim Ephrussi. He actually came from Berdichev in the Russian Empire, which was a great centre of Jewish scholarship. He went off to Odessa. Odessa in, we’re having a talk on Ukraine later, Odessa, a port city in the Ukraine, which was a third Jewish, he became a grain distributor, Jews and modernity. By 1860, his family were the largest exporters of wheat in the world. His eldest son, Leonid, had founded a bank in Odessa, and his brother Ignace, moved to Vienna where he established the Ephrussi Banking House. And he was elected to the nobility by Franz Joseph. And of course the family, they didn’t just have homes in Vienna, along with the Hirsch’s, he had a wonderful mansion in Paris, he had a home in London, Athens, vast wealth, castles all over the place. Baron de Hirsch actually had a hunting lodge outside Budapest, and Edward VII would come hunting. So these are the people that walked the world, so did Kasal. And of course Leonid’s son, Charles Ephrussi, those of you who are love literature, he is the model for Charles Swan, in Proust’, “In Search of Lost Time.” And originally of course, they were the Sephardi family.
Now, can we go on please, because I’m giving you a touch now of the incredibly wealthy. So you’ve got the image of the Jew as capitalist. Now let’s turn to a man called Victor Adler, 1852 to 1918. Now he came from Prague. He was the son of a Jewish merchant from Moravia. His family moved to Leopoldstadt when he was three years old. He went to a Catholic Gymnasium, where he became very friendly with Heinrich Friedjung, who was one of the great Jewish historians of the period. He goes to the University of Vienna. Can you imagine what the University of Vienna must have been like in the 1870s, ‘80s and '90s? It must have blown your mind away. On one level, liberalism, the early period, of course, is a period of liberalism. But as the liberalism gives way to something much more sinister, nevertheless, despite all the nationalisms, you have these incredibly acute minds at that university, at that particular time. And I just think it must have been, when you talk about time machines, I’ve said this to you before, provided you could have left, but to actually have gone there, between 1880 and 1910, what a world you would’ve seen, you might even have bumped into Freud playing chess with Trotsky So he studies chemistry and medicine at the University of Vienna.
He works, he graduates, he goes to the psychiatric department of the General Hospital. Other students, other students there, are people like Josef Breuer and of course, Sigmund Freud, they all knew each other. In 1878, he marries Emma Braun, who was a journalist. She obviously, the place of women is interesting. These are liberal, assimilated families, even though he comes from a religious family, the minute they come to Vienna, it lessens. And you can see that he’s dressed as a modern man. And his wife wrote historical novels and she was a committed socialist, as was he. And she became a close correspondent of Karl Kautsky, who was the most important Czech-Austrian philosopher, and he was a Marxist. And Kautsky is particularly important because after the death of Engels, he takes over the movement. So this couple are absolutely at the centre of socialism, Austrian Marxism. He was also a friend of Bertha Pappenheim, the fascinating Austrian-Jewish feminist, who was founder of the Jewish Women’s Association. If any of you want to do some research, there’s some amazing characters to go further with in this particularly extraordinary period. Josef Breuer’s, in fact, she is Anna O, who’s one of Josef Breuer’s most documented patients, because Freud wrote up the case notes.
So do you see how old it comes together? Now, the couple had three children and they lived at 19 Berggasse before Freud took over the house. Now, interesting. He initially supported the Pan German movement. Now the Pan German movement, we’ve already heard from Jellinek, that basically Austrian Jews saw themselves as Austrian. Victor Adler, who is a Marxist, he becomes involved in something called the Pan German movement, which I’m going to talk more about when I deal with racial madness. And these are a group of people who want to really affiliate to Germany. And he works on the programme, the Linz Programme, just keep that thought in your heads til Thursday. And he later breaks away from them, because unfortunately, the Pan German movement becomes violently anti-Semitic and they no longer allow Jews into it. And from 1886, he publishes a Marxist journal, it’s called, “Equality.” He’s very much worried by the working class conditions in Vienna, particularly in the huge brick factory, and the trucking system where wages were paid not in money, but in kind, in some commodities. You were given a certain amount of credit with retailers, vouchers, tokens. And he felt that this was complete, trucking is an archaic English word, it basically means exchange or barter. And he was totally against that. And he gains a lot of support amongst the working classes.
And in fact, it is he who unites the Austrian labour movement. He was a hugely passionate fighter for the rights of people. And he founds the Social Democratic Workers Party in 1888, which later on, of course becomes the Communist Party, and he becomes its first chairman. He is elected to parliament, he’s passionate about women’s rights, about universal suffrage. And he was the one who went for unity between all the ethnic conflicts. Remember these Marxists, extreme socialists, their view is that if you create a just society, all the differences between people would disappear. So you have a character running a socialist movement, who is an internationalist, and he wants to break all the ethnic, really divisions, within Austria. And he’s a brilliant orator and he is a great champion of the working classes. He hated the first World War, as did the majority of them. He does become part of the Austrian government, the new Austrian government at the end of the war.
By the way, Vienna at the end of the war, is going to be known as Red Vienna, which I’ll be talking about in a few weeks. Unfortunately, he died of heart failure on the last day of World War I. So the picture I’m giving you, look, the majority of Jews in Vienna, they are in the professions, they’re in business. But there are a few acute figures that I’m pointing out to you. Now, what did it mean at the time? Only if you thought that the Jew could never be part of your society, you’d be pointing, Victor Adler is a Jew, he’s a socialist. For the capitalist, he’s messing everything up. For the workers, for the lower middle classes in particular, the capitalist, aggressive capitalism is messing everything up. And then of course you have the Catholic church. The Catholic church, which particularly under Pius IX, which loathed, absolutely loathed modernity, it’s Pius IX who really creates the doctrine of immaculate conception, that the Virgin Mary, herself was born without sin. Sex, remember, to the Catholic church is sin. Can you imagine how characters like Klimt went down? Can you imagine how modern art went down? Can you imagine how people like Adler went down, fighting for the will of the people amongst the conservative bourgeois? So you can see the divisions, but remember, we are using hindsight.
And for those Jews who met in the coffee houses or met in each other’s homes, it’s still getting better. Now can we turn to the next character, please? Now this is Moriz Benedikt. I’ve already mentioned him to you, because if you think, Wickham Steed said he was the second most powerful man in the empire. And of course he is the editor owner of the Neue Freie Presse. And he becomes a very important figure in Austrian politics. He was actually born in the Subcarpathia. Many of these characters are such driven individuals. He comes to Vienna, he’s got a talent for writing, they have many languages, these characters. And he works for Viennese magazines, they live in one room till they make a little bit more money, he becomes a subeditor, he works and works and works his way up. His father isn’t particularly poor, this is the point as well. And the fact that his father manages to establish a business, which helps him on his way, he sends him to Vienna, remember, to be educated. He goes to the university, he studies economics, and then he becomes a journalist. And it’s the defeat of Austria in 1866 that worries him. The Neue Freie Presse has been established by another Jew, by Max Friedlander. It becomes the most influential paper in the Habsburg Empire. He was employed to run the economics section. He was very influential in modernising the paper. He had a very determined editorial policy. And it does become really, the main organ for the German Liberal Party in Vienna. Of course, it’s at its height, in the '70s and '80s, he served as political editor in financial affairs. He employed some very, very interesting people.
He finally becomes editor, he amasses a huge fortune, he employs people like Karl Krause, like Theodore Herzl, like Max Nordau, like the young Stefan Zwei. Can you just imagine the writers who worked for Moriz Benedikt. This is a quote from Wasserman, “His paper, the stronghold of German Jewish intellectualism of the cosmopolitan variety and he’s a classic assimilationist.” Benedikt once told a cousin of Herzl’s, “I am not pro-Jewish, I’m not anti-Jewish. I am a-Jewish.” Now, one of the problems with Benedikt, with the policy of hindsight, is that he didn’t take a strong stand against the anti-liberal movements or against anti-Semitism. Like many of the establishment, they wanted it to go away. And he was terrified of Herzl. When Herzl published “Der Judenstaat,” he tried to have it suppressed, even when Herzl died, the obituary in the paper he wrote for, wasn’t about Zionism, it was about his writings. He said about Herzl’s work, “We shall no longer have our present Fatherland and we shall not yet have a Jewish state.” So he believed, he’s elected to the Austrian Upper House, he was a man of huge power, and he went along with the status quo. And when anti-Semitism reared its ugly head, because the emperor was not himself anti-Semitic, he believed it would all go away.
And to be ruthlessly honest, and I think we have to be, even though we know what’s going to happen next, if it hadn’t been for the First World War and that terrible collapse, it might have come to a reasonable level. You know that terrible quote on anti-Semitism. “Anti-Semitism is to dislike Jews more than is reasonable.” It’s such a world weary quote. Because they could live the lives they wanted, they were terrified to speak out too strongly. And Moriz Benedikt was a man of huge power and influence, as was of course the man, Moritz Szeps, who I’ve already mentioned, who was a friend of Rudolph. Now another classic case. He was born, Moritz Szeps was actually born in 1835. I’m afraid I don’t have a picture of him. His father was a doctor. So his grandfather was the one who made a bit of money, enough to let his son become a doctor. He studied medicine at Lemberg. He continued his studies in Vienna. And then again, he also changed careers for journalism. And he becomes the editor-in-chief of the Morgenpost. And then the Neues Wiener Tagblatt, which was another leading liberal paper. He became incredibly wealthy, he built the Paris steps. He also was very close to Clemenceau, who of course was very important in France, not a Jew, in The Dreyfus Affair. He wanted Austria to emulate, Szeps. I’m talking about, to emulate the French model and not the other model of Prussia. Now I’m going to turn to one of my favourite individuals, and I’m giving you a teaser here, because having talked about business, journalism, capitalism, communism, let’s talk about popular culture. Can we see the next slide, please, darling? That’s the front cover of the Neue Freie Presse for you. But I’d like the next one, Judy.
There you have the famous, extraordinary Max Reinhardt. Those of you who love Hollywood, will know that the most incredible people worked for Max Reinhardt. May I quote Billy Wilder, may I quote Fred Zimmerman? May I quote the Otto Preminger? And I can go on and on, Dieterle, I can go on and on and on. They all, in the end, they earned their bones working for the greatest theatre director of Central Europe of the period, Mr. Max Reinhardt. And he was born Maximilian Goldmann. He was born in Baden, near Vienna. He was the son of a merchant called Wilhelm, which was his name before it was changed. He was a Jewish merchant from Hungary. He made a bit of money, and he and his wife Rachel, they’ve made a bit of money, they come to Vienna. And his son is to go into a bank. A cousin has a small bank, send Max to the bank to earn a very important profession. But whilst he’s in the bank, he’s already having acting lessons. He actually gave his debut when he was 17 years old, he took the name Max Reinhardt. And he managed to get a small part at the reopened Saltzburg City Theatre. You’ve got to remember the growth of the entertainment industry, even the working classes were having a little bit of leisure time. How do you think cabaret grew up? And it’s the opening of the theatres, this is what’s so important.
He first relocated to Germany and he joined the Deutsche Theatre Company. He is going to make a fortune. In the end, he’s going to own 31 theatres, both in Berlin and in Vienna. In 1918, he actually purchased Schloss Leopoldskron Castle in Saltzburg, it’d fallen into disrepair. And he’s going to live in it for 20 years. and of course, out of it, he created, along with Hofmannsthal, the Great Salzburg Festival. Before that, in 1901, he was one of the founders of the Sound and Smoke Cabaret in Berlin, which he opened at the Kleines Theatre. And in the end, as I said, 31 theatres in Berlin and Vienna. But there’s going to be a lot more of Max Reinhardt as we wend our way through Jewish history. And I always have to do something a little bit optimistic. Of course, when the Nazis came to power in Germany, he had a lot of problems, he went to Vienna, he finally gets out to America. He’d already been to America backwards and forwards. By the way, at Salzburg, he directed a morality play called “Jedermann,” annually where God sends Death in judgement . I mean, he’s very much into innovative, creative theatre. He’d already worked in America on “Midsummer Night’s Dream.” He put it on the stage in the States in 1927. And in 1935, he’s in Hollywood with William Dieterle, and he stages it in the Hollywood Bowl. A huge fortune is lost, but he also makes a film.
And can we please see a slide of that film, please? There you see, “Midsummer Night’s Dream.” Now how many of you are good? That’s Olivia de Havilland, you can see James Cagney, you can tell me who the others are. It cost a fortune to make. But that’s if you like, this is the man who becomes the great theatre director of Central Europe. He goes to Hollywood, but I think his legacy as well, so many of the greats trained with him. Can we go on quickly, if you don’t mind, Hugo von Hofmannsthal. I just wanted to show you his face, I will be going back to him later. And I’m going to show you another face that I’m going to be going back to later. I’m giving you a teaser now. I’m not going to rush Hugo von Hofmannsthal in five minutes and I’m not rushing Max Reinhardt, I just wanted to give you a bit of a lift. Can we just see a few more pictures if you don’t mind? There, the extraordinary Max Nordau, who’s going to become one of Herzl’s main pillars, and by far the more famous of the two, whose book, “Degeneration,” to this day causes problems. Actually, I think I’m going to stop there because I’ve got so much more information to give you and I have plenty of time to do it. And I know what Wendy always says, don’t rush, Trudy, don’t rush. So I’m going to stop there. And Judy, thank you for helping with the slides, I’m so bad at it. And let’s have a look at the questions.
Q&A and Comments:
Don’t forget that we have a very important session at seven o'clock, our time. Israel is full of COVID says Adrian. Reading in the Smithsonian Magazine about Winchester. Yes, she is a fascinating woman, in the first settlement, in England, who was a huge financier, but she was murdered.
Q: Dale, a major thoroughfare in Montreal is named after Pius XI. Inside art history, you see, he might be seen as a great pillar of the Catholic church, why?
A: Because he held the Catholic church against liberalism, communism, satanism, anything evil. But come on, think about it. Arlene, please explain how Christian Jew haters reconciled that Jesus was Jewish.
Arlene, are you expecting a rational answer to a irrational, this is the problem. Jesus has been de-Judaized. Jesus is de-Judaized It’s a huge question that Helen’s talked about and what I’m doing, and I don’t want to spend many sessions on the history of anti-Semitism, it’s just too dark. We live lives. But Rob Rinder is coming in for Purim and he and I will have a conversation then. Look, if you want to read up on it, I would suggest Maccabee, Robert Wistrich, any of these characters, they’ve got a lot to say about it.
This is from Johnny. My parents were Viennese refugees born in the first decade of the century. Conversation of family were Austrian, and little conversation was about distant Hungarian relatives. But on my first visit to Budapest, I was immediately put home, in a way I never felt in Vienna. That’s interesting, Johnny, it’s complicated, isn’t it? I mean, I think Vienna, because of what happened. Mind you, what happened in Budapest was pretty ghastly. Herzl’s house was next to the big synagogue in Budapest, I hope you saw it.
Faye, I’ve always been intrigued that how Jews can find Vienna so attractive, it’s always been anti-Semitic. Be careful, Faye. Look, yes, there was the most appalling rending of a society, but think what Jewish life was like in the Christian world beforehand. They did believe that things were going to get better, they threw in their lot, the majority of them, with liberalism. They were loyal citizens, most of them. Being a Jew, it’s a complicated story, but it’s also a story of survival. And I’m saying this a week after Holocaust Memorial Day, and I hope you found our speakers wonderful. I mean, those are survivors. They have such a spirit, nothing’s destroyed them. And the four that we had the privilege of listening to, they’ve all lived big lives since the war, they’ve contributed to society in a huge way. And not every non-Jew is an anti-Semite, it’s the vocal ones that speak up. The majority of people I find in the main are decent. But you are talking about the rational and the irrational.
This is from Gila. The traces of the Jews are everywhere, the city is beautiful, if one can ignore the anti-Semitism, it’s a beautiful culture place. For Jews whose Judaism is unimportant to them, it doesn’t bother them. As for this Jew, I lived there 38 years and I was unable to park my Israeli-American Judaism at the door, so I left. Since 2015, we live in Israel, God bless Israel. Gila, one of the sessions that I’m going to be running next week, as I said, is about Zionism in Vienna. It’s the cradle of Zionism, that’s the important point. It’s the first student organisation, And also it was the place where Herzl came from. Yes, he was born in Budapest, but his creation is in Vienna. But Zionism was a minority movement at that time, the majority of Jews did believe that in the end, Europe would hold, they loved it. Remember, the Isaiah Berlin parable. Imagine the people from another planet who land on planet Earth. And because of their tradition of learning, they fall in love with a planet, it’s dazzling them.
Can you imagine if your grandfather is a Talmudist? Look, a lot of the characters I’m talking about, they came from Jewishly educated families. It’s a very, very difficult issue now, we have to get into the field of epigenetics, which I know nothing about, but I’ve had many students in the past who have talked to me about it. Is it possible? Can we talk about collective memory? I dunno.
Q: This is from Bernard. My grandparents came to England about 1900. If Jews were doing so well, what made them come to England? They were not wealthy. Could it be to escape call up in the Austrian army?
A: Bernard, not every, and it depends where they came from in the Hapsburg empire. I mean, don’t forget the Austrian army, if they came from Galicia, the bulk of Jews in Galicia were dirt poor. And so were some Jews in Vienna. Let’s be careful.
Yes, that’s interesting, Howard, the main Ashkenazi Synagogue striking me like the Spanish synagogue. Sorry, lost the question. Sorry. I’m so bad at technology.
Q: Ruth, in a previous lecture I referred to non-Jewish Jews. What do you mean? Who decides who is a Jew and what makes one a Jewish Jew? Most Jews are secular and still committed to Judaism?
A: It’s the title of a book by Isaac Judaism, it’s called “The Non-Jewish Jew.” And actually Dennis Davis is going to give a lecture on it, because it’s a fascinating concept. He starts with Spinoza and he talks about characters like Trotsky, Marx, he would include Freud, he would include Rosa Luxembourg, people who are seen as Jews by other non-Jews because they’re of non-Jewish birth. Basically, in the end, it’s how the Gentile world describes you. I mean, Trotsky’s a wonderful example. He was an internationalist. And it was Trotsky who broke down Jewish life in Russia. You know, it was Jewish commissars who broke down Jewish life, just as Christian life was broken down in Russia under The Revolution. And there is a story that one of the rabbis called for him and said, why are you doing this? And he gave the classic answer. He said, look, we’re all one people now. And the rabbi said, Trotsky may well believe it, but one day Bronstein will pay for it. And of course, Bronstein was Trotsky’s real name.
Now this is from Jules. The Rothschild Hospital was a place for Jewish refugees after World War II, my mother-in-law mentioned it in her memoirs, thank you very much.
Yes, Mitzi, one of the great novels of the decline of the Habsburg rule is the “Radetzky March” by Joseph Roth. Joseph Roth was a fabulous writer, honestly, read Zweig, read Roth. Yes, it’s a list of institutions and people who were supported, thank you Joel.
Helen, I’ve just seen released the screening of the Tom Stoppard’s play, “Leopoldstadt,” about three generations of the Viennese Jewish family. It’s available on the NT website. It reflects the people and period you and Patrick have been talking about. Yes, Helen, I had the good fortune to see it three times because he kept on changing the script. Yes, and also there’s the film’s, “Sunshine.” That’s about a Hungarian family in the Habsburg Empire. István Szabó directed it, you should get hold of that as well. Not a donor board, rather a list of organisations.
Oh, have I got it wrong? That’s so silly of me, I wish I had German. As a teenager, I went to Vienna with a friend. Friends of ours, not Jewish, stayed with families. My parents being Orthodox wouldn’t allow me to stay unless a Jewish family offered to accommodate. No one offered. As a result, we were offered accommodation for five weeks in a Jewish old age home, love it. Valerie, you liked the “Leopoldstadt,” last week, yeah. And don’t forget, Tom Stoppard himself is finding his Jewishness.
This is from Hella. On a personal note, my maternal great-grandfather died in Vienna before the family immigrated. I have his death certificate. I have no idea why he was there or if his family was with him. My grandfather never spoke about it and I was too young and silly to ask. It’s a compelling mystery. I only knew they lived in Buchardt, now in Western Ukraine. Yes, you know, there are lots of genealogy sites. I know that people on a part of our community on lockdown are involved with them. I know Arlene is, perhaps someone on the site can help. Marcia, the American Public Broadcaster just carried a British documentary that showed the slums of London, by decade, from 1850 to 1910. They have modern people living in a tenement to show what life was like. Some of the participants were Jewish and it showed the kind of work they have done, tailor, sweatshop worker, seamstresses. Yes, and of course, when the Eastern Europeans landed in Vienna, just as they landed in London, the establishment in the whole, the Jewish establishment, was very upset about it. Yeah, of course. Terrible conditions, yeah.
Ellie Straus, the general consensus was that Vienna and Austria as a whole never recovered their cultural importance after the Jews left or were killed. Yeah, Ellie, I’m not going to disagree with you there. Martin, we’ve just seen “Leopoldstadt” on film. There is a long speech by the assimilated, converted, during the first act where he calls Judaism the past and reclaims himself a proud and loyal Austrian who craves to be accepted. It could have been copied and pasted from one of your accounts of what happened. Rather than being written by Tom Stoppard. Martin, Tom Stoppard came back to finding out about his Jewish roots. And when I first saw the play, it was very clunky. It’s much, much better now because it was like he was trying to put the history over. Yes, basically, that’s what he had to deal with because his mother didn’t want to bring him up as a Jew after everything that had happened to the family.
Q: Was there any significance in the painting of the Ashkenazi Synagogue that many of the men were wearing top hats?
A: Yes, this is about acculturation, yes. Yes, Eichmann set off his headquarters in the Rothschild Palace. Yes, of course, later on in the course, I’m going to be looking at Eichmann and Kaltenbrunn and Adolf Hitler, where they all lost…
This is from Sandy, you quoted from you , Would he ever lecture? We could ask him. As long as somebody can do the Zoom for him, I agree with you. When I was on the IRA, it was called ITF then, he was the intellectual head. And when I ran the OJCC, he often came to speak. He was a wonderful, wonderful, is a wonderful, wonderful man. There was only a small Sephardi group in Vienna and yes, they did tend to be quite wealthy.
This is Pamela, recommend “The Women of Rothschild,” by Natalie Livingston. Yes, an important book.
Q: At what point were Jews allowed to own property in Vienna?
A: After 1867.
Yes, this is from Ella. Did I get the message of the BCC series, “Fall of Eagles,” which I mentioned last week, can be purchased on DVD from Amazon? It’s over 12 hours long. And Debbie’s saying you can watch it on YouTube for free. It’s a brilliant series, it’s the BBC at their best. I will have to give you a list of that, Naomi.
Now, this is Hindi Hurt. Baronde Hirsch’s money help to establish Jewish farming communities in America, in the US, and on Crown Lands, is what is still known, Hirsch Saskatchewan, my husband’s grandfather wrote in detail how he arrived there in the middle of a bitter winter. Yes, I’ve actually lectured before on Baron de Hirsch when I was looking at Germany. He’s an absolutely fascinating man.
Yes, there were poor Jews, which I’ve talked about, and I’m going to be talking about more later on. What I’m talking about at the moment is the intellectual pull of various Jews. Of course there were poor Jews. If you hung around certain parts of Vienna, it was actually quite tragic. But what is interesting about the Jews, in the main, their poverty was one generational, same as in London.
Talking about the beginning of the Rothschild wealth, read Nile Ferguson’s thing. No, it wasn’t the Chinese opium trade, Margot, it actually begins in Frankfurt, but it’s a hugely detailed question you’ve asked. Yes, Baron de Hirsch. What’s the name? My brain isn’t operating too well today. I will think of it for next time.
Q: Were there quotas for Jews at the University of Vienna?
A: There weren’t for a while actually, because you saw, 45% in the medical faculty. Yes, I know there were quotas, there were quotas in most universities between the wars. I mean, I think it was Harvard who introduced a Jewish quota in 1923 because 25% of the students were Jewish. Mrs. Romelli my mother was born in 1910, grew up in Vienna, but her grandfather, wealthy Schiff, had a synagogue named for him, Bertha Pappenheim was a cousin. I often wished I had experienced this Vienna.
Yes, Ellie, it it is one of those times that you want to flip through, isn’t it? Yes, “The Hare with Amber Eyes,” yes. We had an exhibition last week and Edwin de Wall spoke. Yes, Ellie’s telling us that.
Q: Where can you find the Jellinek quotes?
A: Oh dear. “The Jews of Vienna in the Age of Franz Joseph” by Robert Solomon Wistrich, the best book on the period. What about the Hollywood Museum, excluding all the Jews, in my opinion, actually made Hollywood. Well, I call that rewriting history myself. The story of Hollywood and the Jews is a fascinating story, in fact it’s one of my favourite stories. If I could ever really master how to do film clips, I’d do more of it.
Q: Was it Max Reinhardt was in “The Sound of Music?”
A: No, it was his villa, I think that was used for “The Sound of Music.” Arlene, they believed the Jews killed Jesus, that’s it. Yes. Yeah. Jesus is de-Judaized eyes and then he’s murdered and Christianity supersedes, but I mustn’t be cynical.
Yes, it was William Powell, well done, well done, Sam, well done, heather, it is Dick Powell, Dick Powell with Olivia de Havilland. She only died last year.
I’m getting some lovely questions, thank you. Betty Covax, my father used to say Hitler made the Jews Jewish.
Okay, I think I better stop there because we’ve got a very important lecture at seven o'clock. So Judy, thank you very, very much and I will see you on Thursday.