JEWS IN THE AUSTRO-HUNGARIAN MONARCHY

Synagogue Pecs, Hungary

The first mentioning of Jews on the territory of Austria proper goes back to the “Raffelstettner Customs Regulation” which was formulated between 903 and 906. The first Jews came as travelling merchants who traded between the Carolingian Empire, where they were already mentioned in the 8th century, and the Slav territories in the East. At that time several Jewish merchants had already settled on the territory of the duchy of Bavaria, of which Austria was a part. The Jews were expelled from the duchy of Austria several times. After the battle of Mohacs 1526 and the expansion of the Habsburg Empire into the Danube basin including now Bohemia, Moravia and Hungary many Jews who lived in the kingdom of Bohemia moved to Vienna and the surrounding lands, but they fled again to Bohemia after another pogrom of Viennese Jews between 1669 and 1671 because bigger Jewish communities had already existed there in the 16th century. In Moravia the Jews were expelled from the cities already in the 15th century and mostly lived on noble estates on the countryside. Also in Hungary bigger Jewish communities were established on the estates of the Hungarian nobility after they had been driven out of the cities. But most of the Jews in the Eastern Danube basin in the 17th century lived on the territory that was still part of the Osman Empire because the more tolerant attitude of the Osmans towards Jews guaranteed them relatively more legal security.…

MINORITIES IN THE AUSTRO-HUNGARIAN EMPIRE

Not only the Jewish population but all national minorities had to cope with the pressure from the majority population, mostly the German- or Hungarian-speaking majority. Since the 1880s politics and everyday life were dominated by nationalism and nationalistic conflicts in Central Europe. Yet the multinational dynastic Habsburg Empire continued to exist and to make administrative efforts to protect all peoples and religions. All the bigger minority groups in the cities had developed an infra-structural network. In Vienna there were dozens of Jewish and Czech associations, Jewish newspapers, a Hungarian and a Croatian newspaper and several Czech newspapers. Furthermore there were several national mutual loan societies (Kreditgenossenschaften), a Czech private school system, a Polish school, Jewish Thora schools, many charities to support even small communities of emigrants from small rural regions and villages. These societies, associations, clubs and charities compensated for the dispersed living conditions as the minorities in the crammed 2-million capital could not crowd together in special areas. …