“DANUBE FOOTBALL” – VIENNA’S IDENTIFICATION WITH FOOTBALL – AND THE “DANUBE MAIDENS” – VIENNA’S FEMALE SWIMMING CHAMPIONS (until 1938)

LIVES OF THE NON-ÉLITE IN VIENNA FROM THE AUSTRO-HUNGARIAN EMPIRE TO THE NAZI REGIME AND POST-WAR AUSTRIA, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
1st Professional Austrian Football Champion 1924/25, bottom row: third from the left: Norbert Katz, my great-uncle
The HAKOAH championship team 1925 with Norbert Katz to the left of the trophy
Detail of the photo of 1925: Norbert Katz in the middle
Detail of the oil painting of the “Miracle Team” 1932 with Norbert Katz in the centre

Oil painting of the “Miracle Team”, the Austrian National Team in 1932 at Stamford Bridge Stadium, London, with Norbert Katz behind the left shoulder of Hugo Meisl, the coach.

Norbert Katz, the husband of my great-aunt Agi, was a very talented and successful professional footballer in Vienna until he had to emigrate in 1938. As a very young player he became champion of the Austrian second league in 1919/20 with his team Hakoah Vienna and was Austrian Champion in the season 1924/25 with Hakoah Vienna. Later in England he was employed as a bank clerk, but continued to work as sports trainer and football functionary. This fact offers the chance to investigate the significance of football for the city of Vienna as a vehicle of identification with the young Austrian state. May great-aunt, Agi, was a free water Danube swimmer for the sports club Hakoah, one of the “Danube Maidens”,  before she married Norbert. Swimming, just as football, was a very popular and internationally successful sport in Vienna in the 1920s and 1930s.

At the end of the 19th century the English sport football was introduced in Graz, Prague and Vienna, but Vienna soon took the lead because football was directly introduced by Englishmen in Vienna, whereas the clubs in Graz and Prague were subsidiaries of Frankfurt clubs. At that time many English people worked and lived in the Habsburg Empire’s capital city. They introduced the ethics of sport and its benefits for health  and mind in the Austro-Hungarian Empire. The gasworks in Simmering, for example, were an English subsidiary and the British company brought many English engineers, skilled workers and white collar staff to Vienna and they started to play football at the “Jesuitenwiese” in the Vienna Prater. Other important British companies that had established businesses in Vienna were Clayton & Shuttleworth, which produced agricultural machines and typewriters, Thomas Cook & Son, the travel agent, and several British sanitary firms. Gandon of the gas works, Gramlick, the owner of a British sanitary firm, Shires, a salesman of the “Underwood” typewriter, Blackey, the director of Clayton & Shuttleworth, Reverend Hechler of the Anglican Church in Vienna, Blyth of Stone & Blyth and Loew, director of the Viennese hat factory Böhm, these were the men who introduced football to Vienna. In 1892 they founded the “Vienna Cricket Club”, but cricket could not find enough players and spectators in Vienna, so the club decided to introduce football in Vienna, too, and in 1894 they changed the club’s name to “Vienna Cricket and Football club” (later “Austria Wien”). Just a few days earlier another group of Englishmen had registered the “First Vienna Football Club” with the imperial administration in 1984, which means the “Vienna” was the first Viennese football club in the city. The two clubs “First Vienna Football Club”, called “Vienna” and the “Vienna Cricket and Football Club”, called “Cricketer” (later FK Austria Wien) were based in Döbling and Heiligenstadt and their first players were the gardeners who Baron Nathaniel Rothschild had brought to Vienna to tend his gardens at the “Hohe Warte”. “Vienna” was the first Viennese football club that also accepted Austro-Hungarian players and was not exclusively managed by Englishmen. Franz Joli, son of the inspector of the Rothschild gardens was enthusiastic about football after his stay in England and he and his brother Max Joli boosted the enthusiasm for the new game among the local population. They started to play with the English gardeners in the Rothschild gardens. So, father Joli had to look for an appropriate football ground outside the gardens in order not to have the lovingly tended meadows of the Rothschild gardens devastated. The first football ground of the “Vienna” was an unused plot at the Heiligenstädterstraße, later the “Kuglerwiese”. The founding assembly took place at the inn “Zur schönen Aussicht” at the “Hohe Warte” on 22 August 1894 and the colours chosen for the club were blue and yellow, the colours of the Rothschild horses competing at the race course in Freudenau. The club was founded under the patronage of the director of the Rothschild bank in Vienna and Baron Rothschild paid for the rent of the football ground and subsidised the club. The first club pub was “Bittners Restaurant” at the Heiligenstädter Pfarrplatz. On the 15 November 1894 the first football match between the two rivalling clubs took place at the Kuglerwiese and the “Cricketer” won 4:0. This was the birth of the Viennese football sport.

The beer brewer Ignaz Sobotka, my great-grandfather, on the right – supporter of an amateur football Team in Vienna in the 1920s
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THE GREAT DEPRESSION: CREDIT-ANSTALT CRISIS 1931

FINANCE AND ECONOMY IN CEE, THE DANUBE REGION: ECONOMIC AND SOCIAL DEVELOPMENTS, , , , , , ,

Former Österreichische Creditanstalt building, architects Gotthilf and Neumann (built 1916-1921)

The Credit-Anstalt crisis played a crucial role in the dramatic economic developments of the 1930s in Europe as the collapse of the Credit-Anstalt affected the largest bank of Austria and at that time also the largest bank east of Germany. The collapse of the Credit-Anstalt in Vienna started the spread of the crisis in Europe and forced most countries off the Gold Standard within a few months. A feeling of financial distrust and insecurity spread from Vienna and led to runs on other banks in Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Romania, Poland and Germany. The collapse in May 1931 set off a chain reaction that led from the run on German banks to withdrawals in London and the devaluation of the pound to large-scale withdrawals from New York and another series of bank failures in the United States. So in brief the news of the crisis of the Credit-Anstalt, the most important bank in Central Europe, shook the whole economic structure of Europe and sent shock waves through the rest of the world.…

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INTERNATIONAL INVESTMENT

FINANCE AND ECONOMY IN CEE, THE DANUBE REGION: ECONOMIC AND SOCIAL DEVELOPMENTS, , , , , ,

Palais Ephrussi, family of Austrian bankers (Vienna – the bank opposite the Palais was destroyed in the 2nd World war), architect Theophil Hansen

The Austro-Hungarian Monarchy generally had an export surplus of securities, which means it was a net importer of long-term capital, except during the period 1903-1908. While in 1868 the majority of loans was taken by Amsterdam, Brussels, Frankfurt and Paris, in 1914 Berlin was the most important foreign creditor. Government securities and railway priority bonds constituted the largest categories. In terms of state debts, the Austro-Hungarian Empire was a debtor towards Western and Central Europe and a creditor towards the Balkans together with Germany. Yet compared to Germany and France, the Austrian banks in Serbia and Romania were insignificant, only in Bulgaria were they of importance. After 1878, most of the debts of the Balkan states financed railway construction. While lending for the infrastructural development of backward countries, the empire constructed its own railway network with the help of foreign capital. After 1855, when the railways were sold to private enterprise and the system of guaranteed interest was introduced, foreign capital penetrated the empire’s economy. The mobilier banks provided the needed capital for the railway construction. In Hungary 85 per cent of the railway system was owned and run by the state by 1891, while in the Austrian half of the empire only 55 per cent was run by the state and it owned only 43 per cent in 1897. More than 70 per cent of the railway priority bonds were still in the possession of foreign investors at the beginning of the 20th century.…

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INTERNATIONAL FINANCIAL RELATIONS OF THE HABSBURG EMPIRE

FINANCE AND ECONOMY IN CEE, THE DANUBE REGION: ECONOMIC AND SOCIAL DEVELOPMENTS, , , , , , , ,

Former Länderbank (Vienna), founded 1880, architect Otto Wagner (built 1882-1884)

It can be said that the Austro-Hungarian credit institutions were established along French and German lines either as direct imitations (Prussian mortgage banks, credit cooperatives) or as combinations of German, English or French patterns (savings banks). At the same time very special types were developed in the monarchy, such as the Landesbanken or the dualistic organisation of the bi-national Austro-Hungarian Bank. They illustrate the special financial climate in the empire. The adjustment to this special climate can also be seen in the participation of the ownership in the banks and the management of the banks. For example, in their application to the ministry the founders of Credit-Anstalt guaranteed the subscription of the capital in the following way: 40 per cent was taken by the Rothschild houses in Vienna, Frankfurt and Paris, 50 per cent by Austrian and Bohemian aristocrats and 10 per cent by a private Prague banker. According to the founders’ statement of intention, it could only undertake Austrian transactions and a representative of the state had a seat in the governing body. Representatives of the Hungarian aristocracy also had seats in the first committee of the management. In this way the Credit-Anstalt wished to be a financial institution representing the multinational character of the monarchy. In the final distribution of shares the Credit-Anstalt revealed its “national” character according to the monarchy’s state philosophy: neither the dynasty itself, nor the aristocracy nor the Viennese Jews were excluded.…

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TYPES OF BANKS IN THE HABSBURG EMPIRE

FINANCE AND ECONOMY IN CEE, THE DANUBE REGION: ECONOMIC AND SOCIAL DEVELOPMENTS, , , , , , , , , ,

Former Österreichische Creditanstalt building (today the Park Hyatt Vienna hotel), founded 1855 “k.k.privilegierte Österreichische Credit-Anstalt für Handel und Gewerbe”, architect Franz Fröhlich (built 1858-60)

 

The components of the banking system had already been established when the above mentioned Gründerzeit took place. Different components were formed in different periods and new types of institutions were created after the crash of 1873 because the system itself was very dynamic.

 

The oldest element was the bank of issue in Vienna (1816). The Austrian National Bank opened its first branch in Prague in 1847 and its second one in Pest in 1851. By 1875 it had 24 branches in addition to its headquarters in Vienna. On local markets these branch offices played an important role in the distribution of Treasury notes, government paper money that had been issued again since 1866, and in the supply of bank notes. In the beginning of the 19th century savings banks were established. The Erste Österreichische Sparcasse was established in 1819 with philanthropic aims and it served as an example in other parts of the empire. Due to the crises of 1857 and 1873 a great number of private bankers, who were considered the main financiers before, disappeared from the financial scene or their business was transformed. They either specialised in certain fields or joined larger banks established at that time. The Rothschild house in Vienna was the only one to keep its former position.…

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FINANCE AND INDUSTRIAL INVESTMENT IN THE HABSBURG EMPIRE

FINANCE AND ECONOMY IN CEE, THE DANUBE REGION: ECONOMIC AND SOCIAL DEVELOPMENTS, , , , , , , , , , , ,

Sparkasse Karlsbad, Bohemia

 

Industrialisation and the industrial boom in Cisleithania, the western part of the “Dual Austro-Hungarian Monarchy”, boosted the confidence of Austrian liberalism, while the crash of 1873 weakened it again considerably. The Gründerzeit (literally: founding time) resulted from a combination of several factors, a mushrooming financial sector willing to invest in the economy, an expanding rail network making demands on the iron industry and technical innovation in various coal-consuming industries, all of this interacting to produce an economic leap forward. As in the 1850s the railway expansion spurred financial innovation, the Gründerzeit was characterised by a blossoming of banking institutions. After the financial crisis of 1857/58 most private bankers experienced a serious downturn, but finance grew again from 1867, the founding of the dual monarchy, via the multiplication of joint stock banks through the established Creditanstalt, associated with Anselm Rothschild, and the Niederösterreichische Escomptegesellschaft. Utilising high profits, the banks helped sponsor the growth of joint stock companies, 1005 of which received charters in the years 1867-73. Vitkovice, controlled by Rothschild, led the way in the adoption of the Bessemer process by the monarchy’s major iron works by 1870, along with puddling, the rolling mill and increasingly the use of coke instead of charcoal. Chief among them was the Bohemian Iron Company, centred at the coal-mining town of Kladno near Prague, which had emerged from the amalgamation of three predecessors in 1857. The coal production received a powerful impetus from technical innovations in a series of industries in the 1860s, like flour milling, sugar refining, paper making and of course the textile industry.…

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