Abstract
Following the collapse of the Habsburg Empire, contemporaries and later historians alike remarked that the ‘only true Austrians’ left were the Jewish Austrians. This chapter analyses the memory discourses concerning Jewish participation in the First World War as they emerged around two memorial sites in Vienna: the Kriegerdenkmal (Soldiers’ Memorial), a Jewish memorial created at the Central Cemetery, and the Heldendenkmal (Heroes’ Memorial), an Austrofascist memorial created at the Heldenplatz, as a platform from which to open up a more fundamental discussion into the transformative nature of Austrianness in the interwar period and the role of Jewish memory discourses therein.
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Notes
- 1.
Franz Theodor Csokor (1936), Dritter November 1918: Ende der Armee Österreich-Ungarns (Vienna, Zsolnay), this scene 60–62. All translations, unless otherwise stated, are my own.
- 2.
A plethora of work on the relationship between nationalism and the collapse of the empire has emerged since the earliest trailblazing works on this question such as Oscar Jászi (1936), The Dissolution of the Habsburg Monarchy (Chicago, University of Chicago Press). More recently, both the extent of nationalist sympathies and the inevitability of their corroding impact on the empire have been increasingly called into question. See for example Johannes Feichtinger and Gary Cohen, eds. (2014), Understanding Multiculturalism: The Habsburg Central European Experience (New York, Berghahn); Pieter Judson (2016), The Habsburg Empire: A New History (Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press).
- 3.
Cited in Hans Rauscher, ed. (2005), Das Buch Österreich: Texte, die man kennen muss (Vienna, Braumüller), 293.
- 4.
As observed by George Berkley (1988), Vienna and Its Jews: The Tragedy of Success 1880s–1980s (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press), 166. Berkley elsewhere described the assembly as ‘consisting solely of German-Austrians (including Socialist Jews who believed themselves to be such)’, 142. The paradigm opened up here—differentiating among other things between Jews and Germans or between Zionists and Socialists—pre-empts some of the discussion at the heart of this paper, whereby Berkley’s conclusions should be approached with caution.
- 5.
This is the first paper to emerge from my on-going postdoctoral project, provisionally entitled Once the ‘Only True Austrians’: Jews and the Transformation of Austrian Culture Through the Twentieth Century. It is based on a paper presented at the conference Contesting Jewish Loyalties: The First World War and Beyond at the Jewish Museum in Berlin on 16 December 2016, and draws on the research undertaken during a Prins Foundation Postdoctoral Fellowship at the Center for Jewish History in New York in 2015/2016.
- 6.
Cited in David Rechter (2014), ‘Die große Katastrophe: Die österreichischen Juden und der Krieg’, in Marcus Patka, ed. Weltuntergang: Jüdisches Leben und Sterben im Ersten Weltkrieg (Vienna, Jüdisches Museum Wien), 25.
- 7.
Max Grunwald (1936), Vienna (Translated by Solomon Grayzel, Philadelpha, Jewish Publication Society), 156.
- 8.
Wolfgang von Weisl (1971), Die Juden in der Armee Österreich-Ungarns—Illegale Transporte—Skizze zu einer Autobiographie (Tel Aviv, Olamenu), 1.
- 9.
Erika Weinzierl (1988), ‘Der jüdische Beitrag zur österreichischen Kultur der Jahrhundertwende’, in Wolfgang Plat, ed. Voll Leben und voll Tod ist diese Erde: Bilder aus der Geschichte der jüdischen Österreicher 1190–1945 (Vienna, Herold), 208.
- 10.
Erwin Schmidl (1989), Juden in der k. (u.) k. Armee 1788–1918/Jews in the Habsburg Armed Forces (Eisenstadt, Österreichisches Jüdisches Museum), 146.
- 11.
Key works of recent years emphasising malleability over essentialist understandings of Jewishness include Klaus Hödl (2006), Wiener Juden—Jüdische Wiener: Identität, Gedächtnis und Performanz im 19. Jahrhundert (Innsbruck, Studienverlag); Lisa Silverman (2012), Becoming Austrians: Jews and Culture Between the World Wars (Oxford, University Press). Silverman and Hödl made a major contribution to the field with their concept of ‘Jewish difference’, in which ‘Jewishness’ is understood as an analytical category, like gender or class, according to which Jewish and non-Jewish Austrians defined themselves through the last century.
- 12.
The study of the construction of an Austrian national identity has mostly been limited to the post-1945 Republic. See for example Oliver Rathkolb (2006), Die Paradoxe Republik: Österreich 1945 Bis 2005 (Vienna, Donauland).
- 13.
This point was also made recently by John Boyer (2010), ‘Introduction: Boundaries and Transitions in Modern Austrian History’, in Günter Bischof, Fritz Plasser, and Peter Berger, eds. From Empire to Republic: Post-world War I Austria, Contemporary Austrian Studies Vol. 19, 15.
- 14.
Aside from the widespread omission of Jews in Austrian historiography and national consciousness, this problem is exacerbated in much of the scholarly literature on Austria’s Jews, which with its inability to overcome outdated narratives such as that of ‘Jewish assimilation’ perpetuates the notion of Jewish otherness in Austrian society, past and present. See the discussion in Steven Beller (2003), ‘Knowing Your Elephant: Why Jewish Studies Is Not the Same as Judaistik, and Why That Is a Good Thing’, in Klaus Hödl, ed. Jüdische Studien: Reflexionen zu Theorie und Praxis eines wissenschaftlichen Feldes (Innsbruck, Studienverlag).
- 15.
Article 88 of the Treaty of Saint-Germain-en-Laye, 10 September 1919. See the full text under https://www.ris.bka.gv.at/GeltendeFassung.wxe?Abfrage=Bundesnormen&Gesetzesnummer=10000044. Accessed 30 January 2017.
- 16.
Bruce Pauley (1981), Hitler and the Forgotten Nazis: A History of Austrian National Socialism (London, Macmillan), 3–4.
- 17.
As discussed by Wolfgang Maderthaner (2010), ‘Utopian Perspectives and Political Restraint: The Austrian Revolution in the Context of Central European Conflicts’, in Bischof, Plasser, and Berger, eds. From Empire to Republic, 56–58.
- 18.
The creative genius of Vienna’s Jews is a perennial topic of discussion: see for example Steven Beller’s (1990) now classic Vienna and the Jews, 1867–1938: A Cultural History (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press). This is also a favourite topic for Jewish Austrians in exile: see for example John Emanuel Ullmann (1993), The Jews of Vienna: A Somewhat Personal Memoir, unpublished memoir, Leo Baeck Institute, AR 10682. The compulsion to quantify Jewish ‘contributions’ to Austrian culture (see the title of the above-cited work by Erika Weinzierl), however, often runs the risk of evaluating Jewish history purely on the merits of its cultural productivity while discursively reducing Jews to a group of outsiders who merely ‘contribute’ to a dominant—usually portrayed as disinterested—non-Jewish culture.
- 19.
Adler was appointed Foreign Minister of the new republic but died on 11 November 1918. Other Jewish-born individuals to hold prominent positions in the newly founded republic include Otto Bauer, who succeeded Adler as Foreign Minister, and Julius Deutsch, who became Defence Minister. Berkley (1988), Vienna, 142.
- 20.
Illustrating this point, the popular perception by non-Jews of the number of ‘racial Jews’ living in interwar Vienna by far exceeded reality, with estimates ranging from 300,000 to as high as 583,000. Bruce Pauley (1990), ‘Politischer Antisemitismus im Wien der Zwischenkriegszeit’, in Gerhard Botz, Ivar Oxaal, and Michael Pollak, eds. Eine zerstörte Kultur: Jüdisches Leben und Antisemitismus in Wien seit dem 19. Jahrhundert (Buchloe, Obermayer), 224.
- 21.
For an overview of Austrofascism, see Tim Kirk (2003), ‘Fascism and Austrofascism’, in Günter Bischof, Anton Pelinka, and Alexander Lassner, eds. The Dollfuss/Schuschnigg Era in Austria: A Reassessment, Contemporary Austrian Studies Vol. 11. Kirk argues (in brief summary) that this movement could best be described as an alliance between ‘fascist’ and ‘fascisant’ elements. While acknowledging the complexity of discussions surrounding Fascism generally and the problem of definition in the Austrian case specifically, I nevertheless employ the term ‘Austrofascist’ here, partly for simplicity but also in the interest of not euphemising what was a violent and authoritarian movement.
- 22.
Jászi (1936), The Dissolution, 134.
- 23.
See among other contributions the chapter by Erwin Schmidl (2014), ‘Jüdische Soldaten in der k.u.k. Armee’, in Patka, ed. Weltuntergang. The origins of Jewish service in the Habsburg army and its significance as a vehicle for emancipation were explored by Michael Silber (2006), ‘From Tolerated Aliens to Citizen-Soldiers: Jewish Military Service in the Era of Joseph II’, in Pieter Judson and Marsha Rozenblit eds. Constructing Nationalities in East Central Europe (New York, Berghahn).
- 24.
On the Kriegerdenkmal, see the seminal papers by Martin Senekowitsch (1994), Ein Ungewöhnliches Kriegerdenkmal: Das jüdische Heldendenkmal am Wiener Zentralfriedhof (Vienna, Militärkommando Wien); Gerald Lamprecht (2014), ‘Erinnern an den Ersten Weltkrieg aus jüdischer Perpektive 1914–1938’, in Gerald Lamprecht, Eleonore Lappin-Eppel, and Heidrun Zettelbauer, eds. Der Erste Weltkrieg aus jüdischer Perspektive: Erwartungen, Erfahrungen, Erinnerungen (Innsbruck, Studienverlag). On the Heldendenkmal, see the seminal paper by Peter Pirker, Magnus Koch, and Johannes Kramer (forthcoming), ‘Contested Heroes, Contested Places: Politics of Remembrance in Vienna’, in Jörg Echternkamp and Stephan Jaeger, eds. Views of Violence: Representing the Second World War in Museums and Memorials (New York, Berghahn). I wish to thank the authors, for whom I translated this paper, which provides a welcome history of the politics of memory at this most conflicted memorial landscape in contemporary Vienna, and which allowed for many opportunities to consider the links between Jewish and Austrofascist commemorative practices in the preparation of this chapter.
- 25.
See for example Hermann Stern (1915), ‘Ein jüdisches Kriegerdenkmal’, Oesterreichische Wochenschrift, 8 January, 24–25.
- 26.
See for example a complaint about the ‘religious neglect’ of burying Jewish soldiers in non-Jewish cemeteries in ‘Die jüdischen Opfer des Krieges’, Jüdische Volksstimme, 20 January 1915, 5.
- 27.
See for example the Jüdisches Kriegsgedenkblatt, Nummer 1, November 1914 (Vienna, Halm & Goldmann, 1915), and subsequent issues, which lobbied its readership to send in information on ‘Jewish officers, cadets, and doctors who fell before the enemy’.
- 28.
Lamprecht (2014), ‘Erinnern an den Ersten Weltkrieg’, 247.
- 29.
See Tim Corbett (2016), ‘Culture, Community and Belonging in the Jewish Sections of Vienna’s Central Cemetery’, in Austrian Studies, 24 (2016): Jews, Jewish Difference and Austrian Culture.
- 30.
Martin Senekowitsch (2006), ‘‘Ich hatt’ einen Kameraden’: Gedenkfeier für die im Ersten Weltkrieg gefallenen und im Holocaust getöteten jüdischen Soldaten Wiens’, Österreichisches Schwarzes Kreuz Kriegsgräberfürsorge 123:2, 17.
- 31.
Lamprecht (2014), ‘Erinnern an den Ersten Weltkrieg’, 245.
- 32.
For example in ‘Ein Kriegerdenkmal für die jüdischen Kriegsgefallenen’, Arbeiter-Zeitung, 14 October 1929, 3; in ‘Kriegerdenkmälerenthüllung auf dem Zentralfriedhof’, Wiener Zeitung, 15 October 1929, 5; in the longer article ‘Enthüllung der Kriegerdenkmäler für jüdische Soldaten: Eindrucksvolle Feier auf dem Zentralfriedhof’, Neue Freie Presse, 14 October 1929, 4. The latter underlined the pacifist message of the memorial, which was also espoused by speakers at the event, while simultaneously emphasising Jewish fulfilment of ‘duty to the Volk and Heimat’ of Austria.
- 33.
See their own publication: Sigmund Friedmann (1935), Drei Jahre Bund jüdischer Frontsoldaten Österreichs (Vienna, Bund jüdischer Frontsoldaten), and a brief history of the organisation: Martin Senekowitsch (1994), Gleichberechtigte in einer grossen Armee: Zur Geschichte des Bundes jüdischer Frontsoldaten Österreichs 1932–38 (Vienna, Militärkommando Wien).
- 34.
The Frontkämpfervereinigung Deutsch-Österreichs (Association of Front-Line Soldiers of German-Austria) for example, founded in 1920, was only open to ‘former front-line soldiers of German-Aryan origin’. Lamprecht (2014), ‘Erinnern an den Ersten Weltkrieg’, 251. The need to mobilise against violent antisemitic attacks was evident from the earliest days of the First Republic, with attacks increasing dramatically in number and severity in the 1930s. See Berkley (1988), Vienna, 212.
- 35.
As in the mission statement: ‘We do not fight for any party, we fight for our rights!’ Flyer of the Bund jüdischer Frontsoldaten Oesterreichs, Vienna, July 1932, digital copy in author’s collection kindly supplied by the Österreichisches Schwarzes Kreuz.
- 36.
In 1921, Sommer had led a successful defensive manoeuvre against Hungarian forces attempting to retain control of the ceded Burgenland, making him ‘Austria’s first postwar military hero’. Berkley (1988), Vienna, 163.
- 37.
Lamprecht (2014), ‘Erinnerung an den Krieg: Der Bund jüdischer Frontsoldaten Österreichs 1932 bis 1938’, in Patka, Weltuntergang, 202–203.
- 38.
Friedmann (1935), Drei Jahre, 17.
- 39.
The Bund’s dual loyalty was evident in its mission statement in Friedmann (1935), Drei Jahre, 4, while the transnational dimension of Jewish war commemoration is evident in the letters from various organisations abroad, 10–16.
- 40.
See the overview of the politics of the era in Harriet Freidenreich (1991), Jewish Politics in Vienna 1918–1938 (Bloomington, Indiana University Press).
- 41.
During its short-lived rule, the Austrofascist state practised a quiet policy of attrition against Jews in the public sector, not to mention the intellectual and artistic exodus of Jews that had already begun with the Austrofascist seizure of power in 1933. See John Warren (2009), ‘Weiße Strümpfe oder neue Kutten’: Cultural Decline in Vienna in the 1930s’, in Deborah Holmes and Lisa Silverman, eds. Interwar Vienna: Culture Between Tradition and Modernity (Suffolk, Camden House), 32–37. On Austrofascism and antisemitism, see Pauley (1990), ‘Politischer Antisemitismus’, 240–244. With the increasing dominance of both religious orthodoxy and political Zionism in the Jewish community of the 1930s, some of the segregationist policies of the Austrofascist state were even welcomed by the community organisation, as demonstrated by Sara Yanovsky (2010), ‘Jewish Education in Interwar Vienna: Cooperation, Compromise and Conflict Between the Austrian State and the Viennese Jewish Community’, in Bischof, Plasser, and Berger eds. From Empire to Republic.
- 42.
See for example the Nazi-leaning weekly Kikeriki from 20 October 1929, which led on the front page with a Heimwehr militiaman in a Tyrolean hat kicking stereotyped Jewish men out of the parliament in Vienna, with the caption in Austrian dialect: ‘Dear God, is the Heimwehr man powerful! What a kick!’.
- 43.
Berkeley wrote that that the Jewish community organisation greeted the creation of the Austrofascist state with ‘enthusiastic approval’, while the Bund cheered the end of Austrian ‘pseudo-democracy’. Berkeley (1988), Vienna, 219. The community organisation was thereafter purged of Social Democrats in what resembled a ‘witch-hunt’. Freidenreich, Jewish Politics, 165–166.
- 44.
Roth wrote a tribute to Austrofascism: ‘An den » Christlichen Ständestaat«’, reproduced in Hermann Kesten, ed. (1976), Joseph Roth Werke, Vol. 4 (Cologne, Kiepenheuer & Witsch), while Kraus regarded Austrofascism as ‘the only effective barrier against the rising power of the Nazis’. Frank Field, The Last Days of Mankind: Karl Kraus & His Vienna (London: Macmillan, 1967), 72.
- 45.
See for example Pauley (1981), Hitler, 84; Freidenreich, Jewish Politics, 195.
- 46.
See Pauley (1990), ‘Politischer Antisemitismus’, 240.
- 47.
Berkley (1988), Vienna, 212.
- 48.
Pauley (1981), Hitler, 91.
- 49.
See for example Werner Bergmann (2004), Geschichte des Antisemitismus (Munich, C. H. Beck), 79–81.
- 50.
See Lamprecht (2014), ‘Erinnern an den Ersten Weltkrieg’, 257.
- 51.
Lamprecht (2014), ‘Erinnerung an den Krieg’, 207.
- 52.
Walter Goldinger and Dieter Binder (1992), Geschichte der Republik Österreich, 1918–1938 (Vienna, Verlag für Geschichte und Politik), 252.
- 53.
The article ‘Heldengedenkfeier der jüdischen Soldaten’, Neues Wiener Journal, 19 June 1933, 2, for example, is framed by articles discussing Austria’s position in Europe alongside articles on the Nazi bombing terror in Vienna, while highlighting as usual the Jewish ‘love for the fatherland’.
- 54.
Friedmann (1935), Drei Jahre, 43.
- 55.
Cited in ‘Heldengedenkfeier des Bundes jüdischer Frontsoldaten: Kundgebung für Gleichberechtigung und Frieden’, Neue Freie Presse, 19 June 1933, 4.
- 56.
‘Heldensonntag’, Christlich-Soziale Arbeiter-Zeitung, 24 June 1933, 4.
- 57.
See the issue from 23 June 1933.
- 58.
Gedenkschrift anläßlich der Weihe des österreichischen Heldendenkmales am 9. September 1934 (Vienna: Vereinigung zur Errichtung eines Österreichischen Heldendenkmals, 1934), 14.
- 59.
‘Der B.J.F. bei der Heldengedenkfeier am 9. September 1934’, Jüdische Front, 15 October 1934, 16.
- 60.
‘Die Weihe des Heldendenkmals’, Neue Freie Presse, 10 September 1934, 2–3.
- 61.
See for example his essays on the destruction of Austria following the Anschluß: Joseph Roth, ‘Totenmesse’ and ‘Huldigung an den Geist Österreichs’, in Kesten (1976), Joseph Roth Werke (Vol. 4).
- 62.
Gedenkschrift (1934), 4.
- 63.
See Julie Thorpe (2010), ‘Pan-Germanism After Empire: Austrian ‘Germandom’ at Home and Abroad’, in Bischof, Plasser, and Berger, From Empire to Republic.
- 64.
George Berkley recounted a joke from the interwar period that characterises the paradoxes of political sentiments in the First Republic: Chancellor Schuschnigg asks the mayor of an Austrian town about its political makeup: ‘How many of your people are Christian Socials? About fifty per cent. How many are Social Democrats? Some forty percent. Well, then, how many are Nazis? Approximately one hundred per cent’. Berkley (1988), Vienna, 241, see also the discussion of the ‘180-degree turn’ from Austrofascism to National Socialism, 301–303. In terms of discourse alone, Austrofascism was deeply reminiscent of National Socialism, which would also be deserving of closer study.
- 65.
See Peter Diem, ‘Das Äußere Burgtor: Ein österreichisches Heldendenkmal?’ http://austria-forum.org/af/Wissenssammlungen/Symbole/Burgtor_-_Heldendenkmal (accessed 31 January 2017).
- 66.
A detailed account can be found in ‘Friedhofs- und Beerdigungswesen’, in Bericht des Präsidiums und des Vorstandes der Israelitischen Kultusgemeinde Wien über die Tätigkeit in den Jahren 1933–1936 (Vienna, Verlag der israelitischen Kultusgemeinde in Wien, 1936).
- 67.
‘Die Feier auf dem Zentralfriedhofe’, Jüdische Front, 15 October 1934, 3–8.
- 68.
This also excluded other participants in the Habsburg military, such as Muslims, of whom 14,000 served in the First World War. Christoph Neumayer (2014), ‘Muslimische Soldaten in der k.u.k. Armee’, in Patka ed. Weltuntergang, 98.
- 69.
For example ‘Heldengedenkfeier des Bundes der jüdischen Frontsoldaten’, Neue Freie Presse, 17 September 1934, 6. Note that the title is almost word for word the same as in the report of the previous year.
- 70.
See for example ‘Heldengedenkfeier des Bundes jüdischer Frontsoldaten’, Neue Freie Presse, 23 September 1935, 8.
- 71.
See ‘Grabgang zu den jüdischen Heldengräbern im Zentralfriedhof’, Neue Freie Presse, 21 September 1936, 6.
- 72.
Cited in ‘Heldengedenkfeier des Bundes jüdischer Frontsoldaten’, Neue Freie Presse, 13 September 1937, 8.
- 73.
Martin Senekowitsch (2014), ‘Emil Sommer: Bundesheer-Generalmajor, BJF-Gründer, Kultusrat’, in Patka, ed. Weltuntergang, 225.
- 74.
Peter Steiner (2014), ‘Sigmund Edler von Friedmann / Eitan Avissar: BJF-Präsident und israelischer Brigadegeneral’, in Patka, ed. Weltuntergang, 221.
- 75.
Schmidl (1989), Juden, 90.
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Corbett, T. (2019). Once ‘the Only True Austrians’: Mobilising Jewish Memory of the First World War for Belonging in the New Austrian Nation, 1929–1938. In: Madigan, E., Reuveni, G. (eds) The Jewish Experience of the First World War. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-54896-2_12
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