Vol. XXXIII · 2002 · pp. 239-251 (13)

Helga Embacher

Download full article (476 KB) [subscribers only]

Abstract

We were fervent Habsburg patriots," Simon Wiesenthal, born in 1908 in Buczacz in Eastern Galicia, recalls of his youth. As Albert Lichtblau demonstrates using examples of Jewish memoirs, the vast majority of the Jewish population in the Austro-Hungarian monarchy glorified and mythologized Emperor Francis Joseph I, who was regarded as the protector (Schutzherr) of the Jewish minority. The first phase of his reign led to the Constitution of 1867 (Staatsgrundgesetz), which provided for equal opportunity for all confessions, something that the Jewish minority had been desperately seeking. Jews also appreciated that the emperor twice rejected the appointment of the anti-Semite Karl Lueger as mayor of Vienna. During World War I, three hundred thousand Jewish soldiers fought in the Habsburg army. Their war experiences and closeness to non-Jews gave them a feeling of being an equal part of the larger community. Yet only twenty years after the end of World War I, Vienna served as a model for the robbery and expulsion of Jews and their deportation to concentration camps. It became obvious that Jews had never been accepted as members of the Austrian nation, though they thought they had been.