From Prejudice to Persecution: A History of Austrian Anti-Semitism (10 page)

Read From Prejudice to Persecution: A History of Austrian Anti-Semitism Online

Authors: Bruce F. Pauley

Tags: #History, #Jewish, #Europe, #Austria & Hungary, #Social Science, #Anthropology, #Cultural, #Discrimination & Race Relations, #test

 

Page xxix
16.
Westjuden
. Western Jews. In Austria this meant Jews who had come to Vienna and the Alpine provinces from Bohemia, Moravia, and Austrian Silesia. They were much more acculturated into German-Austrian society than the Ostjuden. In practice, Ostjuden frequently became Westjuden after living in the West for one or two generations.
17.
Vereine
. Association, club, or organization.
18.
Verjudet
. Jewified; corrupted by Jewry. Racial antiSemites frequently used this term to refer to anything in which Jews were involved or in which the "Jewish spirit" played a role. In practice it often meant anything liberal.
19.
Völkisch
. A term that is virtually impossible to translate. Its nearest English equivalent would be "racist-nationalist."
20.
Volksgeist
. A metaphysical word meaning "spirit of the people" coined by the eighteenth-century German philosopher, Johann Gottfried Herder. German and Austrian racists frequently used the term to differentiate the essential "racial" characteristics of Jews and Germans.

 

Page 1
1
The Eternal Scapegoat

AntiSemitism in Austria, as in other European countries prior to the end of the Second World War, took so many different forms that, like the term
fascism
, it almost defies definition.

1
The term itself is misleading because almost all antiSemites have directed their ire exclusively against Jews, not other Semites such as Arabs. Moreover, antiSemites have never even been able to agree on who is a Jew. Consequently, the definitions of antiSemitism also vary widely. One only slightly extreme definition is the following: "a doctrine which attributes to the Jews an exceptional position among all other civilizations, defames them as an inferior group, denies their being part of the nation and categorically refuses them any symbiosis. This definition includes nonviolent social antiSemitism and 'compulsory Zionism' as possible forms of antiSemitism. It transcends the general understanding of Jew-hatred, or combat of Jewry, and emphasizes the latent totality of a phobia, which represents a secular version of a dichotomous conception of history."
2
A less extreme and more comprehensive definition that would probably apply to all forms of antiSemitism described in this book is "an attitude of hostility towards Jews as such,
i.e.
not towards a particular Jew, and not towards a number of people who, apart from having an attribute that arouses hostility, also happen to be Jewish. The hostility . . . must be associated definitely with the quality of being a Jew."
3

For the more radical antiSemites in Austria and elsewhere, antiSemitism bore some of the characteristics of a religion. Many of its beliefs were beyond empirical proof and had to be accepted as articles of faith. It seemed to provide answers to mystifying events, assuaged insecurities, and satisfied everyday psychological demands.
4
Richard Coudenhove-Kalergi perhaps put it most succinctly when he said that antiSemitism was "emotional and instinctive," and was "older than the theoretical hatred of the Jews. . . . It was [not] based on a judgment but on a prejudice; not on knowledge, but on instincts."
5
For

 

Page 2

the antiSemite, Jews represented what was disliked and feared. Therefore the term
Jewish
was always a pejorative and only used to describe negative things, never something cultivated or artistic.

6

Allegations Traditional and Modern
Even if antiSemitism in Austria and elsewhere took an almost infinite number of forms and was justified by an equally infinite number of rationalizations, a large number of allegations were made by nearly all antiSemites. Austrian antiSemites contributed little if anything to this stockpile of charges against the Jews, either before or after the First World War.
7
In fact, most of the allegations made against Austrian Jews had been in evidence for centuries, and only the circumstances in which the charges were made had changed.
One Austrian historian has summarized ten frequently made charges against Jewssome very old, others more recentas follows: (1) Jews everywhere retained their own characteristics, an oriental appearance with a strong bent nose and curly hair; (2) Jews were very rich because of their unscrupulous business practices; (3) they had acquired important offices through the "evil" of emancipation and had formed a clique; (4) the "Jewish press" was a morally corrupting influence because of its unscrupulous nature; (5) Jews wanted to establish a world empire; (6) they had different concepts of right and morality than Germans (including Austrians); (7) the errors of the Jewish religion and theology as well as the corrupting teaching of the Talmud were pernicious, for example, in permitting unchastity and prostitution; (8) Jews were cowards; (9) pogroms were justified because Jews were usurers. Finally, a more recent charge was that (10) Jews were leaders of the Russian Revolution.
8
In reality, this list is far from complete. By 1918 Jews were being held responsible for the defeat of the Central Powers in the world war and the shortages of food, fuel, and housing that accompanied and followed it. What is especially fascinating about this list is that it incorporates every type of antiSemitism found in Austria in the interwar years and beyond: religious, economic, social, and racial.
So ubiquitous and longlived were many of these charges that their very universality and longevity became justifications for antiSemitism. AntiSemitism must have been valid because so many people, in so many countries had believed it for such a long time. If hundreds of great men from Tacitus to Treitschke subscribed to it, then surely they could not have all been wrong, or so the argument went.
9

 

Page 3

The longevity of Christian antiSemitism clearly contributed to the idea that Jews had been universally cursed. Christian antiSemites traced the ideology back to 587 B. C. when the First Temple in Jerusalem was destroyed and the Jews began their captivity in Babylonia. The destruction of the Second Temple in Jerusalem by the Romans in 70 A. D. was seen by Christians both at the time and later as God's wrathful punishment for the Jews' rejection of Jesus.

10
Far more important was the official Roman Catholic view, held throughout the Middle Ages and until recent times, that the Jews were collectively and hereditarily responsible for the crucifixion of Jesus and were therefore the "murderers of God." Some hard-core antiSemites went so far as to claim that Jesus himself was a "Galilean who considered himself to be a mortal enemy of the Jews and thought they were the children of the devil."
11
Judas Iscariot was held by many of these racists to be a stereotypical Jew.

Another medieval idea that persisted in Austria into the twentieth century was ritual murderthe "blood libel." According to this fantasy, Jews murdered Christian children in order to use their blood for religious rituals. Between 1867 and 1914 there were no fewer than twelve trials for ritual murder in Austria-Hungary and Germany although only one trial ended in a conviction, and that was for ordinary murder, not ritual murder. AntiSemites were not troubled by these verdicts, however.
12
As late as 1934 a book was published in Austria whose title asked:
Gibt es jüdische Ritualmorde? (Is There Jewish Ritual Murder?)
, a question that was answered affirmatively after a long list of "cases" had been cataloged.
13
Although the book's publication occasioned a protest from Jews and was ultimately banned, the Styria Verlag in Graz published a pamphlet protesting the confiscation of the book.
14
Traditional Christian antiSemitism also appeared in attacks on Jewish business practices. Jewish businessmen were allegedly unethical because they had cut themselves off from the saving grace of Jesus Christ. Christian businessmen, presumably, could not hope to compete with Jews because their religion would not allow them to swindle and cheat. If taken to court, a Jewish lawyer and a sympathetic Jewish judge would be sure to acquit their "blood brother." All the thoughts and aspirations of Jews supposedly revolved around making money and avoiding hard, low-paying jobs. Although some "Aryans" were also concerned with making money, this was not the general rule, or so the antiSemites argued.
15
Although Christian antiSemitism was the most important type advocated by Austria's Christian Social Party from the moment of its founding in 1890, it was by no means monopolized by that party.
The alleged exploitation of non-Jews by Jews was one of the most effective weapons used by Austrian antiSemites of literally every political persuasion.

 

Page 4

Thus, Jewish bankers and businessmen were accused of collectively controlling virtually the entire Austrian economy. Most of the millionaires in Austria were allegedly Jews who controlled the banks and stock exchange. Bankers exploited the Christian population in the most "frightful way." The paper factories were all controlled supposedly by Jews as were most of the insurance industry and the wholesale trade of grain, cattle, wine, and other alcoholic beverages. Jewish power even extended over most means of transportation including trains, the Danube Steamship Company, and automobile clubs.

16
(The actual economic influence of the Austrian Jews will be discussed below in Chapter 14, "The Jews in Austrian Society.")

Occasionally antiSemites, especially those favoring religious and racial explanations, tried to explain the success of Jewish businessmen and the moral and economic failings of their Christian counterparts. The Jews, one writer maintained with at least some plausibility, had had centuries of experience in trading and related professions. Racial antiSemites thought that Jews had developed a different way of living than Aryans. Living a life of danger and involvement in business affairs had made them more alert, cautious, cunning, and unscrupulous, and they had passed these characteristics on to their children.
17
Another writer was far more explicit in his anti-Semitic feelings by maintaining that when Christian businessmen followed "Jewish economic practices" it was the result of "Jewish infiltration and assimilation."
18
Only rarely did an antiSemite admit that "the true cause of the downfall of Vienna's German-Aryan population lies in the sons of rich Aryan businessmen who are raised in an undisciplined and effeminate way and waste their inheritance or at least do not exploit it. . . . Only if their business collapses completely do they discover their Aryan heart and find their way to
völkisch
organizations and parties."
19
Racial antiSemites loved to use statistics to support their allegations that the Jews were a "criminal people."
20
Figures that disproved their claims were either ignored or explained away, sometimes in a ridiculous fashion. Jewish crimes were not an outgrowth of historical discrimination but an expression of their "racial characteristics." If many statistics on crimes actually favored Jews, it was because they had been "falsified by Jews."
21
Racial antiSemites also claimed that Jews were more frequently convicted of fraud than either Catholics or Protestants; they were six times as likely to be convicted of not closing their stores on Sundays as Christians and ten times more frequently convicted of employing women and children than the Christian counterparts.
22
Jews were so frequently charged with profiteeringfor example, six of twenty-one cases

 

Page 5

between 1922 and 1924that the words "Jew" and "profiteer" became almost synonymous.

23

None of these figures, however, even if taken at its face value, is particularly surprising, much less damning. It is obvious that for Jewish businessmen, for whom Sunday was not the sabbath, remaining open that day would be a far greater temptation than it would be for Christians. Furthermore, most Jewish shops were family-owned and -operated; if women and children were employed, they were likely to be family members.
24
And if a higher percentage of Jews than Christians were convicted of profiteering, there were three times as many Jewish businessmen per capita to begin with.
Anti-Semitic writers conveniently neglected to discuss the low Jewish crime rate in Austria involving theft (209 cases for every 100,000 Jews in 1916 compared with 292 for Protestants and 355 for Catholics). As to their extremely low rate for crimes of violence4.2 per 100,000 Jewish adults compared with 10.8 for Protestants and 20.3 for Catholicsthis only "proved" another favorite anti-Semitic allegation, namely that the Jews were cowards!
25
The theories of nineteenth-century racists such as Count Arthur de Gobineau, Wilhelm Marr (who is "credited" with coining the term "antiSemitism" in 1879), Houston Stewart Chamberlain, and many others lent an aura of pseudoscientific respectability to age-old prejudices. Racists now claimed that it was a scientifically demonstrable fact that Jews were sensual scoundrels who preyed on German women and girls. They were said to be imitators and exploiters in contrast to Aryans who were supposedly honest, simple, pious, and creative. These "völkisch" antiSemites thought that Jews had been undermining the original German peasant way of life for two thousand years. In particular, Jews were "materialistic" in contrast to the ''idealistic" Germans, among whom völkisch antiSemites included the Germanspeaking Austrians.
26
Racists disagreed about the physical characteristics of Jews. The more radical ones insisted that physical differences were clearly identifiable. The more "moderate" ones, however, conceded that this was not always the case. Even their material culturetheir food, shelter, clothing, and so onadmittedly differed little from Aryans. It was not their physical differences, however, that really mattered, but their urban social structure. Without a peasantry they allegedly lacked a spiritual fountain of youth. Racists believed that this spiritual difference was decisive. Therefore, like Negroes and Chinese, albeit not for identical reasons, Jews could never hope to be Germans.
27
Racists turned the American Declaration of Independence upside down: for them it was "self-evident" that all men were created unequal.

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