The importance of Austria and especially Vienna for such a study far outweighs the comparatively small size and population of the country. Although the Republic of Austria that was created in November 1918 could boast little more than 32,000 square miles and scarcely 6.5 million inhabitants, its Jewish population was fairly large. The country's 220,000 Jews were three and a half times more numerous as a proportion of the total population than the 550,000 Jews of Germany. For Vienna alone the numbers were even more significant. In the 1920s over 200,000 self-professed Jews lived in the Austrian capital, making it the sixth largest Jewish city in the world after New York, Warsaw, Chicago, Philadelphia, and Budapest. In Central and Western Europe Vienna had by far the highest concentration of Jewish residents. About 1 in every 9 Viennese (10.8 percent) was Jewish. By contrast, the highest percentage of Jews found in Germany4.7 percent in Frankfurt am Mainwas less than half that of Vienna. Only 3.8 percent of Berlin's population (173,000) was of the Mosaic faith.
1
|
