Vienna and the Jews 1867-1938: A Cultural History (review)

Volume 9, No.2 l-Vinter 1991 93 Wistrich believes that the rise of the antisemitic Christian Social party and the appointment of its leader, Karl Lueger, as mayor of Vienna in 1897 were far more significant than antisemitic developments in neighboring Germany or Hungary. Although Austrian antisemitism was a prerequisite for both the first great Zionist leader, Nathan Birnbaum, and Zionism's most famous and successful exponent, Theodor Herzl, the great majority of preWorld War I Viennese Jews rejected Zionism and preferred fighting antisemitism through the Austrian Israelite Union, founded in 1886 by Rabbi Joseph Samuel Bloch. The activities of the Union, especially its Defense Bureau , prove that assimilationist Jews did not blindly resign themselves to antisemitic rule. On the contrary, the Union was a forum for the forceful expression ofJewish pride and identity. As for Herzl, his rejection of assimilation and passionate espousal of Zionism did not result from anyone antisemitic event, not even the Dreyfus affair which he witnessed in Paris. Herzl differed sharply from the assimilationists in maintaining that modern antisemitism was a product of emancipation and Jewish-Gentile economic competition; it was not a mere remnant of the pre-emancipation age as Jewish liberals believed. Unfortunately, Herzl's conclusion, that Jews could never assimilate, was all too eagerly exploited by antisemites, as the co-editor and proprietor of the Neue Freie Presse, Eduard Bacher, warned the Zionist leader already in February 1896. There is little to criticize in Wistrich's masterful study. The judgments of the author, an Associate Professor of Modern European and Jewish History at Hebrew University, are nearly always reasonable and well substantiated with examples. The book would have benefited from a concluding chapter which might have drawn together many of the arguments made in the nearly 700 pages of text. Otherwise, I was disappointed only by the far-too-abbreviated bibliography-which includes only a fraction of the works cited in the footnotes-and the index, which lacks subheadings. These defects are minor, however, in a book which should remain the standard work in the field for many years to come. Bruce F. Pauley Department of History University of Central Florida Vienna and the Jews 1867-1938: A Cultural History, by Steven Beller. Cambridge : Cambridge University Press, 1989. 271 pp. $34.50. Written in response to Carl Schorske's Fin de Siecle Vienna, which plays down the specifically Jewish contribution to Viennese culture, this volume 94 SHOFAR plays up the role of Jews to the hilt. Indeed, it concludes unabashedly that "it was indeed its Jews which made Vienna what it was in the realm of modern culture." The book is a revised version of Beller's doctoral dissertation at Cambridge University. Beller presents his arguments very forcefully, albeit somewhat defensively, documenting his sources carefully and even providing in his footnotes the German original for translated quotes in the text, just in case you don't believe the author's version. Beller makes his point, but I believe he overstates his case. Beller devotes the first part of the book to trying to demonstrate the preponderance of Jews in the Viennese cultural elite statistically. He lists both Jewish and non-Jewish figures by name according to field and attempts to weigh their relative importance. In attempting to show that the Jews made up much, if not most, of the liberal bourgeoisie in Vienna, he analyzes Jewish attendance at universities and gymnasia, as well as Jewish dominance in the liberal professions and in coffee houses and salons. Whether one can actually prove cultural influence by using statistics and what constitutes the criteria for admission into the "cultural elite" remain unclear, however. Beller's definition of "who is a Jew" is all-encompassing; in fact, at times it seems as if just about everyone in Viennese high culture around the turn of the century and thereafter was Jewish either directly or indirectly. Conversion did not provide an escape from Jewishness, even if it was one's grandfather (or great-grandfather) who was baptized. It seems that even non-Jews in certain intellectual circles started to think more or less like Jews, if they were married to Jews or associated with them regularly! In...