Helga Embacher, Gertrude Enderle-Burcel, Hanns Haas, Charlotte Natmessnig (Hrsg.): Sonderband 5. Vom Zerfall der Grossreiche zur Europäischen Union – Integrationsmodelle im 20. Jahrhundert (2000)
Von der alten zur neuen Ordnung - Marsha Rozenblit: The Crisis of National Identity: Jews and the Collapse of the Habsburg Monarchy
language and identified with its culture. The creation of a German-Austria presented the Jews who lived there, essentially the Jews of Vienna, with a grave crisis. They had liked the old Austrian identity because it had afforded them so much latitude for Jewish ethnicity, but such ethnicity would be more problematic in a nation-state that demanded the political, cultural, and ethnic/national loyalty of its citizens. The Jews in German-Austria certainly professed their loyalty to the new state, as well as their affiliation with German language and culture, but they could not bring themselves to adopt a German national identity that had the same meaning for them as it did for the Germans. The virulence of antisemitism in the new state did not make their task any easier. Although they generally did not view the new state as a reincarnation of old Austria, they nevertheless hoped that they could continue the old Austrian tri-partite identity, loyal to the state and its culture, yet also asserting a Jewish ethnicity. Indeed, although the new political logic might have dictated embracing a German national identity, in fact more Jews turned to Jewish ethnicity, and also to full-blown Jewish nationalism, than ever before. Zionists reacted to the creation of the new Austria by assuming, without any evidence, that the new German-Austrian nation-state would practice the same kind of tolerance for national minorities as did the old multinational Austria. Under the leadership of Robert Strieker, they tirelessly lobbied for the state to recognize the Jews as a nation and grant them national rights. Such rights were never even remotely possible, but Strieker and the Austrian Zionist establishment persisted nevertheless. As in Czechoslovakia, the Zionists in Austria created a Jewish National Council to demand national rights for Jews in the new state. The Jüdischer Nationalrat of German-Austria, created on November 4, 1918, declared the loyalty of “die Staatsbürger jüdischer Nationalität” to the Volksstaat Deutschösterreich. The Council demanded that the new state recognize the Jews as a nation and accord them minority rights, namely the right to control Jewish cultural affairs, including education, and Jewish representation in all elected bodies and relevant government agencies.46 The Jewish National Council fervently hoped that the new Austria would not function as a German nation-state. Jewish nationalists hoped that like the old Austria, the Austrian Republic would simply be a state, albeit one that allowed them to affirm a Jewish national identity.47 48 At the same time, they proclaimed their loyalty to the state and insisted that “wir deutsch-sprechenden Nationaljuden” are “Freunde der deutschen Kultur und des deutschen Volkes, in dessen Sprache wir denken und fühlen”.4" As one spokesman for Zionist youth noted: “Wir wissen, dass wir nicht The Crisis of National Identity: Jews and the Collapse of the Habsburg Monarchy 46 CZA, Z3/2I4, Denkschrift, Jüdischer Nationalrat für Deutschösterreich (4 November 1918). 47 JZ: (15 November 1918), pp 1-2. 48 I b i dem , (6 December 1918), p. 5. 53
