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
as participants in its dominant culture, but they could not identify as members of its dominant nation, at least not in the same way as Germans, Czechs, or Poles. Moreover, widespread antisemitic violence complicated the possibilities of adopting a new national identity. Most Jews either hoped or pretended that the new successor states would resemble the old Austria and not force them to adopt a new national identity. The crisis of identity precipitated by the collapse of the Habsburg Monarchy induced many Jews, far more than before the war, to assert a Jewish ethnic identity, and in many cases, to insist that the Jews themselves formed a nation. In all the successor states Jews formed Jewish national councils to demand the recognition of the Jews as a nation and the extension to them of national minority rights. Even when these councils failed, they represented a significant attempt at constructing a new Jewish identity, especially in Poland and Czechoslovakia, where a Jewish national identity made the most sense, given the presence of several national minority groups. Not all Jews embraced Jewish nationalism, but the post-war crisis made most of them insist on their Jewish ethnic identity and solidarity far more vigorously than before. This paper will focus on the German-speaking Jews of the Austrian half of the Dual Monarchy. These Jews faced the gravest crisis of identity when the supranational monarchy collapsed in 1918. Mourning the End of Habsburg Austria It is a truism of Central European history that the nationalities of the old Austria rejoiced in their new-found independence, glad to be free of Habsburg domination. Yet it is also true that in October 1918 most Habsburg subjects were too weary of war and too hungry to be as concerned about political sovereignty as the nationalist politicians and propagandists. Moreover, many states had to craft new national identities even while they contained national minorities unhappy to find themselves in states dominated by other nations. Many old Austrians did not know where they belonged. Members of the old Habsburg elite - high level bureaucrats and army officers - felt utterly homeless. So too did many Jews. Jewish response to the collapse of Habsburg Austria varied considerably by region and by political or religious orientation. Jews in Vienna - both those long resident and the Galician refugees stranded there - felt the loss of Habsburg Austria most acutely. Most Jews in Vienna genuinely mourned the dissolution of the monarchy at the end of October 1918. When the German deputies in the Austrian parliament declared a German-Austrian state on October 21, Heinrich Schreiber expressed the anguish of Viennese Jews, wondering “wird dieser Tag für uns Juden ein anderer, neuer, neunter Ab”, the traditional day for mourning catastrophes in Jewish history. He reiterated the traditional Jewish loyalty to Habsburg Austria declaring: The Crisis of National Identity: Jews and the Collapse of the Habsburg Monarchy 43
