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

he and his colleagues would halt the antisemitic agitation raging in Bohemia, Moravia, and Slovakia.

Full-fledged pogroms erupted in many places in Bohemia and Moravia in the months after the end of World War I, and these pogroms shocked the Jews who always assumed that anti-Jewish violence only occurred in the East. The rioters blamed the Jews for war-time food shortages and attacked the Jews for their traditional loyalty to Austria and to German culture. In sharp contrast to the Jewish press coverage of pogroms in Galicia, which held Polish authorities responsible, virtually all reports of Czech pogroms blamed the hungry, ignorant mobs and insisted that the Czech authorities would squelch such violence. The Jewish press thus contrasted bad Poland and good Czechoslovakia.32

The Zionists, who had rejoiced in November 1918 when Masaryk made a public declaration of support for the Jewish national movement,33 counted on him to forge a decent Czech state and end antisemitism.34 35 When he arrived in Prague in December 1918, Selbstwehr praised him as the great leader, who would lead his people “aus dem österreichischen Sumpf zur Freiheit”. The editors hoped that “vor seinem ruhigen und unparteiischen Urteil endlich der kulturfeindliche Antisemitismus einem besonneneren und gerechteren, für die Tschechen selbst ehrenhafteren Verhalten weichen würde” and that the Jews would enjoy füll equality.” The Brünn Zionist newspaper, Jüdische Volksstimme, echoed this sentiment in March 1919:

Der 68jährige Lenker des neuen Staates, welcher die Zügel der Regierung mit jugendlichem Mut und Entschlossenheit ergriff, versprach wiederholt, auch den jüdischen Staatsbürgern vollen Schutz und Sicherheit zu verschaffen und wird sein Versprechen auch wahr zu machen wissen.36

How nicely philosophy professor Masaryk fit into Emperor Franz Joseph’s shoes!

The Crisis of National Identity: Jews and the Collapse of the Habsburg Monarchy

327; Riff, Michael A.: The Ambiguity of T. G. Masaryk’s Attitudes on the “Jewish Question”. ln:T. G. Masaryk ( 1 8 5 0-1 9 3 7 ), vol. 2, Thinker and Critic, ed. by Robert B. Pynsent. New York 1989, pp. 77-87; Stölzl, Christoph: Die “Burg” und die Juden: T. G. Masaryk and sein Kreis im Spannungsfeld der jüdischen Frage: Assimilation, Antisemitismus und Zionismus. In: Die “Burg”: Einflußreiche politische Kräfte um Masaryk und BeneS, ed. by Karl Bosl, vol. 2. Munich 1974, pp. 79-110.

32 See for example, Selbstwehr: (6 December 1918), pp. 1-2 and (13 December 1918), p. 1.

33 Ibidem, (8 November 1918), p. 1, (15 November 1918), p. 1; Central Zionist Archives, Jerusalem [hereafter CZA], Z3/217 telegram of Ludwig Singer, president of Jewish National Council, 6 November 1918.

34 See CZA, Z3/180 report, Jüdischer Nationalrat. Prague, (23 December 1918).

35 S e I b s t w e h r : (20 December 1918), p. 1.

36 J VS: (28 March 1919), pp. 3-4.

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