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A Note on Galician Jewish Migration to Vienna

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 February 2009

Marsha L. Rozenblit
Marsha L. Rozenblit
Affiliation:
University of Maryland, College Park
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Extract

In a 1975 article in the Austrian History Yearbook, “The Migration of Galician Jews to Vienna, 1857–1880,” Anson Rabinbach asserted that the rapid growth of the Jewish community of Vienna in the second half of the nineteenth century was caused by the massive immigration of Jews from Galicia. He argued that the largest wave of Galician Jewish migration to the Austrian capital occurred between 1857 and 1869. After 1880, he observed, Jewish migration from Galicia declined markedly. Only one of the three people who commented on this article, Scott M. Eddie, pointed out the absence of substantive proof and the existence of logical inconsistencies in Rabinbach's arguments. Moreover, Eddie raised the important question, never addressed by Rabinbach, of the significance of Bohemian and Moravian migration in the expansion of the Jewish population of Vienna in the decades before World War I. Eddie wondered: “Why didn't greater geographical proximity and cultural similarities cause them (Bohemian and Moravian Jews) to be the principal source of Jewish influx into Vienna.”

Type
Peoples and Culture
Information
Austrian History Yearbook , Volume 19 , Issue 1 , January 1983 , pp. 143 - 152
Copyright
Copyright © Center for Austrian Studies, University of Minnesota 1983

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References

1 Rabinbach, Anson G., “The Migration of Galician Jews to Vienna, 1857–1880,” Austrian History Yearbook, XI (1975), 44–54.Google Scholar

2 Eddie, Scott M., “Galician Jews as Migrants: An Alternative Hypothesis,” Austrian History Yearbook, XI (1975), 61.Google Scholar

3 Jeiteles, Israel, Die Kultusgemeinde der Israeliten in Wien mit Benützung des statistischen Volkszählungsoperatus vom Jahre 1869 (Vienna: L. Rosner, 1873), pp. 40–42Google Scholar; Löw, Akos, “Die soziale Zusammensetzung der Wiener Juden nach den Trauungs- und Geburtsmatrikeln, 1784–1848” (unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of Vienna [Philosophy], 1952), pp. 161–163Google Scholar; Austria, K. K. statistische Central-Commission, Österreichische Statistik, n.s. 2, no. 1, p. 33*; Statistisches Jahrbuch der Stadt Wien, 1910, p. 25.

4 The birth- and marriage-records of the Jewish community of Vienna from 1784–1938 are housed in the present offices of the Israelitische Kultusgemeinde in Vienna, Bauernfeldgasse 4, A-1190 Wien. The tax records are part of an extensive archive of the Vienna Jewish Gemeinde which, thanks to the clearsightedness of the Gemeinde Board, survived World War II. The IKG archive is now housed at the Central Archives for the History of the Jewish People in Jerusalem. The tax records are file AW 805/1–25. For a fuller discussion of this analysis see Rozenblit, Marsha L., The Jews of Vienna 1867–1914: Assimilation and Identity (Albany, N.Y.: State University of New York Press, 1984).Google Scholar

5 Only about one-third of the Jewish community could afford to pay taxes to the Israelitische Kultusgemeinde. In 1896, for example, about ten thousand Jewish households paid taxes to the Gemeinde. Multiplying this number by five to account for family members, only about fifty thousand Jews out of approximately 150,000 were taxpayers. The 1896 taxpayers are listed in Verzeichnis der im Wiener Gemeindegebiete wohnhaften Wähler für Neuwahl des Cultus-Vorstandes im Jahre 1896, Central Archives for the History of the Jewish People, AW 48/1.

6 In his 1873 study of the 1869 census, Israel Jeiteles (pp. 56–57) found that 3.4% of the Jews in Vienna were Viennese, 11.3% Bohemian, 20.9% Moravian, 13% Galician, and 46.3% Hungarian. Jeiteles derived these figures from the number of Jewish families, rather than from the number of Jewish individuals in Vienna. Rabinbach ignored this study in his article. For a more complete discussion of Jewish migration to Vienna see Rozenblit, The Jews of Vienna.

7 The Jewish preference for family migration has been discussed in the literature on mass migration of Jews to the United States. See for example Joseph, Samuel, Jewish Immigration to the United States (New York: Columbia University, 1914), pp. 127–132.Google Scholar The Galician Jews who fled to Vienna during World War I also came with their families. See Tartakower, Aryeth, “Jewish Migratory Movements in Austria in Recent Generations,” in Fraenkel, Josef, The Jews of Austria (London: Valentine, Mitchell, 1967), p. 291.Google Scholar

8 Rauchberg, Heinrich, Die Bevölkerung Oesterreichs auf Grund der Ergebnisse der Volkszählung vom 31. December 1890 (Vienna: A. Hölder, 1895), pp. 101–102, 111Google Scholar; idem, “Der Zug nach der Stadt,” Statistische Monatsschrift (Vienna) XIX (1893), 130, 138Google Scholar; Weber, Adna F., The Growth of Cities in the Nineteenth Century: A Study in Statistics (Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 1963), pp. 276–278.Google Scholar

9 Löw, p. 179. Löw must have miscalculated somewhat because his figures do not add up to 100%.

10 Schmidtbauer, Peter, “Zur sozialen Situation der Wiener Juden im Jahre 1857,” Studia Judaica Austriaca, VI (1978), 62.Google Scholar Rabinbach, of course, could not have known Schmidtbauer's work.

11 See note 5 above.

12 The size of the population of hometowns was obtained from K. K. statistische Central-Commission, Gemeinde-Lexikon der im Reichsrathe vertretenen Königreiche und Länder bearbeitet auf Grund der Ergebnisse der Volkszählung vom 31. December 1900, 14 vols. (Vienna: A. Holder, 1903–1908)Google Scholar; idem, Allgemeines Ortschaften-Verzeichniss, der im Reichsrathe vertretenen Königreiche und Länder nach den Ergebnissen der Volkszählung vom 31. December 1900 nebst vollständigem alphabetischem Namenregister (Vienna: A. Hölder, 1902)Google Scholar; and Hungary, Magyar Kir Központi statisztikai hivatal, Publications statistiques hongroises, n. s. 1: Dénombrement de la population des pays de la couronne hongroises en 1900, Première Partie; Démographie générale suivant communes (Budapest: Pesti Könyvnyomda-Részvénytársaság, 1902).Google Scholar

13 Thon, Jakob, Die Juden in Oesterreich (Berlin: Bureau für Statistik der Juden, 1908), p. 19.Google Scholar

14 Wandycz, Piotr S., The Lands of Partitioned Poland, 1795–1918 (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1974), pp. 222–223Google Scholar; Rabinbach, “Migration of Galician Jews to Vienna, 1857–1880,” pp. 50–51.

15 Kaplun-Kogan, Wladimir W., Die jüdische Wanderbewegung in der neuesten Zeit (1880–1914) (Bonn: A. Marcus and E. Weber, 1919)Google Scholar; Fleischer, Siegfried, “Enquête über die Lage der jüdischen Bevölkerung Galiziens,” in Nossig, Alfred, ed., Jüdische Statistik (Berlin: Jüdischer Verlag, 1903), pp. 219–220Google Scholar; Wandycz, , The Lands of Partitioned Poland, 1795–1918, pp. 220–226Google Scholar; Mahler, Raphael, “The Economic Background of Jewish Emigration from Galicia to the United States,” YIVO Annual of Jewish Social Science, VII (1952), 255–267Google Scholar; Rosenfeld, Max, “Die jüdische Bevölkerung in den Städten Galiziens 1881–1910,” Zeitschrift für Demographie und Statistik der Juden, IX, no. 2 (02 1913), pp. 19–20Google Scholar; “Galicia,” in Encyclopedia Judaica (1970), XVI, 1329.Google Scholar

16 Austrian (i. e., Galician) immigration to the United States leaped from seven thousand in 1898 to eleven thousand in 1899 and seventeen thousand in 1900, an annual figure which was sustained until World War I. See Rischin, Moses, The Promised City: New York's Jews, 1870–1914 (New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1970), p. 270.Google Scholar

17 Tartakower, , “Jewish Migratory Movements in Austria,” p. 290.Google Scholar

18 Rothkirchen, Livia, “Slovakia: I., 1848–1918,” in The Jews of Czechoslovakia, 2 vols. (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1968), I, 77–78.Google Scholar

19 For further discussion see Rozenblit, , The Jews of Vienna, 1867–1914: Assimilation and Identity.Google Scholar