1. For a detailed biography of Fischhof, see Richard Charmatz, Adolf Fischhof: Ein politisches Lebensbild (Stuttgart: Cotta, 1910), pp. 1–16. Interestingly, Charmatz did not discuss Fischhof's Jewish background, and indeed barely mentioned that he was Jewish. See also Werner J. Cahnmann, “Adolf Fischhof and his Jewish Followers,” Leo Baeck Institute Yearbook, Vol. 4, 1959, p. 117, n. 9, who called attention to Charmatz's omission on this point, but himself offered few details about Fischhof's Jewish background in either of his articles.Google Scholar

2. As always in a discussion of the Habsburg Monarchy, a note about terms is necessary. “Austria–Hungary” refers to the polity that came into being after the 1867 Ausgleich, also known as the Dual Monarchy and, in more common parlance, the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Before 1867 the term “Austria–Hungary” is anachronistic. When talking about politics or government after 1867, “Austria” refers to the non-Hungarian half of the Dual Monarchy, an entity also known unofficially as “Cisleithania.” Before 1867, the term “Austria” stands for the whole of the Monarchy. I will also use the term Austria to refer to the Habsburg state in the abstract without reference to any specific time in history, i.e. “Austrian consciousness.” For the sake of consistency and simplicity I have chosen to use German place names throughout this article.Google Scholar

3. Pieter Judson, Exclusive Revolutionaries: Liberal Politics, Social Experience and National Identity in the Austrian Empire, 1848–1914 (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1996).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

4. For a detailed recounting of Fischhof's words and actions on 13 March 1848, see Charmatz, op. cit., pp. 19—21; at the Reichstag in Vienna, pp. 66–75; for his activities in the Reichstag after its move to Kremsier, see pp. 93–110. See also Stefan Walz, Staat, Nationalität, und Jüdische Identität in Österreich vom 18. Jahrhundert bis 1914 (Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 1996), pp. 49–54 for a discussion of Fischhof in 1848, and p. 65 for his work in the 1848–49 Reichstag. For a general discussion of these tumultuous events, see John Rath, The Viennese Revolution of 1848 (New York: Greenwood Press, 1957).Google Scholar

5. For more on this document, see Judson, op. cit., pp. 64–67, and Robert A. Kann, The Multinational Empire: Nationalism and National Reform in the Habsburg Monarchy, 1848–1918. Vol. II (New York: Columbia University Press, 1950), pp. 32–39.Google Scholar

6. Charmatz, op. cit., p. 127. Fischhof earned his medical degree at the University of Vienna and had been appointed an assistant doctor at the University in 1846. See Rath, op. cit., p. 394.Google Scholar

7. Charmatz, op. cit., p. 130.Google Scholar

8. For example, he published a series in the Pester Lloyd in January 1866, see nos. 18, 19, 22, 26, cited in Ibid., p. 161, and a two-part series in the Neue Freie Presse 12 and 20 November 1867 (nos. 1150, 1158), cited in Ibid., pp. 185–86.Google Scholar

9. Ibid., p. 201. In his appendix (see pp. 447–54), Charmatz included a later version of this document that was more precise yet virtually identical in content, found in the Nachlass of the Czech leader Frantisek L. Rieger. According to Charmatz, Rieger mentioned that this version appeared in an early 1868 publication.Google Scholar

10. Adolf Fischhof, Österreich und die Bürgschaften seines Bestandes (Vienna: Wallishauser, 1869).Google Scholar

11. Kann, op. cit., p. 32.Google Scholar

12. See Charmatz, op. cit., pp. 265–77, for letters from Fischhof on the Bohemian Landtag compromise and the Hohenwart reforms (see below), including his many missives to Rieger, his compatriot as far back as the 1848–49 Reichstag. See also pp. 319–24 for more letters between Rieger and Fischhof that discuss the latter's continuing mission and a plea to Rieger to cooperate and work out differences with the Germans.Google Scholar

13. Adolf Fischhof, Die Sprachenrechte in den Staaten gemischter Nationalität (Vienna: Mainz, 1885), p. 46. These articles had appeared in the Wiener Allgemeine Zeitung in February, March and April 1884 (see Charmatz, op. cit., p. 351). Fischhof praised the 1870–71 agreement, and argued that it merited the attention of anyone interested in solving the nationality question in Bohemia, the province with the most intractable national problems of any in Austria. He included the text in Appendix C, I., pp. 74–78 of Die Sprachenrechte in den Staaten gemischter Nationalität.Google Scholar

14. Oskar Jászi, The Dissolution of the Habsburg Monarchy (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1929), p. 113.Google Scholar

15. For the one major project during this period that did not deal with nationality issues in Austria, see Adolf Fischhof, On the Reduction of Continental Armies, translated by Humphry William Freeland (London: Williams and Norgate, 1875).Google Scholar

16. Charmatz, op. cit., pp. 326–27.Google Scholar

17. This conflict emerged once again in 1897, during the crisis caused by the issuance of the Badeni language ordinances. These ordinances mandated that the Habsburg bureaucracy in Bohemia and Moravia be fully bilingual, and included a provision that all Habsburg officials in the province speak both Czech and German by 1901. First Germans across the Monarchy began protesting violently until Minister President Badeni withdrew the ordinances, then Czechs rioted to protest their withdrawal. For a more detailed discussion of this crucial affair, one that brought the Reichsrat to a standstill for weeks, see Steven Beller, Francis Joseph, pp. 148–52 (London: Longman, 1996).Google Scholar

18. This proposal did not deal with the language of communication between offices or between the province and the capital. In the 1870s, all communication within the Bohemian bureaucracy and between itself and Vienna was in German, and had been as long as anything like a modern bureaucracy had existed in the Monarchy. Fischhof did not protest this policy.Google Scholar

19. Fischhof, Die Sprachenrechte in den Staaten gemischter Nationalität, pp. 47–48. This publication was a collection of articles that had appeared in the Wiener Allgemeine Zeitung in February, March and April 1884 (Charmatz, op. cit., p. 351).Google Scholar

20. Adolf Fischhof, Der österreichische Sprachenzwist (Vienna: Manz, 1888), pp. 31–32. These articles first appeared in the Neues Wiener Tagblatt (Nr. 45, 58, 72, 86) in February and March 1888 (Charmatz, op. cit., p. 361).Google Scholar

21. Fischhof, Der Österreichische Sprachenzwist, pp. 32–33.Google Scholar

22. Ibid., p. 3.Google Scholar

23. Ibid., pp. 4–5.Google Scholar

24. For a more complete discussion of the details of this event, including the full text of Fischhof's statement at the Musikvereinsaal, see Charmatz, op. cit., pp. 389–97. Fischhof's written text was actually delivered by Dr Edmund Singer, although Fischhof greeted the crowd and thanked them for attending before turning the floor over to Singer (Ibid., p. 389).Google Scholar

25. Unfortunately, Fischhof and his allies, mostly the ever-shrinking contingent of democratic left-liberals, failed to convince their audience to join in this new political organization and support federalist reforms. After Fischhof and other supporters had delivered their remarks, a group of German nationalists, ironically consisting largely of Jews and led by Heinrich Friedjung, a Jew who was at that time a virulent German nationalist, disrupted the discussion and violently dispersed the gathering. As Austro-German liberals became more openly nationalistic, they had little desire for a compromise position that would, from their perspective, strengthen the Austrian Slavs at German expense. See Werner J. Cahnmann, “Adolf Fischhof als Verfechter der Nationalität und seine Auswirkung auf das jüdisch-politische Denken in Österreich,” in Wolfgang Häusler, ed., Studia Judaica Austriaca, Bd. I (Vienna: Verlag Herold, 1974), p. 90, n. 16. The Neue Freie Presse condemned the new party, and mocked the gathering's inauspicious conclusion in the paper's lead article on 18 July 1882. Other pro-centralist German liberal institutions and leaders dismissed it as well as a conservative, pro-Slav party (Charmatz, op. cit., pp. 397–98). When the new party failed, most of the older leaders of the Viennese democratic movement retired. See Joseph Samuel Bloch, My Reminiscences, Vol. I (Vienna: R. Lowit, 1923), pp. 58–59.Google Scholar

26. As quoted in Charmatz, op. cit., p. 390.Google Scholar

27. As quoted in Ibid., p. 254. Charmatz reprinted this as well as numerous other letters.Google Scholar

28. Fischhof, Österreich und die Bürgschaften seines Bestandes, p. 26. One could see these remarks as Fischhof simply trying to make the best of Austria's exclusion from the soon to be unified German Empire. His positive attitude, however, does correspond with his vision of Austria as a German-led, yet basically pluralistic state.Google Scholar

29. Ibid., pp. 28–29.Google Scholar

30. Adolf Fischhof, Ein Blick auf Oesterreichs Lage, p. 21 (Vienna: Wallishauser, 1866).Google Scholar

31. Ibid., pp. 23–24.Google Scholar

32. Ibid., p. 24.Google Scholar

33. Fischhof, Österreich und die Bürgschaften seines Bestandes, p. 33.Google Scholar

34. Fischhof, Ein Blick auf Oesterreichs Lage, p. 25.Google Scholar

35. Fischhof, Österreich und die Bürgschaften seines Bestandes, p. 36.Google Scholar

36. Ibid., pp. 36–37.Google Scholar

37. Ibid., p. 142. Ironically, he compared such a development to the tragedy that befell Europe when German barbarians overran the Roman Empire.Google Scholar

38. Fischhof, Die Sprachenrechte in den Staaten gemischter Nationalität, p. 12.Google Scholar

39. Fischhof, Österreich und die Bürgschaften seines Bestandes, pp. 142–43.Google Scholar

40. Ibid., p. 143.Google Scholar

41. Ibid., p. 141.Google Scholar

42. Ibid., p. 61.Google Scholar

43. Ibid., p. 143.Google Scholar

44. Ibid., p. 137.Google Scholar

45. Ibid., p. 143.Google Scholar

46. As quoted in Ibid.Google Scholar

47. Ibid., p. 33.Google Scholar

48. Ibid., p. 148.Google Scholar

49. Ibid., pp. 148–49.Google Scholar

50. Ibid., p. 63.Google Scholar

51. Ibid., p. 60.Google Scholar

52. Ibid.Google Scholar

53. Ibid., pp. 26–27.Google Scholar

54. Ibid., p. 28.Google Scholar

55. Ibid., p. 30.Google Scholar

56. Ibid., p. 43.Google Scholar

57. Ibid., p. 4.Google Scholar

58. František Palacký, Oesterreichs Staatsidee (Prag: n.p., 1866), p. 83, Appendix A. This appendix reprinted a letter Palacký wrote in which he rejected an invitation to join the Frankfurt Parliament as a delegate from Bohemia, which had been a part of the German Confederation. Fischhof worked with Palacký during the 1848–49 Reichstag, and referred to the Czech's writing on more than one occasion.Google Scholar

59. Fischhof, Österreich und die Bürgschaften seines Bestandes, pp. 67–68. In describing the citizens of a national state as related by blood, Fischhof seems to be making a case for a racial definition of nationhood that would have excluded him, as well as all Jews, from the German Volk. This statement is odd, to say the least, in light of his Jewish faith and self-identification as a German. He did not explain where his Judaism fit into his identification as a German or Austrian, or how it fit into his identity at all in his public political writings (see below for further discussion).Google Scholar

60. Ibid., p. 6.Google Scholar

61. Ibid., p. 30.Google Scholar

62. Ibid.Google Scholar

63. Michael Silber, “The Historical Experience of German Jewry and Its Impact on Haskalah and Reform in Hungary,” in Jacob Katz, ed., Toward Modernity: The European Jewish Model (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Books, 1986), pp. 107–58, especially p. 107.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

64. Steven Beller, “Patriotism and the National Identity of Habsburg Jewry,” Leo Baeck Institute Year Book, XLI, 1996, p. 237.Google Scholar

65. Sigmund Singer (Fischhof's nephew), “Erinnerungen an Adolph Fischhof zu seinem 10. Todestage,” Neue Freie Presse, 22 March 1903, cited in Cahnmann, “Adolf Fischhof and his Jewish Followers,” p. 121, n. 18.Google Scholar

66. For an alternate interpretation, see Cahnmann, “Adolf Fischhof als Verfechter der Nationalität und seine Auswirkung auf das jüdisch-politische Denken in Österreich,” p. 82. Cahnmann argued that Fischhof “implied” that he considered Jews one of the nationalities that should be recognized and given autonomy. Cahnmann stated that Fischhof only mentioned Jews directly one time, and quoted a passage from p. 38 of Österreich und die Bürgschaften seines Bestandes, in which Fischhof compared the plight of Jews and Slavs. However, I did not find the quotation Cahnmann cited anywhere on or near page 38, and I found no statement by Fischhof that either implicitly or explicitly recognized Jews as one of the Austrian nationalities on that page or in any other section of his writings.Google Scholar

67. As quoted in Charmatz, op. cit., pp. 279–81.Google Scholar

68. The push to involve more Jews in agriculture reflected the hope that they would assimilate as they received emancipation and legal equality. See Jacob Katz, Out of the Ghetto: The Social Background of Jewish Emancipation, 1770–1870 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1973), pp. 60, 179.Google Scholar

69. Fischhof, Österreich und die Bürgschaften seines Bestandes, p. 141.Google Scholar

70. See Judson, op. cit.Google Scholar

71. See also Lewis B. Namier, 1848: The Revolution of the Intellectuals (London: Geoffrey Cumberlege, 1944). Namier condemned the German liberal revolutionaries of 1848 for their blatant national egoism. Presaging Judson, he traced Germany's twentieth century barbarity back to German liberalism rather than Bismarck's Prussian militarism, and referred to the German liberals as “forerunners of Hitler” (p. 33).Google Scholar

72. Judson, op. cit., pp. 260–61.Google Scholar