Barrie Handschu

Birth of Modern Europe

H Band

Zionism: The Cause of National

Anti-Semitism in Austria

  Anti-Semitism has been a threat to Jews all over the world since Roman times. The Jews have been blamed for many things, one of which was the death of Christ. Since then, Christians and Catholics have had preconceived notions about the actions that Jews take in to mobilize in society. During the Middle Ages, Jews lived in diasporas, small communities where Jews were forced to live in isolation. During the Middle Ages, Jews were not allowed to own land, and because they did not want to be poor, they began to deal with finance and currency. In the Middle Ages, if someone had property, they had power, but if the only thing they had was money, they were not viewed as having power, especially if they were Jewish. As the years went on, the way Jews were treated in Austria became worse and worse. They were persecuted on the grounds that they were different because of their religion. Many Jews during the middle ages and through the 18^th and 19^th centuries were orthodox, and could not work on Saturday because that was the day of their sabbath. When the Jews lived in the diasporas, they were forced to work in the sabbath, and during the Catholic and Christian holidays, they were locked up inside the gates. Non-Jewish landlords owned the buildings that the jews lived in. Because the Jews could not live anywhere else, the landlords made rent high, and the living conditions disgustingly low. The food was rationed, and there was never enough. People lived ten in a room, and because the environment was not sanitary, disease spread quickly. As the end of the 19^th century came, finance became important, and suddenly, Jews were gaining power and status in society. Many Catholics and Christians did not like this, and just like in past centuries, they tried to bring the Jews down. Vienna was becoming a great city, and most of the ghettos dispersed, and the people moved to rural areas around Vienna, or in the countryside. The bourgeois Jews of the 19^th century lived and worked in the city, and had influence over what went on around them. Theodor Herzl, a writer born in Budapest, Hungary was a member of the Jewish bourgeoise in Vienna, and had modern ideas about Judaism. For generations, the idea of Zionism floated around in the Jewish community. Finally in 1897, Herzl wrote an essay on Modern Zionism, and changed the way non-Jews looked at Jews in Austria and the rest of Europe. This essay was a response to anti-semitism in Austria, and also a response to the Dreyfus Affair in France. This paper caused great commotion all over the world, and worsened the treatment of Jews in Europe. Modern Zionism helped to create an environment full of Anti-semitism and stregthened Austria’s nationalism against Jews.