Multiauthored books are notoriously difficult to review. Often lacking a well-defined thesis and covering a wide variety of subjects, they are problematic to critique and it is impossible to do justice to all the authors. Such problems are especially evident in Antisemitismus in Österreich 1933‒1938, a massive work that resulted from a four-day conference at the University of Vienna. Merely to enumerate the titles of all fifty-nine articles in this book and identify the authors and their credentials would consume most of my allotted space. These problems are amplified by the book covering far more time than the dates contained in the title. Quite understandably, many of the articles cover the entire First Republic and some trace antisemitism back to the Middle Ages. Still others devote some space to the Holocaust and to the postwar years.
Fortunately, all the articles are interesting and quite readable even for a non-German speaker. The problem with the book's extreme length is ameliorated to some degree by most of the articles containing summaries or conclusions. The lengths of the contributions range from the forty-two pages of Florian Wenninger's article on the antisemitism of the Christian Social Party (which includes a six-page bibliography) to the scant eight pages devoted to the antisemitism of the various Heimwehr organizations, less than one of which lists sources. Regrettably, Antisemitismus in Österreich contains no maps and few photographs, reproductions of antisemitic posters, or graphs. One notable exception is Murray G. Hall's article on a Graz publishing house that includes pictures of sixteen antisemitic caricatures. Matthias Marschik's very interesting and important article on Austrian sport contains ten photographs from that era.
The most important strength of Antisemitismus in Österreich is the breadth of its scope. In the first part (Grundlagen) the more familiar topics are covered, such as the history of antisemitism in Austria, the legal status of the Jewish population, the major political parties (Catholic, Socialist, and nationalist), private organizations, laws, and the number of Austrian Jews. The second section (Politik und Religion) is devoted to all the major parties along with the class and location of their members. Both Roman Catholicism and evangelical Christianity are included. The third part (Kunst und Kultur) includes not just adult literature but also a very interesting contribution by Susanne Blumesberger on the little-known subject of literature for children and young people between 1933 and 1938. Matthias Marschik's article on antisemitism in sport makes the important argument that sport was one of the few things that brought Jews and non-Jews at least occasionally together. Wirtschaft und Berufe (part four) contains contributions by Stefan Eminger and Marie-Theres Arnbom on numerous efforts to boycott Jewish stores and the common practice of summer resorts not accepting Jews. Other reports cover medicine, dentistry, and the legal profession—in all of which Jews were decisively overrepresented. However, they were even more badly underrepresented in civil and foreign service jobs.
The book's fifth section, Wissenschaft, covers the more familiar area of antisemitism in the Austrian Hochschulen and universities, where antisemitism was the most extreme and was often violent. Johannes Koll makes the important and frequently neglected point that learning and scholarship were damaged by antisemitism when violence interfered with learning and when highly qualified Jewish scholars were not hired or were not promoted. Part six covers all the Bundesländer except Vienna. Gerhard Baumgartner argues that antisemitism was relatively mild in the Burgenland in part because of its diminutive Jewish population and in part because it had belonged to Hungary until 1921. The Jewish population at the opposite end of the country, in Vorarlberg, was even smaller, consisting of only forty-two officially recognized Jews. This fact did not prevent newspapers from publishing antisemitic articles or declaring that German Jewish refugees were not welcome in the province. However, there were no physical or legal antisemitic practices in Vorarlberg, according to Niko Hofinger. Antisemitism was also relatively mild in Upper Austria as reported by Christoph Ebner; Linz and Wels being important exceptions. Styria and Carinthia were relative hotbeds of nationalism and antisemitism because of their Slovene minorities and their nearness to Yugoslavia. The relatively high incidence of antisemitism among evangelical Christians also played a role because of their relatively high numbers. Gert Kerschbaumer maintains that the Salzburg music festival played a major role in espousing antisemitism in the province.
The section on Justiz has only two articles. Christiane Rothländer discusses obvious antisemitism in the judicial system in the early 1930s and Gabriele Schneider continues the story for the years from 1936 to the Anschluss in 1938. An article by Hans Haas in the short eighth section, Mikrogeschichtliches, asserts that Jews were well assimilated in the town of Horn in Lower Austria. In the ninth and last section, Jüdische Positionen, Doron Rabinovici discusses the various strategies Austrian Jews had for combating antisemitism and credits the eight-thousand-member Bund jūdischer Frontsoldaten, organized in 1930, as being perhaps the most effective means Jews had of combating antisemitism, especially in its most violent forms.
Several authors maintain that antisemitism was somewhat weaker, or at least less manifest, under Chancellor Schuschnigg—especially in comparison to the most violent years of 1919 to 1923 and 1930 to 1933. Neither Schuschnigg nor Cardinal Theodor Innitzer made antisemitic comments in any of their public speeches. There was no increase in Jewish emigration after 1934, nor was there any increase in Jewish conversions to Christianity. Clearly Jews saw the Austrian government between 1934 and 1938 as the lesser evil compared to Nazi Germany.
My one serious complaint about Antisemitismus in Österreich is that it has no subject index. Nearly seven hundred names are listed in the Personenregister. It would have required little additional space to include the names of countries (other than Austria), cities, political parties, ideologies, universities, or paramilitary formations. Such additions would have been enormously helpful to scholars who have neither the time nor the need to read this excellent book in its entirety.
