Discussions of Jewish political behavior in late nineteenth-century Central Europe have assumed that the rise of antisemitism ended the alliance between Jews and liberals. That alliance had been forged in the middle of the nineteenth century during the struggle for Jewish legal equality in the German states and the Austrian Empire, and it lasted until the liberal parties, beset by the rise of mass politics at the end of the nineteenth century, could no longer muster sufficient electoral support to play their once central role in politics. Indeed, newly created antisemitic political parties attracted many voters as the franchise was extended, and Jews, who would not vote for parties that practiced what Carl Schorske long ago labelled “politics in a new key,” were left politically homeless. In much of Habsburg Austria, antisemitic political parties came to dominate political life as the Christian Social Party achieved a majority on the Vienna city council in 1895 and the Pan German and other German nationalist parties achieved remarkable electoral success in some of the Habsburg borderlands, especially northern and western Bohemia. Moreover, politics was further complicated by the so-called “nationalities conflict,” many of whose activists engaged in antisemitic diatribes to attract members to their respective nations. Austria's German liberals, fearful of losing votes to the more radical antisemitic parties, abandoned the Jews.Footnote 1
This bleak picture of liberal demise and Jewish political homelessness does not accurately reflect the situation in many regions of Central Europe. In some cities in Germany, for example, liberals remained dominant and Jews actively participated in city politics.Footnote 2 In Prague, where Czech national parties replaced the German liberals in local politics, the German liberals nevertheless resisted antisemitism, popular among Germans elsewhere in Bohemia, and continued to include Jews in German political life and in German liberal organizations up to World War I.Footnote 3 In the Habsburg province of Moravia, the focus of this article, German liberals continued to win elections to city councils, the provincial diet, and the Austrian parliament, and Jews continued to support the liberals. Indeed, the strength of this political alliance angered Czech nationalists, who blamed Jews for the success of German liberal parties. Moravia was, after all, a largely Czech-speaking province with a relatively small German-speaking minority. In contrast to nearby Bohemia, however, where Czech parties came to dominate politics, in Moravia German liberals remained strong. Moreover, these German liberals did not generally engage in antisemitic rhetoric to garner votes. Unlike many German national activists in Bohemia, they did not turn to völkisch conceptions of German identity but remained true to older notions of Germanness based on language, culture, education, and values, not on biology or race. There are many reasons for the continued success of German liberalism in Moravia, not least of which was the restricted franchise, which privileged the middle classes, and gerrymandered voting districts, ultimately favoring German-speakers. Czech nationalist claims notwithstanding, there were far too few Jews in the province—about 44,000 in 1900—for them alone to be responsible for the continued appeal of German liberalism in Moravia before the collapse of the monarchy in 1918. Nevertheless, Jews did play a significant role in the continued success of German liberalism.
According to the 1900 census, 71 percent of the population indicated Czech as their language of daily speech, 28 percent German, and 6 percent Polish.Footnote 4 To be sure, Habsburg language statistics are highly problematic, ignoring as they did widespread bilingualism, the role of political and economic pressure in linguistic choice, manipulation of the statistics by nationalist activists, and the way that language choice “fixed” national identity. Nevertheless, since language statistics are our only source for a complicated linguistic reality, we will use them here, aware that not all Czech- or German-speakers considered themselves members of a Czech or German nation, even if the nationalist activists insisted that language choice signified national identity.Footnote 5 Czech nationalism developed later and more slowly in Moravia than in Bohemia, possibly because Moravia was less industrialized, less urbanized, and more agricultural than its neighbor. Catholic piety also remained a potent force. Yet even in Moravia, Czech nationalism played an important role in late nineteenth-century politics. Czech nationalists denounced the Jews for their German allegiances and blamed them for continued German political dominance. They used antisemitic rhetoric, including the threat of anti-Jewish boycotts, in their successful attempt in the 1890s to take over the city councils of the smaller, largely Czech-speaking cities of central and southern Moravia. They also engaged in anti-Jewish violence.Footnote 6
Even though the sources for Jewish voting behavior in Moravia are limited, the evidence is overwhelming that Jews continued to vote for the German liberals and the liberals continued to believe that they needed Jewish voters in order to win elections. This conclusion derives from a careful analysis of official election statistics at the local level as well as from reading “against the grain” in the only Jewish newspaper published in Moravia, a Zionist weekly which lambasted the Jews of the province for their liberal allegiances. Inferences from local election statistics and Zionist diatribes clearly reveal that in some places, primarily in the small market towns of the Czech-speaking central and southern regions of Moravia, Jews formed a sizeable proportion of all voters for German parties, and even more so after the creation of German and Czech voting cadasters with the Moravian Compromise of 1905. The significance of the Jewish vote in many cities and towns led German liberals to believe that they should avoid antisemitism and appeal to Jewish voters. As a result, Jews remained an integral part of the German political community in Habsburg Moravia.
Political behavior thus sheds important light on the extent to which the Jews considered themselves “German.” For complex historical reasons, Moravian Jews mostly spoke German (although many were bilingual), attended German-language schools, read the German-language press, and affiliated with German cultural institutions. Like other German-speakers, Jews took for granted liberal notions about the superiority of German culture and the German language's privileged status in the monarchy. Yet most Jews did not think that they were German in some essential, biological sense. They were German Jews, comfortable in the German community as long as it welcomed them.Footnote 7 Jews voted for the German liberal party and its progressive offshoots, and they regarded this political choice as natural. After all, the German liberals had emancipated them in 1867, and liberalism allowed and encouraged Jews to become integrated members of society. Moreover, voting for the German liberals meant supporting the Habsburg monarchy in general, a monarchy that after 1867 fostered Jewish integration, guaranteed Jewish rights, and protected Jews from antisemitism. Liberal economic views also suited Jews, most of whom pursued commercial occupations.
When Jews voted for the German liberals, they announced that they belonged politically to the German community, or rather the German liberal political community, which accepted them as Jews. They did not vote for German parties because they felt a need to support the “German cause,” but because they liked liberalism.Footnote 8 They considered themselves part of the German political community only so long as that community remained liberal. For most Jews, Jewish interests remained paramount. Jews in Moravia always formed a somewhat separate group in the province, integrated into the community of German-speakers in some ways, separate in others. Yet the nature of politics in Habsburg Moravia allowed Jews to remain in the liberal political community, and despite Czech and German nationalist agitation, they persisted in this affiliation down to the end of the monarchy.
Parliamentary Elections
Until the introduction of universal male suffrage in 1907, Austrian parliamentary elections were organized by curia, with each voting for a predetermined number of representatives unrelated to the number of voters in that curia. The system had been designed in 1861 to give aristocrats and the upper bourgeoisie of the cities greater political power than the lower middle classes and peasantry. The first curia consisted of the aristocratic large landowners; the second curia of the Chambers of Commerce and Industry; the third curia of the cities, which apart from the really large cities, were grouped together to elect representatives; and the fourth of rural communes. Within the third and fourth curias, men voted only if they paid a minimum tax, ten florins before 1885, and five florins afterward. After 1897 there was also a fifth curia of all men, which elected a small number of representatives. The system gave German-speaking liberals “more than their fair share of votes,” in the words of historian John Deak.Footnote 9
This curial system, combined with the fact that many Moravian cities continued to have German-speaking populations even though located in Czech-speaking regions, helped guarantee the ongoing success of liberalism. Liberalism continued to appeal to the middle-class German-speaking men who could vote in cities and towns like Brünn/Brno and Olmütz/Olomouc, where two-thirds of residents indicated German as their language of daily speech in the 1900 census, and in Znaim/Znojmo and Iglau/Jihlava where more than four-fifths did so.Footnote 10 Indeed, while those who voted in the rural curia voted either for the Czech parties or, in the German-speaking north of the province, for German nationalist and populist parties, the urban curia sent a large number of German liberals to parliament up until the end of the monarchy. Thus, the disproportionate number of representatives elected by the urban curia in a province in which, unlike Bohemia, the cities were largely German-speaking, guaranteed continued liberal prominence.
The curial system also created a situation in which Jews formed an important part of the electorate far beyond their percentage of the population. Most Jews in Moravia lived in southern and central Moravia, either in the largely German-speaking cities, where they formed part of a majority community that did not feel threatened by Czech nationalists, or in the small, largely Czech-speaking market towns, where they frequently were the overwhelming majority of all German-speakers. This reality, combined with the perception that Jewish voters were important for liberal victory, meant that German liberals continued to win elections and include the Jews in their ranks, at least in much of the province. Close analysis of the voting results from the parliamentary elections of 1897 and 1907 reveals that while in some districts Jewish numbers were too small to make a difference, Jews did play an important role in German liberal success in several urban districts of central and southern Moravia. Voting results for the Austrian parliament in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries provide ample evidence for the persistence of the Jewish-German liberal alliance.
The 1897 Election
By the parliamentary election of 1897, the franchise had been extended but still remained quite restricted. Moravian voters now elected forty-three delegates to parliament. In the urban curia, 39,513 eligible voters elected thirteen delegates, in the rural curia 119,907 men elected eleven representatives, and in the new fifth curia, 473,974 eligible voters elected seven delegates. The electoral results revealed the liberals' resilience. Within the urban curia, 47.2 percent of all voters voted for German liberals, down from the 55.8 percent that had voted for the German liberals in 1891. About a quarter of the curia voted for an assortment of right-wing German parties, and another quarter voted for Czech parties. Almost three-quarters of all voters in the urban curia voted for German parties, and 65 percent of all those who voted for German parties selected German liberals, that is, for what now called itself the German Progressive Party, created in 1896. The rural curia, by contrast, mostly voted for Czech parties. None of the voters for German parties in the rural curia voted for the liberals. Instead, they voted for the German nationalists (10.1 percent) or the German People's Party (7.7 percent), a populist, nationalist, antisemitic party also created in 1896, that was concerned with the economic interests of the lower middle class and distanced itself from Schönerer's Pan Germans. The fifth curia voted either for the Social Democrats (53.6 percent) or the Old Czechs (46.4 percent) if they voted directly, or for German nationalist, Czech nationalist, clericals, and Social Democrats, if they voted indirectly.Footnote 11
The real strength of German liberalism remained in the cities. In Brünn/Brno, the provincial capital, 58.9 percent of the 9,962 voters in the urban curia chose the German liberal candidate, 23.5 percent the German nationalists, and 17.3 percent the Christian Social Party. Among those who voted in the fifth, general curia (11,402 voters), three-quarters chose the Social Democrats and 25.9 percent the Old Czechs. Such continued support for the liberals stands in stark contrast to Vienna, where the antisemitic Christian Socials won 61.1 percent of the electorate and various liberal parties won 34.2 percent in the urban curia, and fifth curia voters supported either the Christian Socials (54.3 percent) or the Social Democrats (40.9 percent). It also stands in stark contrast to Prague, where the Young Czechs garnered 70.4 percent and the conservative Old Czechs won 28.1 percent of ballots in the urban curia, and the fifth curia voted either for the Young Czechs (61.9 percent) or the Social Democrats (38.1 percent).Footnote 12 In Bohemia in general, the extension of the franchise led to the creation of new Czech political parties, many of which used antisemitism to attract voters, and to the decline of political liberalism in general. Moreover, the Young Czechs, fearful of the appeal of Social Democracy to the new fifth curia voters, embraced antisemitism in their call for Czech unity.Footnote 13 Only Moravia remained a bastion of old-style liberalism.
When the results of the 1897 elections were tabulated, the voters in the urban curia in Moravia had elected to parliament eight German liberals (out of their thirteen mandates): two German Progressives from Brünn/Brno, and one each from the Iglau, Znaim, Neutitschein, Nikolsburg, and Sternberg voting districts, while the Mährisch Weisskirchen voting district sent to parliament a member of the Free German Association, another liberal offshoot. Four urban curial districts—Holleschau, Kremsier, Neustadtl, and Olmütz—sent members of Czech parties to parliament. Only one urban curial district, Mährisch Trübau in the north, elected a non-liberal German politician, a member of the Deutsche Volkspartei. This Moravian delegation contained one Jew: Rudolf Auspitz, a member of the Free German Association, representing the Brünn/Brno Chamber of Commerce.Footnote 14 Counting all the curias, the German liberals had ten mandates from Moravia, the German People's Party had four mandates, and the Pan Germans had one mandate. Both the Volkspartei and the Alldeutsche representatives were from northern Moravia, with its dense concentration of German-speakers.Footnote 15 Contemporary Jewish observers of this voting pattern worried about the growth of antisemitism, but they did not understand that liberalism continued to attract voters in the cities of Moravia. Sigmund Mayer, a leader of Vienna's Österreichisch-Israelitische Union, an organization that defended Jews from antisemitism, insisted in his 1911 memoirs that in the 1890s the political situation for the Jews in Moravia had grown “unfortunate” because, with the exception of Brünn/Brno, the German parties in Moravia had “changed sides to the antisemitic camp.”Footnote 16 Such was simply not the case.
The urban curial voting districts that elected German liberals mostly consisted of cities with German-speaking majorities or districts gerrymandered so that German-majority cities would overwhelm Czech-speaking cities in the district.Footnote 17 With the exception of Sternberg district, German liberal success in 1897 was largely in the urban curia in central and southern Moravia, the part of the province in which most people spoke Czech. Only the Mährisch Trübau urban district, located in the German-speaking north, voted for a German nationalist representative.Footnote 18 This voting pattern reflects the fact that Jews played an important role in liberal success in the south and central part of the province where they formed a significant part of the electorate in many towns and cities.
To be sure, many districts elected liberals even without significant Jewish numbers, including the Sternberg urban curial district in northern Moravia (1.1 percent Jewish), Weisskirchen in east-central Moravia (3.6 percent), and Znaim in the south (3.7 percent). At the same time, however, some urban voting districts that elected liberals had significant numbers of Jews, ranging from under 6 percent in Iglau and Neutitschein, to 7.5 percent in Brünn/Brno, and 8.5 percent in Nikolsburg. These urban districts contained a much higher percentage of Jews than was true in Moravia as a whole, where 44,255 Jews formed only 1.8 percent of the total population.Footnote 19 Just as in the population at large, of course, most Jews could not vote. In addition to women and children, no adult males could vote who could not pay the five-florin minimum tax. Yet, since most Jews in Moravia, especially in the small market towns of central and southern Moravia, were merchants, it stands to reason that Jews voted at a much higher rate than was true in the population at large. Assuming conservatively that 15 percent of all Jews could vote, in some urban districts a reasonably high percentage of all eligible voters would have been Jewish. In the Nikolsburg district, this would mean that at least 18 percent of the electorate was Jewish; in Brünn/Brno, 16 percent; in Iglau and Neutitschein districts about 12 percent; in Weisskirchen and Znaim 7.5 percent. These percentages, well above the Jews' share of the province's population, gave them an outsized role in elections.
Even if all Jews voted liberal, they were not solely responsible for liberal success. Yet, the size of the Jewish electorate surely led to a general perception, among Jews and non-Jews alike, that antisemitic politics would not be effective in central and southern Moravian urban voting districts. The same pattern held in the Bohemian city of Budweis/České Budějovice, which remained a German liberal stronghold largely because of the perceived importance of the Jewish vote to maintaining German control in a linguistically mixed city.Footnote 20
Contemporary Jewish spokesmen, Czech nationalist politicians, and historians ever since have all agreed that German liberals maintained their political control in Moravia due to Jewish support. They did not attribute liberal success to Jewish numbers. Rather, they pointed to the role of the so-called “political Jewish communities” (politische Israelitengemeinden), which they claimed “tipped the scales” in favor of the German liberals in Moravian elections in the late nineteenth century. These twenty-seven Israelitengemeinden were independent juridical entities that provided town services—police protection, public schools, tax collection—for their inhabitants. Before the Revolution of 1848, Jews in Moravia had been prohibited from living in its free royal cities and had been restricted to fifty-two communities, mostly small market towns in the south and central part of the province. Within these towns they formed separate entities, often called “Jewish towns,” which were clearly marked off from the town in which they were located. After the Revolution, the Austrian authorities tried to amalgamate the “Jewish towns” into their surrounding towns, but intense Christian opposition persuaded the authorities in 1850 to create political Jewish communities out of twenty-seven of the former Jewish towns, the ones that were large enough to function in that capacity. With freedom of movement in the 1850s and 1860s, many Jews moved out of the cramped quarters of the Israelitengemeinden, either to the surrounding towns or elsewhere altogether, and some non-Jews, mostly poor people, moved in. But Jews still dominated the economic and political leadership of these communities, which continued to exist as political communes until abolished by Czechoslovakia in 1919–20.Footnote 21
In the late Habsburg monarchy, these political Jewish communities, all located in central and southern Moravia, voted for parliament as part of the urban curia. Placing the Jewish political communities in the urban curia gave them more clout than they would have had if, as small communities, they had been in the rural curia, where their votes would have been overwhelmed by the votes of the Czech-speaking small landowners who voted in that curia, or if they had been included amongst the Czech-speaking towns where most of them were located. Since the majority of voters (if not residents) in the Israelitengemeinden were German-speaking Jews, sometimes, or so it was alleged, Jewish votes “tipped the scales” in favor of the German liberal parties, much to the chagrin of the Czech nationalists who felt that Czech parties should represent Czech-speaking regions by right. Thus, Jews became “reluctant kingmakers” in the words of historian Michael Miller.Footnote 22
To what extent was this perception a reality? Did Jewish voters in the political Jewish communities help ensure German liberal hegemony and keep German liberals free from antisemitism? Obviously, the number of political Jewish communities and the number of Jewish voters within them was far too small to be the sole reason for continued liberal success. Moreover, liberal victories in most cities had nothing to do with the political Jewish communities. A close examination of the election statistics reveals that nowhere did the Jewish political communities decide elections in favor of the German liberals. Nevertheless, the perception of Czech and German nationalists that these communities played a significant role guaranteed that they did so. The fact that Czech nationalists inveighed against them as agents of German success made the German parties believe that they had to court the Jews. Moreover, the very existence of the political Jewish communities provided a tangible locus for the perception that Jews played an important role in liberal success.
What is striking is that the Jewish political communities played almost no actual role in most districts of the urban curia in 1897 or later elections. The number of Jews in those communities was simply too small to make a difference. Three urban curial districts that elected German liberals—Brünn/Brno, Sternberg, and Neutitschein—contained no Jewish political communities. Two districts—Iglau and Znaim—contained one Jewish political community each, but those urban districts were almost entirely German-speaking even without the Jewish political communities. The Weisskirchen urban district contained two Jewish political communities, but the small number of Jews was overwhelmed by the German-speakers in Bodenstadt, Hof, Liebau, Birn, and Bautsch, towns that had been gerrymandered into that district. Mährisch Trübau contained two political Jewish communities, but they did not prevent it from electing a German populist. Similarly, the Holleschau urban district contained two political Jewish communities, but it elected a Czech politician to parliament.
In fact, only two urban voting districts contained significant numbers of political Jewish communities: Nikolsburg, which included seven Israelitengemeinden, and Kremsier, which included four. Nikolsburg may be the one case in which putting the political Jewish communities into the urban voting district may have played some role in “tipping the scales” in favor of German liberal parties. While the town of Nikolsburg/Mikulov was located in an overwhelmingly German administrative district very close to the Lower Austrian border, the other towns in this urban voting district were in largely Czech-speaking areas. The political Jewish communities of Nikolsburg/Mikulov, Austerlitz/Slavkov, Kanitz/Kounice Dolni, Gaya/Kyjov, Strassnitz/Stážnice, Lundenburg/Břeclav, and Pohrlitz/Pohořelice may have added sufficient numbers of voters for German liberal candidates to make a difference. On the other hand, the presence of four political Jewish communities had no impact on voting results in the Kremsier urban voting district, which was overwhelmingly Czech-speaking. There, as in Holleschau, voters elected Czech politicians to parliament.Footnote 23
What is most interesting is that three urban curial districts with significant political Jewish communities voted for Czech parties for parliament: Holleschau, Kremsier, and most surprisingly, Olmütz, which contained a large political Jewish community, Prossnitz/Prostějov. Obviously, despite the fears of Czech nationalist agitators, German-speaking Jewish voters in the political Jewish communities in Holleschau, Kremsier, and Olmütz voting districts were not significant enough a factor to swing the elections in a German liberal direction in these largely Czech-speaking districts. Indeed, in these two districts Jews may have voted for the Czech parties. After all, it was in the towns in these districts—Holleschau/Holešov, Prerau/Přerov, Prossnitz/Prostějov, Kremsier/Kroměříž, and fifty other locations—that antisemitic riots later erupted in October 1899, part of the anti-German and antisemitic Czech nationalist riots that followed the repeal of the Badeni language ordinances. Obviously in these districts, Jews did not “tip the scales” to the German liberals.Footnote 24
In the Olmütz/Prossnitz/Deutsch Brodek urban curial district, the only political Jewish community was Prossnitz/Prostějov. Its 566 Jews did not play the influential role in parliamentary politics that Czech nationalists feared, even in combination with Jews in the city of Prossnitz/Prostějov (987), many of them wealthy textile manufacturers, and Olmütz/Olomouc (1,676), not to mention the two-thirds of the population of Olmütz/Olomouc itself who had indicated German Umgangssprache in 1900. Even if all the eligible Jews and German-speakers voted for German parties, here they were outvoted by those who preferred to be represented in parliament by a Young Czech, presumably mostly Czech-speakers in Prossnitz/Prostějov, the center of Czech nationalist activity in the region.Footnote 25
In the one place where the political Jewish communities may have played a decisive role in a Czech district in favor of German liberal candidates—the Nikolsburg urban curial district—it was probably not the Jewish political communities that gave the German parties the advantage, but rather simply the fact that the cities and towns of the district contained many German-speakers, including Jews. Altogether 2,012 Jews lived in the Jewish political communities of Nikolsburg urban voting district, about two-fifths of all Jews in the district.Footnote 26 Here, where a substantial number of all Jews lived in political Jewish communities, the significance of these Israelitengemeinden makes some sense. Although they probably did not decide the election, they allowed those who perceived Jewish influence to locate that influence in a tangible, physical space.
The Parliamentary Elections of 1907
German liberalism remained strong in Moravia even after the introduction of universal male suffrage for parliamentary elections in 1907. Elsewhere, especially in northern and western Bohemia, German liberals lost much of their electoral strength to German nationalists.Footnote 27 Even in Moravia German liberals no longer dominated the Moravian Reichsrat delegation as a whole, but they still formed the largest bloc within the German wing of that delegation. Moravian voters now elected forty-nine representatives to parliament, but as a result of the Moravian Compromise of 1905, which created separate German and Czech voting cadasters, each national camp now elected its own representatives to parliament. Those on the German cadaster elected nineteen delegates, and those on the Czech cadaster elected thirty delegates to the Reichsrat. Electoral districts were formed for each national cadaster.Footnote 28 Of all the German voters, 30 percent voted for the Social Democrats, 22 percent for the German Progressives, 19 percent for the German People's Party, 19 percent for the Christian Social Party, 7 percent for the Free Pan Germans, a radical German nationalist and antisemitic party which broke with Schönerer's Pan Germans because of the latter's anti-Catholic ideology, and a smattering voted for the Agrarians and the Pan Germans. Gerrymandered districts, however, resulted in eight mandates for the German Progressive Party, six mandates for the German People's Party, three for the Social Democrats, one for the Christian Socials, and one for the Free Pan German Party. Thus, the German delegation contained eight liberals, six overtly antisemitic politicians, and three Social Democrats. Moravian electoral results stand in stark contrast with those from Bohemia, where no voting cadasters existed. German parties there garnered fifty-four out of the 130 mandates, only six from the German Progressives, with 30 percent going to German nationalist and antisemitic parties, 30 percent to the German Agrarians, and 30 percent to the Social Democrats.Footnote 29
German liberal strength in the parliamentary elections of 1907 remained almost entirely in the cities and towns located in southern and central Moravia. Parliamentary elections were still conducted on the basis of urban and rural voting districts. German urban voters, not radicalized by growing Czech nationalist strength in this region, and no longer fearing Czech competition in elections, continued to vote for German liberals even when the franchise was no longer restricted. In some cities and towns, liberals relied on Jewish voters, who formed a significant proportion of German-speakers. Indeed, it is likely that without Czech competition for voters, liberals felt even more comfortable than before relying on Jewish voters and including Jews in the German political community. Thus after 1907, Jews played a greater role than ever before in ensuring the success of German liberals.
As had been the case in earlier elections, however, it was Jewish numbers, not Jewish political communities, that proved influential. All the districts had been redrawn since the previous elections. Many districts contained several political Jewish communities, but the Israelitengemeinden could not possibly decide elections, since most fell within German electoral districts that included many cities, some with German majorities. The continued preference for German progressive delegates, therefore, resulted from the continued salience of traditional liberal views combined with the perception of the importance of the Jewish vote for German parties in this largely Czech-speaking region.
Careful analysis shows that the role of Jewish voters varied from district to district. The cities of Iglau/Jihlava and Znaim/Znojmo were German-majority cities with few Jews; in the former, 62 percent of the German voters voted for the German progressives, and in the latter 82 percent did. Here, Jewish voters played little role, despite the presence of several political Jewish communities. Similarly, the German district of Brünn/Brno sent two German progressives to parliament, as the city had done earlier; fully 63 percent of the German voters voted for that party. Some urban voting districts that elected German Progressives to parliament, especially those in southern Moravia, contained many Jewish political communities. Such was the case in the Trebitsch district, which included the city of Iglau/Jihlava as well as the cities and political Jewish communities of Trebitsch/Třebič, Gewitsch/Jevičko, and Boskowitz/Boskovice. In the Klobouk district, the presence of many Israelitengemeinden may have played some role, although the number of Jews among the German voters was more decisive. This district contained 6,180 voters and 3,733 Jews. Not all Jews could vote, and some Jews may have voted on the Czech cadaster, but nevertheless, the fact that Jews formed over half of all German-speakers in the district may have played an important role in German progressive success. Other German urban districts that elected progressives did not contain Jewish political communities, but they did contain large numbers of Jews. Such was the case in the German urban district of Frankstadt, which included the city of Mährisch Ostrau/Moravská Ostrava and its suburbs, with their relatively large Jewish communities. The only urban district of northern Moravia that elected a German progressive to parliament was Sternberg, but it now included German voters in cities and political Jewish communities in central and southern Moravia, including the city of Olmütz/Olomouc, with its large German-speaking population (including 1,676 Jews) and Prossnitz/Prostějov, Austerlitz/Slavkov, and Gaya/Kyjov, with their political Jewish communities. In Olmütz/Olomouc, 68 percent of the German voters voted for the progressives. Now that the Czech voters were no longer in the picture, German progressives easily won among the German voters in Prossnitz/Prostějov, many of whom were Jewish (1,660 combining the city and the political Jewish community).Footnote 30
Looking at the electoral results by Moravian administrative districts, rather than by voting districts, reveals how important Jewish voters were to German liberal electoral success in 1907. The Bezirkshauptmannschaften that supported German progressives—Gaya, Göding, Gross Meseritsch, Holleschau, Kremsier (without the city), Mistek, Nikolsburg, and Prossnitz—were all in southern Moravia, and, with the exception of Nikolsburg, were overwhelmingly Czech-speaking districts. The number of German voters in those administrative districts was very small, in most cases almost coterminous with the number of Jewish voters who lived in the cities and political Jewish communities of those districts. Such was clearly the case in the Gaya, Holleschau, and Prossnitz districts. In the Gaya administrative district, there were 196 German voters, 101 of whom voted for the German progressives, seventy-four for the Social Democrats, and seventeen for the German People's Party; in Holleschau, there were only seventy-four German voters, thirty-eight of whom voted for the German progressives, eleven for the Social Democrats, four for the German People's Party, and nineteen for the Free Pan Germans; and in the Prossnitz administrative district there were 587 German voters, of whom 371 voted for the progressives, 195 for the Social Democrats, and nine for the Free Pan Germans. The administrative district of Gaya contained 1,101 Jews; the district of Holleschau 966; and the district of Prossnitz 1,565. Virtually all lived in the main town or its political Jewish community. In this context, in which Jews probably formed such a substantial proportion of all German voters, it would have been counterproductive for German liberals to resort to antisemitic slogans to gain German votes.Footnote 31
Southern and central Moravian Germans supported German liberals, but northern Moravia, with its large concentration of German-speakers and few Jews, voted for German nationalist parties. The German urban voting districts of Mährisch Trübau and Römerstadt both elected members of the Deutsche Volkspartei to parliament. Among rural districts in the area, Hennerdorf elected a member of the German People's Party, Hohenstadt elected a Free Pan German, and Mährisch Trübau, a Christian Social. In the south, German rural voting districts, which contained almost no Jewish voters, elected German People's Party members to parliament.Footnote 32 As in 1897, German politics became more nationalist where there were few Jews.
Jews also helped Social Democrats win mandates in two Moravian German voting districts in 1907: the rural district of Mährisch Altstadt in the north and the urban district of Fulnek in central Moravia. In Fulnek the Socialist won a run-off election against a Free Pan German with the help of the German Progressive voters, many of them residents of the district's political Jewish communities. Clearly those who supported the liberals, including the Jews, much preferred the Socialist to a German nationalist, and so arranged for his victory.Footnote 33
The 1907 election results reveal that Jewish voters in the cities and towns of central and southern Moravia, where they formed an important percentage of all German-speakers in many areas, played an important role in politics, helping the German progressives or the Social Democrats win elections. Jewish voters, and the perception of the importance of Jews to German electoral success, prevented German radicalization in this region. Separate national voting cadasters had inadvertently enhanced the influence of Jews in politics. Indeed, although many historians now argue that the Moravian Compromise of 1905 had a negative impact in the province, hardening national identities and separating “Czechs” and “Germans,”Footnote 34 it did create a political space in which Jews could remain part of the liberal German political world, and in which liberals had no reason to resort to antisemitic rhetoric during election campaigns. Relying on Jewish voters in urban districts in largely Czech regions, liberals had no reason to abandon their old political ideology in favor of cultural and political German unity. Thus, despite the end of the restricted franchise, Jews remained an integral part of the German political community, at least in central and southern Moravia.
Jews in the German Political Community
The press also reveals the extent to which Jews participated in the liberal German political community. German liberal newspapers in Moravia continued to articulate a traditional liberal orientation, and thus Jews could feel comfortable supporting the liberals. A sampling of liberal German newspapers in Brünn/Brno and Mährisch Ostrau/Moravská Ostrava reveals that German liberals in Moravia denounced antisemitism and radical German nationalism and upheld traditional liberal values even as they glorified German culture and the Germanness of the Habsburg monarchy. The Brünner Sontags-Zeitung, for example, which represented the interests of the Social-Political Party, a progressive liberal offshoot, inveighed against German nationalists who wanted to dominate German politics. Accordingly, the newspaper opposed attempts to unite all German parties, instead calling for the unity of all “enlightened” German parties, that is, the non-radical, non-antisemitic ones.Footnote 35 The Mährisch-Schlesischer Grenzbote, a politically independent paper published in mixed-language Mährisch Ostrau/Moravská Ostrava, was more concerned with German unity and more fearful about Czech inroads into “German territory” than the Brünn/Brno paper. As a result, although it never espoused antisemitism, it ignored both its German and Czech varieties, denouncing only the Christian Socials in Vienna.Footnote 36 Yet the paper unselfconsciously reported about Jewish participation in German liberal activities. For example, in 1895 it reported that Alois Hilf, the vice-president (and later president) of the Jewish religious community of Mährisch Ostrau/Moravská Ostrava, proposed at a liberal meeting that a call for German unity include a clause opposing those who, in the name of German unity, in fact urged hatred for religious groups. His proposal was unanimously accepted.Footnote 37
Likewise, the Jewish press in Moravia provides ample evidence of Jewish participation in the liberal political community, although this evidence is indirect. There was only one Jewish newspaper in Habsburg Moravia, the Jüdische Volksstimme, published in Brünn/Brno from 1900 to 1934. It was a Zionist newspaper, and it railed against the Jews of Moravia for voting for German liberals, whom it suspected were antisemites who kept their anti-Jewish views secret to get Jewish money. Committed to the notion that Jews were neither Germans nor Czechs, but rather Jews by national identity, and convinced that voting for the German parties would also lead to Czech antisemitism, the editors of the Jüdische Volksstimme urged Jews in Moravia to vote for “Jewish” candidates or not vote at all. The pages of this newspaper illustrate Zionist voting strategies, but not obviously those of most Jews. Nevertheless, following the example of Pieter Judson, who brilliantly read between the lines of German and Czech nationalist newspapers to learn about national indifference in Bohemia, I will here try to read “against the grain” of the Zionist press to discern how Jews voted and the extent to which they thought they were members of the German political community.Footnote 38 Indeed, such a reading reveals that Jews in Habsburg Moravia not only supported the liberals, but even the Zionists preferred the liberals to their alternatives. They too assumed that they were part of the German political world.
Zionists were Jewish nationalists who regarded the Jews as a nation, entitled to develop their own national culture. From its inception the Jüdische Volksstimme therefore warned Moravian Jews against adopting the “national chauvinism” of the Germans, Czechs, and Magyars, which would only stir up racial antisemitism.Footnote 39 Indeed, the newspaper decried the artificial German hegemony in Moravia and warned Jews that siding with the Germans would only lead to Czech revenge.Footnote 40 Max Hickl, later the paper's editor, announced at a meeting of the Moravian-Silesian District Committee of the Austrian Zionist Organization on 1 September 1901: “We are neither for nor opposed to the Germans, neither for nor against the Czechs. We Zionists work for the Jewish people and for the benefit of all mankind.”Footnote 41 During the election for the Moravian diet in 1902, the paper reminded its readers that “political wisdom and general morality” required Jews to practice “the strictest neutrality in the German-Czech struggle.” After all, the conflict was no business of the Jews, and interference would result in unfortunate consequences for them.Footnote 42 In October 1905, during demonstrations and counter demonstrations by German and Czech nationalist activists over the proposed creation of a Czech-language university in Brünn/Brno, the Jüdische Volksstimme urged Jews to remain neutral, and it castigated them, especially the mayors of Jewish political communities, for even considering participation in the affairs of “foreign nationalities.”Footnote 43
At the same time, Zionists urged Jews to learn Czech, or rather, to improve their Czech, both for practical reasons and so as not to antagonize the Czechs, who regarded Jews as agents of Germanization. Learning Czech, however, did not mean becoming Czech. It simply made good sense to learn the language of the majority. Jews, Zionists spokesmen assumed, would continue to speak German, but it would behoove them to be perfectly bilingual.Footnote 44 In early 1909, when the city council of Prerau/Přerov requested that local Jews refrain from speaking German in the street, a provocative act in a “purely Czech city,” local Zionists objected only on the grounds that the request violated the rights of citizens to speak whatever language they chose. Comfortable in both German and Czech, although admittedly more so in German, and not wanting to offend Czech sensibilities, they were willing to comply with the request.Footnote 45 The Zionists also advised Jews to understand the justice of the Czech political cause even as they railed against the Czech-Jewish movement, active in Bohemia, which urged Jews to adopt a Czech identity and to close German-Jewish schools.Footnote 46
The Zionist newspaper spent prodigious energy lambasting Moravian Jews, especially rich Jews and Jewish communal leaders, for thinking that they formed an integral part of the German community.Footnote 47 In an article in late 1900, the Jüdische Volksstimme complained that the leaders of the Jewish religious community of Brünn/Brno spent all their time working for the German School Association rather than the Jewish community. Such men were “alienated from their people, renegades who buy their way into the German . . . community.” These factory owners “who built the Deutsches Haus and celebrate New Year's Eve in the fancy hall of the German Reading Club” were incapable of representing Jewish interests.Footnote 48 Similarly, Egon Zweig, a young Zionist from Olmütz/Olomouc, castigated the president and several board members of the Jewish religious community of that city for belonging to the Association of Germans of North Moravia. Zweig declared that these men were amphibians with “Jewish lungs . . . German-völkisch gills, . . . and Jewish-teutonic heart ventricles.” Indifferent to Jewish interests, they supported the German power establishment.Footnote 49 The Zionist press equated all German associations with the most radical antisemitic German nationalists, and thus lost no opportunity to call Jews who attended meetings of German associations choice epithets like Ghettoteutonen, Teutonenjuden, men in the service of the Teutonic god Wotan, or Khillegermanen (Jewish community [from Heb. Kehillah] Germans), thus linking them to German-völkisch ideology.Footnote 50 At the same time, and wanting to have it both ways, the newspaper declared that with a few exceptions, most German associations in Moravia (or at least those that accepted Jews) had entirely Jewish memberships, with perhaps one or two Paradegojs (Goyim [non-Jews] for display).Footnote 51 Similarly the Zionists regarded Moravian liberal German newspapers that did not engage in antisemitic diatribes as expressing the views of Judenteutonen.Footnote 52 Such charges show the extent to which they were influenced by the nationalities conflict in general. So too did the fun they had engaging in nationalist brawls. Writing thirty years later from Jerusalem, Zweig remembered the exciting interaction between the Zionists and the Holiday Club of German University Students, an organization which included many Jews, in Prossnitz/Prostějov in the summer of 1901. Just like German and Czech nationalist student organizations, the Zionists and their opponents sang dueling songs, engaged in combat (probably fist fights), and boarded the train home, singing all the way.Footnote 53
The Zionists firmly believed that the only reason for continued German liberal success in Moravia was that the Jews voted for liberals and supported them financially.Footnote 54 These Jews, their newspaper argued, should be ashamed of themselves. After all, the liberals were really “a branch of the German nationalists” who held fast to “a utopia of a German Austria.”Footnote 55 Antisemitic through and through, German liberals in Moravia did not advertise their true feelings, the Zionists argued, because they would lose the Jewish support they so needed. In voting districts in which Czechs posed no danger to Germans and in which they did not need Jewish votes, openly antisemitic German nationalists were elected, but in “nationally disputed electoral districts,” where they had to depend on Jewish voters, German liberals were elected. The paper asserted that these men only pretended to be liberal as to ensure the victory of the German candidate, and that the Jews were fools for supporting them.Footnote 56 The Liberals used the Jews, another article averred, merely as “cannon fodder against the Czechs.”Footnote 57 Jewish support for the German liberals only led to anti-Jewish hostility, the Czech boycott, and the impoverishment of Jews in the small towns of southern Moravia.Footnote 58
Elections provided the Zionist press many opportunities to rehearse these themes: to deride Jews for supporting the German liberals, to denounce the German liberals as vicious antisemites only pretending to eschew antisemitism in order to gain Jewish support, and to predict that the Czechs would take revenge against the Jews. This hyperbole, directed at Jewish voters to try to change their voting habits, reveals the extent to which many Jews in fact voted for the liberals. In the months preceding the parliamentary elections of 1901, for example, the Jüdische Volksstimme echoed antisemitic stereotypes of Jewish power when it insisted that the electoral geometry that had created the urban curial district of Olmütz/Prossnitz/Deutschbrodek only served to unite “almost purely German Olmütz” with overwhelmingly Czech Prossnitz/Prostějov, so that a “puny Jewish-German minority could tyrannize the community.” Although a Czech candidate had in fact won the 1897 election, and the paper correctly predicted another Czech victory, it nevertheless warned the Jews of Prossnitz/Prostějov, who had already suffered the economic consequences of “Slavic revenge,” that it would be “insane if they did not simply remain home on election day.”Footnote 59 Jews did not remain home. Zweig chastised them for not realizing that the liberals were hopelessly influenced by Schönerer-style Pan German antisemitism, and he too predicted that the Czechs would take revenge.Footnote 60 In the aftermath of the election, the Jüdische Volksstimme deemed Czech boycotts and vandalism against Jewish stores in the Prossnitz/Prostějov area as “national revenge” for the “anti-Czech position of Moravian Jews,” the result of the “stupid politics” of the Jews of Prossnitz/Prostějov. The paper lamented the fact that small Jewish businessmen, especially in the small market towns, had to suffer for the sins of the industrialists and other members of the haute bourgeoisie.Footnote 61
Similarly, in 1902, the Zionist press used the opportunity of the elections to the Chambers of Commerce and Industry in Brünn/Brno and Olmütz/Olomouc to denounce the Jewish textile factory owners for supporting the “Pan Germans” (that is, the German liberals). Such support, the paper warned, only gave the Czechs the opportunity to attack the Jews and call for anti-Jewish boycotts.Footnote 62 In the Landtag elections that fall, the Jüdische Volkstimme again urged Moravian Jews to remain strictly neutral, not vote for the German parties, and not play the decisive role that the electoral system had given them.Footnote 63 The German liberals did well in the election, in some cases with Jewish help. The Zionists reported that the Czech boycott movement had grown stronger, the “bitter fruit of German liberal party politics.”Footnote 64 Indeed, all elections provided the Zionists with the opportunity to raise the specter of Czech revenge for Jewish behavior.Footnote 65 The repetition of the Zionists' charges reflected the fact that Jews regularly voted for the liberals, as their paper often recognized.
The Jewish newspaper worried especially about antisemitism during the elections for the Moravian diet in 1906, the first to be held according to the provisions of the Moravian Compromise of 1905, which created separate Czech and German voting cadasters. They feared that Czech parties would pressure Jews to register in the Czech cadaster and German parties would run radical nationalist candidates. In despair, they urged Jews to vote only for candidates who were not antisemitic, although at first, they hesitated about recommending the Social Democrats.Footnote 66 As the election got closer, however, fear of electing German nationalist antisemites in some districts, including the city of Mährisch Ostrau/Moravská Ostrava, made the Zionists urge Jews to vote for the local Social Democrat, Ludwig Czech (himself a Jew), rather than the Free Pan German candidate, Wilhelm Freisler, who (they incorrectly declared) had the support of the Jewish community.Footnote 67 And at key moments, the Jüdische Volksstimme expressed a preference for German liberal candidates. In virtually all races where Jews had any impact (and those were the only races to which they paid attention), the editors in fact recommended that Jews vote for the German liberal candidates, even as they railed against them as secret antisemites and German nationalists. In Czech districts where Jews registered as Czechs, Zionists recommended that Jews vote for the Old Czechs, rather than the more antisemitic Young Czechs.Footnote 68
It was not only the Zionists who worried about the impact of national cadasters in Moravia. The Austrian Israelite Union, the Vienna-based organization created in 1886 to combat antisemitism, also believed that Czech and German voting cadasters would render Jews superfluous in elections and intensify antisemitism in both national camps.Footnote 69 In the spring of 1906, the Union called a meeting of all the Jewish religious and political communities in Moravia to decide on a Jewish electoral strategy for the upcoming diet elections. Twenty-four Jewish leaders attended, including representatives of the Israelitische Kultusgemeinden of Brünn/Brno, Iglau/Jihlava, Znaim/Znojmo, and many smaller cities, as well as representatives of most of the political Jewish communities, many of whom also represented their local Jewish religious communities. Interestingly, the Jewish leaders who attended—some Zionists, most not—thought that Jews should enter the German cadaster only in the areas in which they had any hope of influencing elections, in particular in the three urban districts of Göding, Auspitz, and Weisskirchen (and presumably also in the German-majority cities like Brünn/Brno), not because they were Germans, but in order to ensure that Jewish interests were represented.Footnote 70 The Union believed that Moravian Jews had to decide which cadaster to join based on “purely tactical motives.”Footnote 71
The Jewish leaders assembled in spring 1906 worried about their loss of electoral clout, but their focus on matters of Jewish concern led them to back German liberal candidates. They largely agreed with Zionists about Jewish electoral strategies in the wake of the Moravian Compromise, except that they opposed the creation of a Jewish curia.Footnote 72 The Moravian Jewish Political Executive Committee, concerned with electing candidates who would represent Jewish interests, decided in early October 1906 to recommend candidates only in districts where Jewish votes had an impact. In all cases they supported German progressives who were Jews or of Jewish origin. The committee also encouraged Jews to vote for Social Democrats in the general curia, especially in places like Mährisch Ostrau/Moravská Ostrava where the alternative was a Pan German candidate.Footnote 73 Indeed, the candidacy there of Wilhelm Freisler, a Free Pan German, upset local Jews. At one electoral meeting, Israelitische Kultusgemeinde president Alois Hilf announced that Jews could not vote for anyone who did not utterly reject antisemitism. When Freisler refused to do so, all the Jews present left the meeting, a move applauded by the Austrian Israelite Union.Footnote 74 Despite their differences, Jewish communal leaders and Zionists agreed on their electoral strategy: both fretted that German progressives no longer cared about Jewish interests, but they nevertheless recommended that Jews vote for German liberal candidates in districts where Jews had influence; both urged Jews to avoid voting for antisemitic candidates in the general curia; and both urged Jews in the Czech cadaster to vote for the Old Czechs rather than the Young Czechs.Footnote 75 In run-off elections between Social Democrats and German nationalists, they urged Jews to support the Socialists.Footnote 76
In the aftermath of the Moravian Diet elections of 1906 the Zionists lamented that Jews had lost their political influence and liberalism was now dead.Footnote 77 Since it did not suit its polemical purposes, the Zionist newspaper neglected to report that the German progressives won many seats in urban voting districts. The paper also ignored the Czech district results, a good sign that even the Zionists still considered themselves part of the German political community. In the parliamentary elections of 1907, Zionists feared—incorrectly as it turned out—that the introduction of universal male suffrage would utterly deprive Jews of any electoral significance whatsoever. In an article in March 1906, Theodor Haas noted that universal suffrage and its promise of equality was theoretically a good thing, but Jews would lose any chance to influence elections in Moravia. After all, “since Jews mostly live in Czech-speaking areas, they form an insignificant minority compared to the Czech population.” Jews might still play a role in the city of Brünn/Brno, but the other German urban voting districts were so large, Jews would play no role at all.Footnote 78 Like Zionists elsewhere in Habsburg Austria, Moravian Zionists used the election to lobby for Jewish national autonomy and a Jewish voting curia, and they complained when they could not obtain one.Footnote 79 They bemoaned that the creation of separate German and Czech voting cadasters and the new electoral districts prevented them from running Jewish national candidates anywhere in Moravia as Zionists and Jewish nationalists did in Galicia, Bukovina, and Vienna, since in Moravia Jews nowhere formed a large enough mass of voters. The best the Jews could hope for, the Zionist newspaper lamented, in an inadvertent admission that Jews still formed part of the German political community, was to influence elections in a few German urban voting districts: Brünn, Sternberg, Olmütz, Nikolsburg, Mährisch Ostrau, Trebitsch, and Neutitschein.Footnote 80 The Zionists remained deeply suspicious of the German progressives, who did not deserve Jewish support.Footnote 81
The small number of articles about the election during the campaign, and the shocking silence of the Jüdische Volksstimme about the results of the 1907 elections, may reflect Zionist embarrassment that they misunderstood the impact of universal suffrage on German liberalism. After all, liberals won many German urban voting districts, often because Jews, who voted for the liberals, formed a substantial percentage of German voters in southern and central Moravia. Moreover, the Zionists ignored the liberals in 1907 because Austrian Zionists now hoped to elect Jewish nationalists to parliament. Since no Jewish nationalists ran in Moravia in 1907, the Zionists did not pay as much attention to the election as they might have. In 1911, however, the Jewish National Association ran a Jewish nationalist, Lucian Brunner, in the Nikolsburg urban voting district against German progressive Josef Redlich, a baptized Jew. Ignoring all the other races, the Zionist press urged Jews to vote for Brunner, who would represent Jewish interests. The press vilified Redlich as a traitor incapable of representing the Jews, and it attacked Jewish communal leaders for supporting him.Footnote 82 Redlich nonetheless won the election (after a run-off with a German nationalist), and the Zionists conceded that he had done so because Jews had voted for him.Footnote 83 The Zionists also recognized that liberals had won elsewhere—in Brünn/Brno and Mährisch Ostrau/Moravská Ostrava for example—with the help of Jewish voters.Footnote 84
The polemics against Jews who voted for German liberals may not tell us exactly how Moravian Jews voted or what they thought, but the incessant diatribes and the heated attack probably reflect the fact that most Jews did indeed vote for German liberal candidates and considered themselves part of the liberal German political community. Surely the success of liberal candidates in urban curial districts both before and especially after the Moravian Compromise of 1905 encouraged Jews to feel welcome in that community. Even the Zionists, who paid no attention at all to Czech politics, acted as though they were part of the larger German world.
The debates about Jewish voting strategy in the Moravian diet elections of 1906 and the Austrian parliamentary elections of 1907 reveal the pragmatic nature of national identity in general and Jewish identity in particular. The Czech and German political activists who arranged the Compromise of 1905 had wanted to require people to identify publicly with one nation or another, but many people in the Bohemian Lands resisted national ascription.Footnote 85 Even most Jews, who spoke German, supported German cultural institutions, and voted for German liberals, had to deal with the issue of which national cadaster to join. The Zionists would have preferred a separate Jewish cadaster. Failing this, non-Zionist Jewish leaders (as well as their Zionist colleagues) wondered which cadaster made more sense for Jews politically. Jews did not argue that they had to join the German cadaster in order to protect the German “cause” in Moravia. Rather, Jewish needs were primary, and Jewish leaders of all political stripes recommended joining one or the other national cadaster depending on what was best for the Jews. They urged Jews to join the German cadaster only where there was a chance of electing someone—in most cases a liberal—who would take Jewish concerns into account. At the same time, they urged Jews to join the Czech cadaster in those districts where they feared Czech antisemitic backlash if they did not do so. This strategy reflected a primary concern with Jewish interests, not Czech or German nationalism.
In fact, Moravians did not “join” national cadasters. Local governments assigned voters to the German or Czech cadaster, and then individuals could request a transfer to the other cadaster for themselves or for someone else.Footnote 86 The process enabled nationalist activists to “reclaim” members of their own nations and gave the state the power to adjudicate these reclamations. Individuals could switch cadasters simply by professing membership in the other nation, but state officials and the courts also used so-called objective signs of national belonging, including language, schools, and organizational membership, for those reclaimed for their “proper” nation by others.Footnote 87 Given the fact that they spoke German and considered themselves part of the German community, most Jews must have been assigned to the German cadaster, especially in German-majority cities and in the Jewish political communities, and few would have transferred out or been “reclaimed.” At the same time, some Czech-dominated towns probably assigned Jews to the Czech cadaster, and those Jews did not protest. They may have felt that in those cities it was best to vote with the Czechs and not antagonize their Czech neighbors. Jews on the German cadaster, probably the overwhelming majority of Moravian Jews, helped elect German liberals, and the fact that so many liberals won made them feel comfortable as members of the German political community in Moravia. After all, Jews were Germans by language, culture, and education, and they probably felt that German liberals best represented both their German and Jewish interests. They were happy to be part of the German world if it remained liberal and they could participate in it as Jews.
Conclusion
Most Jews thus remained part of the German political community in late Habsburg Moravia, and the German liberal/Jewish alliance persisted. These Jews continued to vote for German progressives where they could, especially in cities with substantial numbers of Jews or where Jews formed a large percentage of all Germans, and the German progressives continued to reject antisemitism and win elections, at least in the cities. Jews also continued to serve as members of liberal-dominated city councils, as in Mährisch Ostrau/Moravská Ostrava, where eleven Jews were on the city council, and Brünn/Brno, with seven, and also in smaller places like Göding/Horodín, Ung. Hradisch/Hradiště Uherský, and even Znaim/Znojmo and Iglau/Jihlava.Footnote 88 The Brünn/Brno Chamber of Commerce and Industry had a Jewish president, the long-time president of the Jewish community, industrialist Julius Ritter von Gomperz, and ten Jewish board members in the early twentieth century.Footnote 89
Surprisingly, the situation did not change with the Moravian Compromise of 1905, which created separate German and Czech voting cadasters and allowed Germans and Czechs to vote for a preset number of representatives to the Moravian Diet and the Austrian parliament. German liberals might have perceived that they no longer needed Jewish electoral support, and they might have begun the process of excluding Jews, but such was not the case. Indeed, the German liberals still felt the need to attract Jewish voters in the cities of central and southern Moravia, especially in towns where Jews formed the majority of German-speakers. In those places, the only German party that might attract votes at all was the German Progressive Party, the latest incarnation of the old liberals. Moreover, no longer feeling competition from Czech-speaking voters, there was no reason to use antisemitic rhetoric in the name of “German unity.” Likewise, the introduction of universal male suffrage for parliamentary elections in 1907 might also have accelerated the process of excluding Jews. Yet, in parliamentary elections in the early twentieth century, the German Progressive Party continued to win the majority of German votes in the cities and towns located in the southern and central parts of the province. The structure of politics in Moravia, including the significance of Jewish voters in the cities, allowed the German liberals to remain true to traditional liberal values. Thus, fears to the contrary notwithstanding, for the most part German liberals in the province eschewed antisemitic rhetoric and Jews continued to vote for them.
Jews did worry about the inroads of antisemitism among German liberals and the impact of the new electoral system, but before the collapse of the monarchy, the old Jewish-liberal alliance remained intact in Moravia, and Jews remained part of the liberal German world as Jews. In interwar Czechoslovakia, however, that liberal German world no longer existed. Universal suffrage and the absence of a viable German liberal party meant that Moravian Jews no longer voted for German parties at all. Although they continued to speak German and participate in the German cultural community, Jews did not participate in the German political world. Loyal citizens of Czechoslovakia, the majority of Moravian Jews declared that they were members of the “Jewish nation” in what they imagined was a multinational state, and they voted for the Jewish Party in elections.Footnote 90 It took the creation of a nation-state and very different political realities to end the Jewish/German liberal alliance. In Habsburg Moravia, however, demographic and political realities had guaranteed its continued significance.
Acknowledgments
I would like to thank the two anonymous readers as well as the editors of the Austrian History Yearbook, Maureen Healy and Robert Nemes, for their excellent suggestions for the improvement of this article. In particular, I would like to thank Robert Nemes for his extraordinary help in shortening this article, which is far better because of his work.
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