How the Jews of Austria Went to War in 1914

Abstract

When the First World War broke out, Jews in the Habsburg Empire found themselves in a series of overlapping conflicts and crisis – young men were drafted and sent to the front, the Russian army threatened Galicia and Bukovina, Jews’ loyalty was questioned, and the nationalist and imperial rhetoric of the day left little room for ambiguities or second thoughts. This article analyses how Jews responded to the outbreak of the war and its multiple crises, as well as how they aimed to position themselves in the tense weeks of summer 1914. As seemingly every nation and community went to war, Jews needed to take part too. They did so in public assemblies where they recalled the eternal figures of Jewish heroism, through prayers for victory over the Muscovite archenemy of the Jewish people, and by public expressions of loyalty in a space where ‘nation’, ‘empire’, and other (ascribed) categories continuously overlapped and reinforced each other. This article analyses Jewish responses to the outbreak of the war in the Cisleithanian half of the Habsburg monarchy. It thereby not only highlights the interdependence of Jews and wider society, but also suggests that traditional approaches to explain the Jewish experience in the Habsburg lands in the beginning of the Great War ought to be reconsidered.