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increasingly secular. For them the racial and economic antiSemitism found in the new bourgeois parties and political movements and in the Marxist Social Democratic Party seemed much more relevant and up to date. For them the ancient Judeophobia and the traditional allegations remained, but the vocabularly had changed. Moreover, unlike premodern times, when Judeophobia was merely a prejudice, albeit a deeply rooted one, there were now well-organized political parties that made antiSemitism an important part of their programs and propaganda.
     
     

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PART I
ANTISEMITISM IN THE AUSTRIAN EMPIRE
AntiSemites were right about one thing: antiSemitism was scarcely a new phenomenon in the twentieth century, in Austria or elsewhere in Europe. Its roots in Austria can be traced back nearly to the founding of Jewish communities in the tenth century. This is not to suggest, however, that Christian-Jewish relations were always hostile. Nevertheless, three themes predominate for the whole of Austrian history up to the collapse of the monarchy in 1918 and even into the First Republic: (1) Jewish-gentile relations were tolerable during periodapidly deteriorated during social and economic crises brought on by bad harvests, plagues, wars, or revolutions; (2) Christian theology taught by the Catholic clergy, especially the lower clergy, was a constant cause of popular antipathy toward the Jews; and (3) Jewish survival depended on the protection of the Austrian rulerswhenever it was removed, expulsion or at least harsh social and legal discrimination was the likely result.
In comparison with that of most other ruling dynasties in Europe, the treatment of Austrian Jews by the Habsburgs was usually fairly enlightened, especially after the accession to the throne of Emperor Joseph II in 1780. Habsburg benevolence did not prevent upsurges in popular antiSemitism, especially in the late nineteenth century, but it did provide Austrian Jews a secure enough setting to leave their ghettos and to enter the modern, secular world and make magnificent cultural contributions to Western civilization.
     

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2
The Historical Roots
Austrian Jews from the Middle Ages to the Eighteenth Century
Jews in the late Middle Ages were attracted to Austria by the opportunities to earn a living denied them in many European countries. In other parts of Germany they were subjected to arbitrary rules of lesser clergymen and city councils, as well as those of the Holy Roman emperor. But in Austria the dukes, like some rulers in other parts of Europe at that time, realized the economic value of Jews and jealously guarded their authority over them much to the displeasure of their gentile subjects. Jews, however, in thirteenth-century Austria were only allowed to engage in money and credit transactions. In 1397 the duke of Austria invited Jews to immigrate to his land from other parts of the Holy Roman Empire. Jews were also lured to Austria by the promise of self-government.
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Consequently, Jews settled in several Austrian localities from the tenth to the thirteenth centuries, soon after or in some cases actually before the founding of the cities of which they became a part. Viennese Jews were first mentioned in a document in 966. Jews began settling in Carinthia in the tenth or eleventh century, well before the founding of Klagenfurt, the capital city, sometime between 1161 and 1181. In neighboring Styria, Jews could be found in Judenburg by 1103 at the latest, in Völkermarkt sometime between 1105 and 1126, and in Judendorf bei Graz in 1147. The history of the Jews of the Styrian capital, Graz, began in 1166, only thirty years after the city itself was founded.
Except for Vienna, Jewish communities in Lower Austria were not founded until the thirteenth century. For example, in Wiener Neustadt, which lies only a few miles south of the Austrian capital, Jews first settled in the early thirteenth century, a few years after the founding of the city in 1194. Meanwhile,