Salzburg, Austria
Salzburg has a rich
Jewish heritage that goes back very far in
history. Jewish people were reported to arrive
in Salzburg at the days of the Roman
Empire,
when the city at the location of today’s
Salzburg was called “Iuvavum.”
After the withdrawal of
the Romans, and the decay of Iuvavum, Salzburg
was re-founded in the
8th century. Bishop Arno of Salzburg (785-871),
who was a friend and advisor to Emperor Charlemagne,
was treated by a Jewish doctor – this
record of a “medicum iudaicum” is
the oldest for Jews in Salzburg in post-Roman
times.
Documents from the 12th
century refer to the “Judengasse,”
the “alley
of the Jews.” This alley is an extension
of the world-famous Getreidegasse and near
the cathedral. A busy shopping street, it
is still one of the central attractions in
Salzburg. The house in the Judengasse 15
was referred to as a house of prayer and
a synagogue in a record from 1370. Later,
it became the site for the pub “Höllbräu” and
today hosts a 5-star hotel.
In late medieval times,
Jewish people in Salzburg had to face threats
and pogroms. Under the rule of a Catholic Prince-Archbishop not overly pleased about non-Catholic residents of any kind, Jews were burnt near today’s Müllnerbräu in 1492 and were expelled from Salzburg and prevented from permanent settlement. This ban prevented
the development of a Jewish community in
Salzburg until 1868. In 1893, a synagogue
was built in Lasserstraße 8, which
still exists and is in use today. One year later,
a Jewish cemetery was built in Aigen.
In 1885, Theodor
Herzl – a Jewish Austrian lawyer,
journalist and father of the Zionist movement – stayed
in Salzburg as a trainee at Salzburg’s
province court. He referred to Salzburg
in a letter as a place at which he spent
some of his happiest hours. However, he
pointed out in the same letter, that there
was a lot of anti-Semitism in
Salzburg, which would make a longer stay
impossible for him, as his career-prospects
would be very restricted. In the late 1990's,
a controversy arose over plans to erect
a memorial plaque with the first part of
Herzl’s quotation – the one
that is somewhat flattering for Salzburg – but
leaving out the criticism. After a lot
of public involvement and media coverage,
the memorial plaque finally included all
of Herzl’s comment.
Not every Jew felt hostility
in Salzburg. Many Jewish Austrians settled
in Salzburg and actively contributed to the
cultural and intellectual life of the city.
The historian Adolf Altmann lived in Salzburg
between 1907 and 1920 and published Geschichte
der Juden in Stadt und Land Salzburg (A
history of the Jews in the City and Province
of Salzburg). Dramatist Max Reinhardt
and poet Hugo von Hoffmannsthal played important
roles in founding
the Salzburg festival and shaped it in
its earliest years. Writer and pacifist
Stefan Zweig, one of the most important German-writing
authors of the 20th century, lived in a villa
on the Kapuzinerberg. In the early 1930's,
the Zweig-Villa was a meeting point for Europe’s
intelligentsia. Jewish German dramatist
Carl Zuckmayer escaped to Austria in 1933 to
live in his former holiday house in Henndorf,
near Salzburg. For most of these people,
the Salzburg Festival and its intellectual
community was a binding force, causing invaluable
cultural input to the life and development
of the city.
In 1938, Austria was
annexed to Nazi Germany,
and Austria, with a significant Jewish core,
had to face its darkest hour. Shortly after
the annexation, Salzburg’s
synagogue was destroyed. Jewish property
in Salzburg – like elsewhere in Austria – was “Aryanised,”
which normally meant that the Jewish owners
were forced to sell all their possessions
for a below-value amount. Stefan Zweig and
his wife fled to Great
Britain and later
to South America. When they thought Europe
was lost to Nazi terror, the couple committed
suicide together. Zuckmayer escaped to Switzerland.
About 100,000 Jewish Austrians
left the country, often leaving behind everything
they had owned. About 70,000 Jewish
Austrians were murdered in concentration
camps. Approximately 375.000 people,
about 5.5 percent of the nation’s population,
were killed during the Holocaust and Second
World War. About 70
percent of the casualties were soldiers
serving in the Wehrmacht.
Salzburg’s Jewish
community never recovered. The current Jewish
population consists of only about 100 people.
The synagogue at Lasserstraße
8 is in active use; services are held on
Jewish holidays, Friday evenings and Saturday
mornings.
Contacts
Israelitische Kultusgemeinde Salzburg
Lasserstraße 8, 5020
Salzburg
Tel 0662-872228
[email protected]
Sources: Mandl, Benedikt . "A Jewish History of Austria." TourMyCountry.com, Visit
Salzburg.
This article is dedicated to Simon Wiesenthal
(1905 – 2005), a Jewish Austrian
patriot. |