List of Austrian Jews
Encyclopedia
Austria
Austria
Austria , officially the Republic of Austria , is a landlocked country of roughly 8.4 million people in Central Europe. It is bordered by the Czech Republic and Germany to the north, Slovakia and Hungary to the east, Slovenia and Italy to the south, and Switzerland and Liechtenstein to the...

 first became a center of Jewish learning during the 13th century. However, increasing anti-semitism
Anti-Semitism
Antisemitism is suspicion of, hatred toward, or discrimination against Jews for reasons connected to their Jewish heritage. According to a 2005 U.S...

 led to the expulsion of the Jews in 1669. Following formal readmission in 1848, a sizable Jewish community developed once again, contributing strongly to Austrian culture. By the 1930s, some 300,000 Jews lived in Austria, most of them in Vienna
Vienna
Vienna is the capital and largest city of the Republic of Austria and one of the nine states of Austria. Vienna is Austria's primary city, with a population of about 1.723 million , and is by far the largest city in Austria, as well as its cultural, economic, and political centre...

. Following the Anschluss
Anschluss
The Anschluss , also known as the ', was the occupation and annexation of Austria into Nazi Germany in 1938....

 with Nazi Germany
Nazi Germany
Nazi Germany , also known as the Third Reich , but officially called German Reich from 1933 to 1943 and Greater German Reich from 26 June 1943 onward, is the name commonly used to refer to the state of Germany from 1933 to 1945, when it was a totalitarian dictatorship ruled by...

, most of the community emigrated or were killed in the Holocaust
The Holocaust
The Holocaust , also known as the Shoah , was the genocide of approximately six million European Jews and millions of others during World War II, a programme of systematic state-sponsored murder by Nazi...

. The current Austrian Jewish population is around 10,000. The following is a list of some prominent Austrian Jews.
Here German speaking Jews from the whole Habsburg Empire are listed.

Athletes

  • Margarete "Grete" Adler
    Margarete Adler
    Margarete "Grete" Adler was an Austrian freestyle swimmer, diver, and gymnastics teacher, who competed in the 1912 Summer Olympics and in the 1924 Summer Olympics.She was Jewish, and was born in Vienna....

    , swimmer, Olympic bronze (4x100-meter (m) freestyle
    Freestyle swimming
    Freestyle is an unregulated swimming style used in swimming competitions according to the rules of FINA. The front crawl stroke is almost universally used during a freestyle race, as this style is generally the fastest...

     relay)
  • Richard Bergmann
    Richard Bergmann
    Richard Bergmann was an Austrian and British table tennis player. Winner of seven World Championships, including four Singles, one Men's Doubles, two Team's titles and 22 medals in total.-Tennis career:...

    , Austria/Britain table tennis player, 7x world champion, ITTFHoF
  • Albert Bogen
    Albert Bogen
    Albert Bogen was a fencer who competed for Austria at the 1912 Summer Olympics and for Hungary at the 1928 Summer Olympics....

     (Albert Bógathy), fencer (saber), Olympic silver
  • Fritzi Burger
    Fritzi Burger
    Friederike "Fritzi" Burger was an Austrian figure skater competitive in the late 1920s and early 1930s. She was Jewish.-Career:...

    , figure skater, 2x Olympic silver, 2x World Championship silver
  • Siegfried "Fritz" Flesch
    Siegfried Flesch
    Siegfried "Fritz" Flesch was an Austrian sabre fencer who competed in the late 19th century and early 20th century. Flesch was Jewish.-Olympic fencing career:...

    , fencer (sabre), Olympic bronze
  • Hans Haas
    Hans Haas
    Hans Haas was an Austrian weightlifter who competed in the 1928 Summer Olympics and in the 1932 Summer Olympics.He was born in Vienna....

    , weightlifter, Olympic champion (lightweight), silver
  • Judith Haspel
    Judith Haspel
    Judith Deutsch-Haspel, born Judith Deutsch was a swimming champion who held every Austrian women's middle and long distance freestyle record in 1935....

     (born "Judith Deutsch"), Austrian-born Israeli swimmer, held every Austrian women's middle and long distance freestyle record in 1935, refused to represent Austria in 1936 Summer Olympics along with Ruth Langer and Lucie Goldner, protesting Hitler, stating, "I refuse to enter a contest in a land which so shamefully persecutes my people."
  • Dr. Otto Herschmann
    Otto Herschmann
    Dr. Otto Herschmann was a Jewish Austrian swimmer, fencer, lawyer, and sport official. He is one of only three athletes to have won Olympic medals in different sports.-Olympic swimming career:...

    , fencer (saber), 2-Olympic-silver (in fencing/team sabre and 100-m freestyle); arrested by Nazis, and died in Izbica concentration camp
    Izbica concentration camp
    The Izbica ghetto was a Jewish ghetto created in Izbica in occupied Poland during World War II, serving as a transfer point for deportation of Jews from Poland, Germany, Austria and Czechoslovakia to Belzec and Sobibor extermination camps. SS-Hauptsturmführer Kurt Engels was the commandant of the...

  • Nickolaus "Mickey" Hirschl
    Nickolaus Hirschl
    Nickolaus "Mickey" Hirschl was an Austrian Olympic-medal-winning wrestler, European Heavyweight Wrestling Champion, and for 10 years held the title of Austrian Heavyweight Wrestling Champion...

    , wrestler, 2x Olympic bronze (heavyweight freestyle and Greco-Roman)
  • Felix Kasper, figure skater, Olympic bronze
  • Klara Milch
    Klara Milch
    Klara Milch was an Austrian freestyle swimmer who competed in the 1912 Summer Olympics. She was Jewish....

    , swimmer, Olympic bronze (4x100-m freestyle relay)
  • Paul Neumann
    Paul Neumann (swimmer)
    Paul Neumann was an Austrian swimmer and physician, who competed at the 1896 Summer Olympics in Athens and became the first Austrian gold medalist ever.-Biography:...

    , swimmer, Olympic champion (500-m freestyle)
  • Fred Oberlander
    Fred Oberlander
    Fred Oberlander was an Austrian, British, and Canadian wrestler.-Wrestling career:Between 1930 and 1950 he won two Austrian Junior wrestling titles, five French Heavyweight Championships, seven British Heavyweight Championships , and the 1950 Canadian Heavyweight crown.He also won the 1935 World...

    , Austrian, British, and Canadian wrestler; world champion (freestyle heavyweight); Maccabiah champion
  • Felix Pipes
    Felix Pipes
    Fritz Felix Pipes was a male tennis player from Austria. At the 1912 Stockholm Olympics he teamed up with Arthur Zborzil to win a silver medal in the men's doubles event.-References:...

    , tennis player, Olympic silver (doubles)
  • Maxim Podoprigora
    Maxim Podoprigora
    Maxim Podoprigora is an Austrian Olympic swimmer.He is Jewish, and was born in Kyiv, Ukraine.He studied at the University of Vienna in Vienna, Austria...

    , Olympic swimmer
  • Ellen Preis
    Ellen Preis
    Ellen Müller-Preis, née Preis, was an Austrian foil fencer. She was born in Berlin, Germany.In 1949, she was named Austrian female athlete of the year.-Fencing career:...

    , fencer (foil), 3x world champion (1947, 1949, and 1950), Olympic champion, 17x Austrian champion
  • Otto Scheff
    Otto Scheff
    Otto Scheff, born Otto Sochaczewsky was an Austrian freestyle swimmer, water polo player, lawyer, politician, and sports official who competed in the 1906 Summer Olympics, in the 1908 Summer Olympics, and in the 1912 Summer Olympics.Scheff was born in Berlin. He won a bronze medal in the 400 metre...

     (born "Otto Sochaczewsky"), swimmer , Olympic champion (400-m freestyle) and 2x bronze (400-m freestyle, 1,500-m freestyle)
  • Josephine Sticker
    Josephine Sticker
    Josephine Sticker was an Austrian freestyle swimmer who competed in the 1912 Summer Olympics.She won the bronze medal in the 4×100 metre freestyle relay event, becoming the first Austrian woman to win an Olympic medal together with her teammates Margarete Adler, Klara Milch and Berta...

    , swimmer, Olympic bronze (4x100-m freestyle relay)
  • Otto Wahle
    Otto Wahle
    Otto Wahle was a Jewish Austrian swimmer who competed in the late 19th century and early 20th century.-Swimming career:...

    , Austria/US swimmer, 2x Olympic silver (1,000-m freestyle, 200-m obstacle race) and bronze (400-m freestyle); International Swimming Hall of Fame

Scientists

  • Sir Otto Frankel
    Otto Frankel
    Sir Otto Herzberg Frankel was an Austrian-born Australian geneticist.- Early life and family :...

    , geneticist http://www.science.org.au/scientists/of.htm
  • Carl Koller, ophthalmologist; first to use cocaine
    Cocaine
    Cocaine is a crystalline tropane alkaloid that is obtained from the leaves of the coca plant. The name comes from "coca" in addition to the alkaloid suffix -ine, forming cocaine. It is a stimulant of the central nervous system, an appetite suppressant, and a topical anesthetic...

     as an anaesthetic http://www.cocaine.org/karl-koller/life.html
  • Hans Kronberger (physicist)
    Hans Kronberger (physicist)
    Hans Kronberger CBE, FRS was a British physicist.- Education :* King's College, University of Durham; BSc 1944* University of Birmingham; Ph.D 1948- Career :Escaping from Austria he studied in Durham...

    , nuclear physicist
  • Robert von Lieben
    Robert von Lieben
    Robert von Lieben was a notable Austrian physicist.Robert von Lieben was born to Leopold von Lieben and Anna von Lieben.-Education:...

    , physicist (Jewish father) http://web.archive.org/web/20091027123051/http://geocities.com/neveyaakov/electro_science/lieben.html
  • Victor Frederick Weisskopf
    Victor Frederick Weisskopf
    Victor Frederick Weisskopf was an Austrian-born Jewish American theoretical physicist. He did postdoctoral work with Werner Heisenberg, Erwin Schrödinger, Wolfgang Pauli and Niels Bohr...

     (1908–2002) physicist. During World War II, he worked at Los Alamos on the Manhattan Project to develop the atomic bomb, and later campaigned against the proliferation of nuclear weapons
  • Max Perutz
    Max Perutz
    Max Ferdinand Perutz, OM, CH, CBE, FRS was an Austrian-born British molecular biologist, who shared the 1962 Nobel Prize for Chemistry with John Kendrew, for their studies of the structures of hemoglobin and globular proteins...

     molecular biologist. Winner of 1962 Nobel Prize for Chemistry

Psychologists, psychotherapists and psychiatrists

  • Alfred Adler
    Alfred Adler
    Alfred Adler was an Austrian medical doctor, psychotherapist, and founder of the school of individual psychology. In collaboration with Sigmund Freud and a small group of Freud's colleagues, Adler was among the co-founders of the psychoanalytic movement as a core member of the Vienna...

    , founding member of the Vienna Psychoanalytic Society and founder of the school of individual psychology
  • Sigmund Freud
    Sigmund Freud
    Sigmund Freud , born Sigismund Schlomo Freud , was an Austrian neurologist who founded the discipline of psychoanalysis...

    , Moravian-born founder of psychoanalysis and neurologist
  • Marie Jahoda
    Marie Jahoda
    Marie Jahoda was an Austrian- British social psychologist.-Biography:Jahoda was born in Vienna, Austria to a Jewish family, and like many other psychologists of her time, grew up in Austria where political oppression against socialists was rampant henceforward Dollfuß claimed power...

    , psychologist http://www3.niu.edu/acad/psych/Millis/History/2003/womeninpsych_6.htm
  • Melanie Klein
    Melanie Klein
    Melanie Reizes Klein was an Austrian-born British psychoanalyst who devised novel therapeutic techniques for children that had an impact on child psychology and contemporary psychoanalysis...

    , psychotherapy
  • Wilhelm Reich
    Wilhelm Reich
    Wilhelm Reich was an Austrian-American psychiatrist and psychoanalyst, known as one of the most radical figures in the history of psychiatry...

    , psychiatry and psychoanalysis
  • Viktor Frankl
    Viktor Frankl
    Viktor Emil Frankl M.D., Ph.D. was an Austrian neurologist and psychiatrist as well as a Holocaust survivor. Frankl was the founder of logotherapy, which is a form of Existential Analysis, the "Third Viennese School of Psychotherapy"...

    , Psychiatrist and psychologist

Social and political scientists

  • Samuel Bergman
    Hugo Bergmann
    Samuel Hugo Bergman, or Samuel Bergman was a German and Israeli Jewish philosopher.-Biography:...

    , philosopher
  • Paul Edwards
    Paul Edwards (philosopher)
    Paul Edwards, born Paul Eisenstein, was an Austrian American moral philosopher.-Life and career:Edwards was born in Vienna in 1923 to assimilated Jewish parents, the youngest of three brothers....

    , philosopher http://wasm.us/Edwards%20Obit.pdf
  • Heinrich Friedjung
    Heinrich Friedjung
    Heinrich Friedjung was an Austrian historian and journalist.Friedjung was born in Roschtin , Moravia . The son of a Jewish family grew up in Vienna, and studied history in Prague and Berlin under Theodor Mommsen and Leopold von Ranke...

    , Moravian historian and politician. (http://www.britannica.com/eb/article-9000270/Heinrich-Friedjung; Encyclopaedia Judaica, article "Historians", list of "Prominent Jewish General Historians".)
  • Norbert Jokl
    Norbert Jokl
    Norbert Jokl was an Austrian Albanologist of Jewish descent who has been called the father of Albanology.- Early life :...

    , founder of Albanology
  • Otto Kurz
    Otto Kurz
    Otto Kurz FBA was a historian and Slade Professor of Fine Arts, University of Oxford.-Career:...

    , historian (Jewish Year Book
    Jewish Year Book
    The Jewish Year Book is an almanac targeted at the Jewish community in the United Kingdom. It has been published every year since 1896 and is currently published by Vallentine Mitchell in association with The Jewish Chronicle and is edited by Stephen W...

     1975 p214)
  • Emil Lederer
    Emil Lederer
    Emil Lederer was a Bohemian-born German economist and sociologist. Purged from his position at Heidelberg University in 1933 for being Jewish, Lederer fled into exile. He helped establish the "University in Exile" at the New School in New York City.-Biography:Lederer was born in 1882 to a Jewish...

    , economist
  • Ludwig von Mises
    Ludwig von Mises
    Ludwig Heinrich Edler von Mises was an Austrian economist, philosopher, and classical liberal who had a significant influence on the modern Libertarian movement and the "Austrian School" of economic thought.-Biography:-Early life:...

    , economist
  • Ludwig Wittgenstein
    Ludwig Wittgenstein
    Ludwig Josef Johann Wittgenstein was an Austrian philosopher who worked primarily in logic, the philosophy of mathematics, the philosophy of mind, and the philosophy of language. He was professor in philosophy at the University of Cambridge from 1939 until 1947...

    , philosopher (born and raised Catholic)

Film and stage

  • Rudolph Bing
    Rudolph Bing
    Sir Rudolf Bing was an Austrian-born opera impresario who worked in Germany, the United Kingdom and the United States, most notably being General Manager of the Metropolitan Opera in New York from 1950 to 1972...

     (1902–1997) opera impresario, General Manager of the Metropolitan Opera
    Metropolitan Opera
    The Metropolitan Opera is an opera company, located in New York City. Originally founded in 1880, the company gave its first performance on October 22, 1883. The company is operated by the non-profit Metropolitan Opera Association, with Peter Gelb as general manager...

     in New York from 1950 to 1972
  • Alber Misak, actor

Musicians

  • Ignaz Brüll
    Ignaz Brüll
    Ignaz Brüll was an Austrian pianist and composer.Ignaz Brüll was born the eldest son of a prosperous Jewish merchant family in the Moravian provincial town of Prostějov . In 1850 he moved with his parents to Vienna, which became the centre of his life and work...

    , composer and pianist
  • Joseph Joachim
    Joseph Joachim
    Joseph Joachim was a Hungarian violinist, conductor, composer and teacher. A close collaborator of Johannes Brahms, he is widely regarded as one of the most significant violinists of the 19th century.-Origins:...

    , violinist (born in Kittsee, Austria, at that time Hungary)http://www.jinfo.org/Violinists.html
  • Hans Keller
    Hans Keller
    Hans Keller was an influential Austrian-born British musician and writer who made significant contributions to musicology and music criticism, as well as being an insightful commentator on such disparate fields as psychoanalysis and football...

    , musicologist
  • Fritz Kreisler
    Fritz Kreisler
    Friedrich "Fritz" Kreisler was an Austrian-born violinist and composer. One of the most famous violin masters of his or any other day, he was known for his sweet tone and expressive phrasing. Like many great violinists of his generation, he produced a characteristic sound which was immediately...

     (1875–1962) violinist and composer, one of the most famous of his day
  • Erica Morini, violinist http://www.arkivmusic.com/classical/album.jsp?album_id=61303
  • Erwin Schulhoff
    Erwin Schulhoff
    Erwin Schulhoff was a Czech composer and pianist.-Life:Born in Prague of Jewish-German origin, Schulhoff was one of the brightest figures in a generation of European musicians whose successful careers were prematurely terminated by the rise of the Nazi regime in Germany...

     (1894–1942) composer and pianist
  • Julius Schulhoff
    Julius Schulhoff
    Julius Schulhoff, was a Bohemian pianist and composer of Jewish birth. He was the great-uncle of the 20th century composer Erwin Schulhoff....

     (1825–1898) pianist and composer
  • Rudolf Schwarz
    Rudolf Schwarz (conductor)
    Rudolf Schwarz CBE was an Austrian-born conductor of Jewish ancestry. He became a British citizen and spent the latter half of his life in England.-Early life:...

    , conductor
  • Walter Susskind
    Walter Susskind
    Jan Walter Susskind was a Czech-born British conductor.-Biography:Susskind was born in Prague, Austria–Hungary, now the Czech Republic. His father was a Viennese music critic and his Czech mother was a piano teacher. At the State Conservatorium he studied under composer Josef Suk, the son-in-law...

     (1913–1980) conductor
  • Richard Tauber
    Richard Tauber
    Richard Tauber was an Austrian tenor acclaimed as one of the greatest singers of the 20th century. Some critics commented that "his heart felt every word he sang".-Early life:...

    , singer and composer
  • Egon Wellesz
    Egon Wellesz
    Egon Joseph Wellesz was an Austrian-born British composer, teacher and musicologist, notable particularly in the field of Byzantine music.- Life :...

    , composer http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1G1-111223932.html

Composers

  • Erich Wolfgang Korngold
    Erich Wolfgang Korngold
    Erich Wolfgang Korngold was an Austro-Hungarian film and romantic music composer. While his compositional style was considered well out of vogue at the time he died, his music has more recently undergone a reevaluation and a gradual reawakening of interest...

    , composer (born in Bohemia)
  • Fritz Kreisler
    Fritz Kreisler
    Friedrich "Fritz" Kreisler was an Austrian-born violinist and composer. One of the most famous violin masters of his or any other day, he was known for his sweet tone and expressive phrasing. Like many great violinists of his generation, he produced a characteristic sound which was immediately...

     (1875–1962) violinist and composer, one of the most famous of his day
  • Gustav Mahler
    Gustav Mahler
    Gustav Mahler was a late-Romantic Austrian composer and one of the leading conductors of his generation. He was born in the village of Kalischt, Bohemia, in what was then Austria-Hungary, now Kaliště in the Czech Republic...

    , Bohemian-born composer, conductor and pianist
  • Arnold Schoenberg (1871-1954), composer (born in Vienna). Founder of Second Viennese School, music theorist.

Writers

  • Peter Altenberg, born in 1859 in Vienna.
  • Raphael Basch
    Raphael Basch
    Raphael Basch, also Rafael Basch was a Bohemian-Austrian writer and politician. He was the father of Victor Basch ....

     (1813-?), journalist & politician
  • Abraham Benisch
    Abraham Benisch
    Abraham Benisch was a Hebraist and journalist.He studied medicine at Vienna but abandoned his studies and moved to England in 1841. He was the editor of the Jewish Chronicle, 1854-69 and 1875-8 and zealously promoted the cause of his fellow Jews...

     (1814–1878) Hebraist and journalist; born Bohemia
  • Henri Blowitz
    Henri Blowitz
    Henri Georges Stephane Adolphe Opper de Blowitz was a Bohemian journalist.He was born to a family of Jewish ancestry at Blovice in Bohemia, and left home at the age of fifteen to travel, acquiring a wide range of languages in the process. When financial constraints led him to plan emigration to...

    , journalist
  • Boris Brainin (Sepp Österreicher), poet and translator
  • Fritz Brainin, poet
  • Paul Kornfeld
    Paul Kornfeld (playwright)
    Paul Kornfeld was a Czech-born German-language Jewish writer whose expressionist plays and scholarly treatises on the theory of drama earned him a specialized niche in influencing contemporary intellectual discourse....

     (1889–1942) writer, author of many expressionist plays
  • Karl Kraus
    Karl Kraus
    Karl Kraus was an Austrian writer and journalist, known as a satirist, essayist, aphorist, playwright and poet. He is regarded as one of the foremost German-language satirists of the 20th century, especially for his witty criticism of the press, German culture, and German and Austrian...

    , author
  • Heinrich Landesmann
    Heinrich Landesmann
    Heinrich Landesmann, Hieronymus Lorm was an Austrian poet and philosophical writer....

    , poet http://www.shtetlinks.jewishgen.org/Nikolsburg/nikoland.htm
  • Felix Salten
    Felix Salten
    Felix Salten was an Austrian author and critic in Vienna. His most famous work is Bambi .-Life:...

    , Hungarian
    Hungary
    Hungary , officially the Republic of Hungary , is a landlocked country in Central Europe. It is situated in the Carpathian Basin and is bordered by Slovakia to the north, Ukraine and Romania to the east, Serbia and Croatia to the south, Slovenia to the southwest and Austria to the west. The...

    -born Austrian writer
  • Hugo Sonnenschein
    Hugo Sonnenschein
    Hugo Sonnenschein was an Austrian writer from Bohemia. - External links :http://www.aeiou.at/aeiou.encyclop.s/s652031.htm...

    , Bohemian-born writer http://www.aeiou.at/aeiou.encyclop.s/s652031.htm;internal&action=_setlanguage.action?LANGUAGE=en
  • Stefan Zweig
    Stefan Zweig
    Stefan Zweig was an Austrian novelist, playwright, journalist and biographer. At the height of his literary career, in the 1920s and 1930s, he was one of the most famous writers in the world.- Biography :...

    , writer

Miscellaneous

  • Alfred Edersheim
    Alfred Edersheim
    Alfred Edersheim was a Jewish convert to Christianity and a Biblical scholar known especially for his book The Life and Times of Jesus the Messiah .- Early life and education :...

    , Bible scholar
  • Maurice de Hirsch
    Maurice de Hirsch
    Maurice de Hirsch was a German-Jewish philanthropist who set up charitable foundations to promote Jewish education and improve the lot of oppressed European Jewry. He was the founder of the Jewish Colonization Association which sponsored large-scale Jewish immigration to Argentina...

    , banker
  • Isaak Löw Hofmann, Edler von Hofmannsthal
    Isaak Löw Hofmann, Edler von Hofmannsthal
    Isaak Löw Hofmann, Edler von Hofmannsthal was an Austrian merchant....

    , merchant
  • Moritz Steinschneider
    Moritz Steinschneider
    Moritz Steinschneider was a Bohemian bibliographer and Orientalist. He received his early instruction in Hebrew from his father, Jacob Steinschneider , who was not only an expert Talmudist, but was also well versed in secular science...

    , bibliographer and Orientalist
  • George Weidenfeld
    George Weidenfeld
    Arthur George Weidenfeld, Baron Weidenfeld, GBE is a British publisher, philanthropist, and newspaper columnist. He was born in Vienna, Austria.Weidenfeld attended the University of Vienna and the city's Diplomatic College...

    , publisher http://www.ajr.org.uk/exhibit.htm

Others


See also

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