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Diaspora Nationalism's Pyrrhic Victory:
The Controversy Regarding the Electoral Reform of 1909 in Bukovina
Institute on East Central Europe
Columbia University
March, 1996
Zionism, i.e., the desire to establish a Jewish state in Palestine, was not the only political program put forward by the nascent Jewish national movement. An alternative -- and at times a rival -- program had been Diaspora Nationalism (or in its Russian variant autonomism) which stood for the attainment of national minority rights for the Jewish population of Eastern Europe within the then-existing large multi-national states. 1 At first glance, Zionism seems to have been the more utopian of the two programs. Only 60,000 Jews lived in Palestine at the turn of the twentieth century, and the prospects of obtaining international recognition of Jewish rights in the old biblical homeland ("obtaining a charter," in contemporary terminology) had been very slight. Diaspora Nationalism, on the other hand, pertained to the bulk of the world Jewish population, which lived in dense settlements in the Russian Pale and in the eastern areas of Austria-Hungary, and offered a concrete course of action relevant to the here and now and not to some distant future. Yet, Diaspora Nationalism never attracted as many supporters as did Zionism and never created the organizational network similar to the Histadrut Ha-Zionit (World Zionist Organization). The closest Diaspora Nationalism had ever come to achieving its aims occurred in 1909 in one of the smallest and most nationally-heterogeneous provinces of the Habsburg monarchy: Bukovina. There, an agreement negotiated between representatives of the various local political parties, including the Jewish People's Party (Jüdische Volkspartei) headed by Benno Straucher, recognized the Bukovinian Jewish population as a nationality (Volksstamm or Nationalität), alongside the Ruthenians (i.e. Ukrainians), Romanians, Germans, Poles and Hungarians. Consequently, Jews in Bukovina were to receive their own vote -- curia and electoral districts were to be carved out to ensure representation in the provincial diet, corresponding to the 13 percent share of Jews in the population of Bukovina.
The agreement in Bukovina was a major coup for Diaspora nationalists. This was the first time that Jews were to be recognized as a nationality in the Austro-Hungarian state and the first time that political rights were to be awarded based on this fact. Moreover, this was the first time since the final legal emancipation of Jews in 1867 that a section of the Jewish population would be recognized as anything but a religious community, thus indirectly supporting the claims of anti-Semites that a German, a Czech or a Pole of the Mosaic faith was an oxymoron. The agreement, therefore, unleashed a debate among various sections of the Austrian Jewish population regarding its prudence and its underlying assumptions. Examining the agreement and the ensuing controversy provides an excellent opportunity to understand the issues involved in being a Jew in a world which was becoming increasingly secular and nationalistic. It offers insight into the great hopes and fears present at that juncture when modern Jewish national identity was formed as well as a key to understanding why Jewish Diaspora Nationalism did not develop into a dominant current in modern Jewish nationalism.
The formation of the Habsburg state was the outcome of a long process in which a wide range of territories were incorporated under the rule of one dynasty. This fact may seem trivial, yet it is of considerable importance. The state came into existence only as a result of the policies, ambitions and interests of the House of Habsburg. In contrast to France or Muscovy, there was no ethnic component to the Austrian state-building process. Even today many Austrians are not sure whether one can truly speak of an "Austrian national identity." The territories that came under the rule of the Habsburgs varied considerably: some were historic lands with long-established political traditions, such as the Kingdom of Hungary and the Kingdom of Bohemia; others were relatively new creations, such as the Province of Galicia, which included the areas the Habsburgs had taken during the partitions of Poland, or the tiny Crownland of Bukovina, which had been incorporated in 1774 into the Habsburg state because it constituted a strategic link between Galicia and Transylvania. 2
As a result of this state-building process, diverse linguistic and religious groups found themselves in this common political structure. Many of them possessed a set of collective myths and memories, which had preceded their incorporation into the Habsburg state and which distinguished them in Anthony Smith's terminology as ethnic communities (ethnie). 3 However, at the end of the 18th century none of these ethnic groups had resembled the nations which 19th century nationalists would later envisage. Most did not have a standardized literary language and some of them, such as the Natio Hungarica or the Natio Polonica, were socially exclusive (or lateral) i.e., pertaining only to the nobility. It was during the nineteenth century that these collective myths and memories would be recast to include an increasing social base, forge new identities and advance concrete political programs.
There were several reasons why these political aspirations presented a grave challenge to a dynastic state such as the Habsburg monarchy. First, there was great heterogeneity in the monarchy's pattern of settlement. There was no neat way in which one could carve the state into ethnic areas without leaving substantial minorities living resentfully outside the core area. Second, there was no one sufficiently large nationality with whose aspirations the state and the dynasty could identify. There were eleven nationalities officially recognized by the Nationalities Law of 1867, the two largest of which -- the Austro-Germans and the Hungarians -- together formed less than 60 percent of the total population. Thus, there was no way of developing an "official nationalism," 4 .e., harnessing the passions aroused by nationalism into the service of the state. Third, accepting the demands of nationalist movements meant limiting the de facto power of the Habsburgs and transferring legitimacy from the dynasty to the nationalities. But because the sole reason for the existence of the state was the dynasty, undermining the latter's position meant in fact undermining the existence of the state.
Aware of these complications, the Habsburgs proceeded reluctantly and haphazardly in their policies vis-à-vis what was then known as the "nationality question" (die Nationalitätenfrage). Despite numerous and highly sophisticated plans for reform, beginning with the proposal of the Kremsier parliament in 1849 and ending with grand designs of the Socialist Karl Renner (personal autonomy) and the Romanian liberal politician Aurel Popovici ("the United States of Great Austria"), no comprehensive program was ever implemented. 5 he only major accommodation to national demands came in 1867 in the so-called "Compromise" (Ausgleich) with the Hungarian national movement, in which the state was divided into two separate parts: Austria (Cisleithania) and Hungary (Transleithania). This move, as Alan Sked asserts, proved disastrous since it gave Hungarian leaders the right to veto any reorganization in the framework of the state, thus preventing any accommodation with the aspirations of other nationalist movements. 6
The only other alternative left for reform was the attempt to reach "little compromises" in individual provinces. This piecemeal approach produced three agreements during the last decade of the monarchy's existence -- in Moravia (1905), Bukovina (1909) and Galicia (1914) -- of which the first two were implemented. The guiding principle behind these reforms was to ensure representation of each nationality 7 in the provincial diet (Landtag) corresponding to the nationality's share in the population. This secured a proportional share of influence in the three areas under the jurisdiction of the provincial diets, namely transportation, health and public utilities. However, the sensitive area of education was removed from the jurisdiction of the provincial diets and placed under the control of independent national committees. 8
In order to execute these reforms, the existing curia system was remodeled. The curia was the basic electoral unit of the Austrian parliamentary system. Each curia consisted of a body of voters, who belonged either to a social stratum (e.g., estate owners, taxpayers of 10 Gulden or less, etc.) or an institution (e.g., chambers of commerce). A predetermined number of Landtag seats was assigned to each curia, thus ensuring a certain share of influence to this particular segment of society. 9 In the Moravian compromise of 1905 the reform abolished all other curiae except the curia of the great estate owners, and created instead two national curiae, one for the Czech speaking population of the province (71 percent of the population of the province) and one for the German speakers (29 percent). The voters were registered in national voting lists (cadastres) and were allowed to vote only in their own curia. 10
The possibilities present in the Moravian agreement had made a great impact on activists in both currents of the emerging Jewish national movement. Die Welt, the official organ of the World Zionist Organization, 11 declared in its leading article from December 8, 1905: "Suddenly stands on the agenda something, which even people who claim to know everything in advance could not have possibly dreamt of even in their wildest dreams: A Jewish curia." 12 According to Die Welt, the Jewish curia would be a most effective weapon in the fight against assimilation, because it would force every Jew to come to terms with his own Jewishness: "it is not the same when one denies his Jewishness secretly and disappears quietly into the crowd or when one has to deny it officially in broad daylight." 13 If Jews were required to state their nationality publicly, they would more clearly notice the intolerance of other nationalities and have second thoughts about committing themselves to the German, Czech or Polish cause.
No less enthusiastic was the Jewish nationalist theorist Nathan Birnbaum (a.k.a. Mathias Acher). Birnbaum, who had been one of the leading figures in Austrian Zionism in the 1880s and 1890s, around the turn of the century rejected the Zionist goal of establishing a Jewish state in Palestine and became increasingly interested in the idea of Jewish national autonomy in the Diaspora. Birnbaum was convinced that the political crisis overtaking multinational Austria might be advantageous to the cause of Jewish nationalism. In the rising national tensions he saw a challenge to the Austrian state which could be overcome only by reforms based on autonomist principles. In Birnbaum's mind, these reforms could lead to the recognition of Jews as equal national partners if Jewish politics in Austria would be conducted in a clever fashion. He was convinced that the Moravian agreement was the model of the future and suggested that Jewish national politics be oriented toward acquiring a Jewish curia. 14
The first opportunity to obtain such a curia materialized four years later in the easternmost province of the monarchy: Bukovina, a province where Jewish nationalism had acquired at the turn of the century an exceptionally strong power base, making it, according to Die Welt, "the experimental station of Jewish national politics for all Austria." 15 From a Jewish perspective, what made Bukovina exceptional was a combination of four factors. First, Bukovina was not a historic province with long-established political traditions. It had no entrenched political elite, an aspect of local politics which facilitated more assertive Jewish participation. Second, the province had the most complex ethnic settlement of any province in the monarchy with no single nationality able to claim absolute majority. According to the 1910 census, Bukovina had a population of 800,127 people -- of whom 38 percent spoke Ukrainian, 34 percent Romanian, 8.25 percent German, and 4.5 percent Polish, with a handful of Magyars, Armenians and Russians. The Jews of the province numbered 102,900, i.e., 12.8 percent of the total population. Third, the bourgeoisie of Bukovina consisted primarily of Jews. The Romanian and Ukrainian populations had a predominantly agricultural profile and the German-speaking gentile population had been primarily employed in industry and crafts. Thus, although Jews in Bukovina, especially in the capital Czernowitz, adopted a cultural pattern associated with the German bourgeoisie they did not integrate into non-Jewish society. The process of Jewish embourgeoisement, which in Hungary and in the western provinces of the monarchy had resulted in greater Jewish integration, did not reduce the distinctiveness of the local Jewish component in Bukovina. Fourth, the 12.8 percent share of Jews in Bukovina was the highest in any Province in the monarchy. This gave the Jewish electorate considerable clout, which was only enhanced by the fact that the curia system favored the wealthier strata of society. 16
Taking advantage of this constellation of factors was Dr. Benno Straucher, a political leader emblematic of what Carl Schorske called the "new style of politics in fin-de-siècle Austria." 17 Straucher began his political activity in the Czernowitz Jewish community in the 1880s, assuming the representation of the Jewish lower bourgeoisie vis-à-vis the then-dominant elite of merchant families ("the patricians"). Initially a member of the Austro-German Liberal Party, he decided in 1888 to leave the party and appeal directly to the Jewish electorate. Using slogans such as "Yehudi Anochi" (I am a Jew) and "the interests of the little man," he managed to acquire a power base in the less-acculturated Jewish lower-bourgeoisie and gained also the support of the Sadagura Hassidic court. After being defeated twice by a "patrician" candidate in 1891 and 1892, Straucher achieved a major victory in 1897 by capturing the Czernowitz Constituency in the Austrian Reichsrat, a mandate he would not relinquish until the dissolution of the monarchy in 1918. 18
In Vienna Straucher became the first Reichsrat member to profess a Jewish national ideology, devoting his activity to the representation of the Jewish people and Jewish interests. Utilizing his position as a Reichsrat deputy, he set out to establish his own political party in Bukovina with the aim of capturing the Jewish electorate of the disintegrating Liberal Party. In 1899 he approached Philip Menczel and Mayer Ebner, the leaders of the Bukovinian branch of the World Zionist Organization (W.Z.O.) and offered to combine his own popularity with the enthusiasm for the recently-formed W.Z.O. in order to establish a Jewish national party in the province. At first, many Bukovinian Zionists were reluctant to cooperate with Straucher; however, with Herzl's urging the two sides came to an agreement in 1901 and established the Jüdischer Volkverein (The Jewish People's Association) with its political arm the Jüdische Volkspartei. 19
The Jüdische Volkspartei, or "Straucher's Party" as it soon came to be known, adopted a twofold political tactic. First, it sought to occupy as many posts as possible within and outside the Jewish community, capturing positions of influence for its leaders and cementing a patron-client relationship with its followers. Straucher himself held a most impressive array of posts: besides being a Reichsrat member and deputy of the Bukovinian Landtag, he was also a member of the Executive Committee of the Landtag (the government of the province), president of the Czernowitz Jewish community, member of the Czernowitz city council and the city's public attorney, director of the Bukovinär Sparkasse (The Bukovinian Savings Bank), and a member of the provincial education board, among many other honorary positions. In 1905 the Jüdische Volkspartei captured 20 out of 50 seats in the Czernowitz city council, which led to the election of Dr. Eduard Reiss as the first Jewish mayor of Czernowitz. 20
The second tactic adopted by Straucher's party was cooperation with other popular- based parties. In 1903 Straucher concluded a political alliance with Nikolai Vassiliko, the leader of the Young Ruthenians, and Aurel Onciul, the leader of the Young Romanians. The aim of this alliance, known also as the Freisinniger Verband (Progressive Union), was to obtain a majority in the 1904 Landtag elections and to initiate a series of reforms, including a reform of the Landtag itself. The latter's reform was to be conducted on the basis of two principles: eliminating property qualifications as the basis of suffrage (voting rights had been restricted to men over the age of 24 who paid annually at least 4 Gulden in property taxes); and ensuring the major nationalities in Bukovina, including the Jews, representation according to their numerical strength. 21
After winning the elections in 1904, it took the Freisinniger Verband five years to formulate a reform proposal that would be acceptable to all the negotiating sides. The proposal -- "the most subtle work under the old Austrian Nationality Law," 22 according to the Austrian constitutional historian Gerald Stourzh -- added yet another criterion to the very complex election procedure in Bukovina. In contrast to Moravia, where national curiae had replaced almost all the other curiae, the reform in Bukovina took the nationality principle into consideration without eliminating the over-representation of certain sectors of local society.
The starting point of the proposal was the assertion that five primary nationalities live in Bukovina: Ruthenians (i.e. Ukrainians), Romanians, Jews, Germans and Poles, each entitled to representation in the local Landtag proportional to its share in the general population. To bring this about, the proposal called for a division of the electorate into five national curiae based on five national voting lists (cadastres). Each voting list would be compiled according to language declarations in the censuses, except in the Jewish case where the confessional clause would be used.
Sept. 1909
|
|
Ruthene |
Roman. |
Jewish |
German |
Polish |
Orth. Mon. |
Univ. Rector |
Orth . Arch-bishop |
|
General Curia |
6 |
6 |
2 |
3 |
1 |
|
|
|
|
Comm. Curia |
10 |
10 |
4 |
3 |
1 |
|
|
|
|
Virlist |
|
|
|
|
|
|
1 |
1 |
|
Chamb. Comm. |
|
|
2 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
Great Estates |
|
4 |
2 |
|
2 |
5 |
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Total
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16
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20
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10
|
6
|
4
|
5
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1
|
1
|
After compiling the voting lists, each voter (male, 24 years or over) would vote according to his economic status. Voters paying 2 Gulden of taxes or less would vote in the General Curia to which 18 seats were allocated (6 Ruthenian, 6 Romanian, 3 German, 2 Jewish, 1 Polish). Voters paying more than 2 Gulden would vote in the Communities Curia which received 28 seats (10 Ruthenian, 10 Romanian, 4 Jewish, 3 German, 1 Polish). In addition, 17 seats were to be distributed to special interests according to the formula presented in Table 1. 23
Details of the proposed Jewish Curia began circulating in the Austrian Jewish press well before the proposal had won the approval of the Bukovinian Executive Committee (Landtagsausschuss) and before the agreement was submitted to the central government in Vienna for ratification. The prospect of gaining a separate Jewish curia particularly stirred the imagination of the Jewish national press: "If the proposal will be approved," wrote the Galician Hebrew language daily Hamicpe, "the first real victory for the Jewish nation shall be achieved. With it the main premise of the assimilation era -- that the Jews are not a distinct nation and therefore must integrate themselves into another nation -- shall be destroyed... and from there hopefully the idea of the nationhood of The People of Israel would become widespread; at first in all of Austria and then in the whole world, and the name of Dr. B. Straucher will be forever connected with this national victory since he was the first to recognize the constellation in his province and utilized it to the advantage of our people." 24
No less jubilant was the Viennese Jüdische Zeitung, a paper which subsequently contributed immensely to the harsh tone and the mudslinging character of the ensuing controversy:
The significance of this achievement is enormous. Four nationalities of this monarchy have recognized the national character of the Jews. Among these are the Poles and the Germans, who play an important role in the process of assimilation. Thus the lie of the assimilationists, that the Jews do not constitute a nation, has been exposed. 25
The precedent-setting value in the brewing Bukovinian compromise did not go unnoticed by Jewish opponents of the agreement, who began mobilizing forces in the hope of exerting enough pressure on the central government in Vienna so that the agreement in its proposed form would be vetoed. Among those mobilized were some of the most influential Jewish politicians in the monarchy: Baron Nathan Löwenstein, who was one of the wealthiest men in Galicia and a leading figure in the coordination of Jewish support of Polish national candidates; Prof. Theodor Gomperz, an eminent classical philologist at the University of Vienna and a member of the upper house of the Austrian parliament; and Kamillo Kuranda, a Reichsrat deputy from the affluent Kai district of Vienna, who was the son of Ignaz Kuranda, the former president of the Jewish community in Vienna and one of the leaders of the Liberal party (which dominated Austrian politics in much of the second half the 19th century).
To understand why an agreement formulated in one of the most backward regions of the monarchy and pertaining to less than 4 percent of Austro-Hungarian Jews elicited such a strong reaction in the centers of Austrian Jewry, one has to go beyond the question of how the state defined the legal status of Jews. Clashing here were two rival visions regarding the present and future place of Jews in central and eastern European societies. The first -- the assimilationist or the integrationalist -- portrayed a future in which Jews would be distinguishable only by their faith. 26 In all other matters Jews would be just like other members of their society. They would absorb the language, culture, and traditions of their surrounding society and internalize the ethnic identities of the autochthonous people. Thus, according to this vision, one should aspire to be for example a Magyar Jew, which would be the corollary of being a Magyar Catholic or a Magyar Protestant. From the perspective of a Jew living in Austria in the 1870s, there was much to be said in support of this vision. Between the promulgation of the Toleranzpatent in 1781 and the final recognition of Jewish equality in 1867, the state had abolished all legal restrictions separating Jews from other subjects. Jews had responded during this period by adopting in an ever increasing measure the vernacular of the surrounding society and the culture of the local bourgeoisie, especially in the more developed areas of Bohemia, Moravia and Vienna and in the urban centers of Galicia: Lemberg and Cracow. However, from the 1880s onwards this vision of the future became increasingly problematic. Anti-Semitism, in its religious, economic and racial manifestations, channeled toward the Jewish component of society the myriad of anxieties and fears accompanying the modernization process, and became a staple of several of the newly-formed mass parties such as the Young Czechs and the Christian Socials. 27 In addition, the rise of nationalism considerably complicated the concept of Jewish assimilation. In a multi-national state such as Austria, the question was not only whether one should adopt the language and the culture of the surrounding society, but whose language and culture one should prefer. A striking example of this problem was Bohemia, where, in response to two decades of continuous economic and political pressure by Czech nationalists, the majority of local Jews changed their language declaration in the censuses from "German" to "Czech." Whether this move reflected a more profound transformation in the pattern of Jewish assimilation in Bohemia is debatable; however, what is clear is that the new assertiveness of Czech nationalists dampened the previous optimism of Jewish assimilationists. 28
The second vision of the future -- the Jewish nationalist -- developed in response to difficulties with Jewish integration into society, gaining considerable momentum in fin-de-siècle Austria, and expressing itself in two distinct approaches: Zionism and Diaspora Nationalism. Both approaches had crystallized during the 1880s and 1890s and shared many common presuppositions: belief in the distinctiveness and common fate of Jews, rejection of assimilation as undesirable and in the long run impossible, and emphasis on Jewish moral regeneration. However, each approach envisioned a different political goal: Zionism stressed the need to establish a Jewish state in Palestine, since this was the primordial homeland of the Jewish people and since Jewish national development was hampered by the fact that Jews were a minority everywhere. Diaspora Nationalism, on the other hand, considered the Zionist aspiration for a Jewish state as utopian and sought instead to obtain concrete political rights for Jews in the Diaspora, hoping to obtain some form of autonomy for the dense settlement of Jews living in the eastern regions of Austria-Hungary and in the Russian Pale. In other words, Diaspora Nationalism saw the Jews as no less indigenous to central and eastern Europe than other nationalities: they were not merely passers-by on the way back to their ancestral homeland nor were they an aggregate of individuals having the same articles of faith. Thus, if other indigenous nationalities were in the process of receiving political rights, it was extremely important not to miss this window of opportunity and strive to be a part of the "little compromises."
The Diaspora Nationalist vision of the future therefore demanded an assertive and independent Jewish involvement in politics, something which the unique character of Bukovina had allowed. However, in other areas of the monarchy, such an involvement could bring disastrous consequences to the hopes and aspirations of those striving for integration. It not only played into the hands of anti-Semites by reinforcing the claim that Jews were strange and distinct but also threatened to diminish considerably the de facto bargaining power of Jewish politicians. This was best summed up by Isaak Kohn, the head of the Zionist branch in the Bukovinian town of Sereth:
Let us not delude ourselves, the question of a Jewish curia has a constitutional aspect with implications relevant to the politics of the whole monarchy, not just to those of Bukovina... the central government must look at the question from the perspective of the whole monarchy and see that if the recognition of the Jewish nationality occurs even once then one could claim its validity in all the crownlands represented in the Reichsrat [i.e., Cisleithania] including Galicia. [This will bring about a clash] with the most influential association in the Reichsrat, the Polish Club, which needs the Jewish electorate in Galicia in order to have a numerical majority vis-à-vis the Ruthenians. 29
Thus, when the reform proposal was submitted for final approval in September 1909, it contained within it a double challenge to the vision of Jewish integration. First, it threatened to anchor in law the notion that Jews were ethnically distinctive and by this to reverse more than a hundred years of legislation which had sought to diminish Jewish distinctiveness. Second, it jeopardized the way Jewish politics had been conducted in Austria during the past half century: no longer were behind-the-scenes deals negotiated by prominent individuals with groups favoring Jewish integration, but rather there was an assertive and open formulation of Jewish interests, often in competition with the wishes and interests of other nationalities.
The reaction, therefore, of the Jewish establishment in Vienna and Galicia was swift and determined, manifesting itself in a polemical exchange carried out on the pages of some of the leading newspapers in Austria and in a campaign to influence the government to veto the proposed reform. The position of the Jewish community in Vienna was presented by one of the leading academics in the capital, Theodor Gomperz, 30 in an essay entitled "The Electoral Ghetto" 31 (Das Wahl-Ghetto), published in one of the most influential Austrian newspapers of the time, the Neue Freie Presse. 32
Gomperz's critique presented three main arguments for dismissing the Jewish curia. First, it was an attack against Jewish emancipation. "By making the little border province into an important political experiment field," 33 he argued, Jewish nationalists are attempting to differentiate the Jews from the rest of society. This might seem as an improvement, a privilegium favoribile, however it may easily be turned into a privilegium odiusum, an instrument to discriminate against Jews and to rob them of their equality of rights as citizens. The era when Jews lived in a ghetto was not that distant and the positions of Jews not that secure to enable Jews to experiment with one of their greatest achievements during the past century. Second, he claimed, the proposal had a coercive nature. It attempted to force upon the group "the subjective feeling of only a small part. The collective is expected from now on to be recognized as a nationality and to be represented accordingly in the Landtag (we shall have to see whether in the long run only in this Landtag)... To make, however, these fickle currents and opinions the basis for a long-lasting division of political rights will add to this `kingdom of improbabilities' a new and highly adventurous oddity." 34 Third, it was bad politics. The enlightened minorities, which until then cooperated under the ideological umbrella of liberalism, would now be supplanted by the less progressive-minded majorities. As a result, an effective barrier against anti-Semitism would be irrevocably destroyed and the Jews would have to fight anti-Semitism on their own from a less prominent and less influential position. 35
Also skeptical about the political efficacy of a Jewish curia was Dr. Oswald Byk, a major in the medical corps of the Habsburg army and the son of Emil Byk, the former president of the Lemberg Jewish community. Approaching the question of a Jewish curia with Galician politics in mind, he asked what could possibly be the purpose of such a constitutional device. 36 In Byk's mind the supporters of the Jewish curia presented two main arguments in its favor. First, the curia would ensure the election of strictly-Jewish (Nurjuden) representatives, who were proud of their Jewishness and regarded it as the most important part of their identity. Second, the curia would oblige these Jewish representatives to devote their activities to Jewish interests because their careers would depend upon it. In Byk's opinion, neither of these arguments had much substance. The first assumed that Jews preferred to vote for their co-religionists. However, elections in Galicia demonstrated that this was not always the case. In districts where Jews constituted the majority of voters, a preference was sometimes given to Socialist candidates or to candidates of the Polish club. Thus, "the election of strictly-Jewish candidates would not be ensured unless the Jewish voters themselves decide to vote strictly as Jews." 37 But if Jewish voters put greater emphasis on party affiliation, then nothing could force them to elect strictly-Jewish candidates. With regard to the second argument, Byk had nothing but scorn:
What parliamentary achievements could these Nurjuden delegates possibly hope to attain without the support of an influential party? The answer is given to us by the four Zionist deputies of the Reichsrat, whose achievements in the course of the past three years have been absolutely nothing. Dr. Emil Byk is alone to be thanked for improved conditions of Jewish crafts in Galicia and for possibilities of exchanging a Sunday holiday for a Sabbath holiday; achievements which he could not have attained without the assistance of the Polish club. 38
It was, however, the second mode of action, -- i.e., working behind the scenes to ensure that the government adhered to its traditional policy concerning the Jewish population of the monarchy, which produced results. On October 1, 1909, a statement was issued by the Austrian Interior Minister Baron Haerdtl saying:
The government, based on the Fundamental Laws [i.e., the December Constitution of 1867] of the country, cannot comply with the wish to establish a Jewish curia. Such a compliance could be construed as an act of hostility against the Jews, as though the government wishes to relate in any way the political rights of Jews to their confessional affiliation, a step which would contradict the Fundamental Laws. 39
In other words, Haerdtl reaffirmed the basic policy of the Austrian governments since 1867, which regarded the Jews of Cisleithania solely as a religious group. Under this policy, the Jews as individuals enjoyed all political, civil and religious rights but collectively were not regarded as a nationality. With this statement he reaffirmed the government's commitment to the integrationist vision of the future, despite the growing difficulties it encountered in fin-de-siècle Austria. Baron Haerdtl, however, agreed to meet with a delegation of Jewish nationalists and to hear their objections to the government's decision. The delegation handed Haerdtl a memorandum protesting against the government's veto and arguing that the curia was an internal affair of Bukovina and that it reflected the wishes of the majority of Bukovinian Jews. In addition, the delegation indicated that it was willing to negotiate the controversial aspects of the reform proposal, suggesting that the Jewish voting list would be based on voluntary declaration of each individual and not on the confessional declaration as initially proposed. This, claimed the memorandum, would counter the objections concerning the coercive nature of the reform and would give Jews the choice to decide in which national curia to vote. 40
Haerdtl did not reject this suggestion outright; however, he informed the delegation that he was not inclined to accept it since the government did not consider Jews to be a nationality. Nonetheless, he assured the delegation that some sort of compensation system would be devised to ensure proportional Jewish representation in the Bukovinian Landtag. The reform proposal was therefore returned to the negotiating sides, with the instruction to register the Jewish population in Bukovina as Germans and to carve the electoral districts within the German curia in such a way as to guarantee at least eight Jewish deputies in the Landtag. The modified reform proposal was submitted to the government two weeks later and promptly approved. 41
Echoes of the controversy continued to reverberate in the Jewish national press at least two months after the first reform proposal had been vetoed. Newspapers throughout the monarchy and even as far away as London discussed the details of the affair and the reasons for its final rejection. The prevalent opinion was that the government itself was relatively neutral, and the main culprits were assimilationist circles in Vienna and Galicia. The bitter and disappointed Benno Straucher was especially active in settling accounts with his adversaries. For him the affair symbolized the bankruptcy of the whole notion of assimilation and demonstrated the level of decadence and timidity to which western assimilated Jews had sunk:
These Jews who acknowledge their Jewishness only while registering births but otherwise are ashamed of this fact, these so-called accidental Jews, should cut the last string of their only formal affiliation with the Jewish people... The Jewish nation feels itself strong. It is experiencing a renaissance, it lives and wants to live, therefore it will shake off these half-Jews, these quarter-Jews, just like a tree which allows its rotten fruit to fall on the ground. 42
Yet, it was not the integrationist vision of the future which proved short-lived, but Straucher's own version of Jewish nationalism. Diaspora Nationalism would never again attain the kind of formal recognition it received in the Bukovinian reform proposal. It failed because it could not make a strong enough case that Jews in central and eastern Europe could be both equal and nationally distinct. Diaspora Nationalism's vision of the future appeared, on the one hand, as a gamble that might jeopardize a hundred years of Jewish endeavors for equality, and on the other hand, not powerful enough to compete with the emotional draw of the Holy Land in Jewish collective memory. It failed also because it lacked the necessary political clout to implement its political program and because conditions in Bukovina, which gave local Jews considerable leeway for political maneuver, were unique in the Austro-Hungarian monarchy. In a broader perspective, it failed also because the "little compromises," which at the time seemed to be the wave of the future, proved a cul-de-sac in Central and Eastern European history. World War I ushered into Eastern Europe the era of the nation-states, putting an end to the idea of national minority rights within a multi-national state.
NOTES
Note 1: Regarding Zionism and Diaspora Nationalism see: Shlomo Avineri, The Making of Modern Zionism: Intellectual Origins of the Jewish State (New York: Basic Books, 1981); Robert Wistrich, The Jews of Vienna in the Age of Franz-Joseph (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990) -- Part 3 of this work introduces some of the leading figures in early Jewish nationalism; Adolf Gaisbauer, Davidstern and Doppeladler: Zionismus und jüdischer Nationalismus in Österreich 1882-1918 (Vienna: Böhlau Verlag, 1988); Joachim Doron, Haguto ha-Tsiyonit shel Nathan Birnbaum [The Zionist Thought of Nathan Birnbaum] (Jerusalem: ha-Sifriya ha-Tsiyonit, 1988); David Vital, The Origins of Zionism (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1975); S.A. Birnbaum, "Nathan Birnbaum and National Autonomy," in Joseph Fraenkel, ed., The Jews of Austria (London: Vallentine and Mitchell, 1967), 131-145; and Oscar Janowski, The Jews and Minority Rights (New York: Columbia University Press, 1933). Although the book is rather old it is still the best introduction to Jewish Diaspora Nationalism, covering both Austria-Hungary and Russia. One should not confuse Diaspora Nationalism (capitalized) with Ernest Gellner's definition of diaspora nationalism (uncapitalized). In his typology diaspora nationalism denotes the variant of nationalism developed by minority communities such as Armenians, Greeks and Jews, that possessed a culture different from the dominant culture of the state and that had lost their unique social function during the transition to the modern industrial state. As a result both Zionism and Diaspora Nationalism are characterized by Gellner as "diaspora nationalism." Ernest Gellner, Nations and Nationalism (Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 1983), Ch. 7. Back.
Note 2: See Robert Kann, A History of the Habsburg Empire 1526-1918 (Berkeley, California: University of California Press, 1974) and R.J.W. Evans, The Making of the Habsburg Monarchy (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1979). Back.
Note 3: Anthony Smith, The Ethnic Origins of Nations (London: Basil Blackwell, 1986). Other general works analyzing the genesis and development of nationalism are: Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origins and Spread of Nationalism, 2nd ed. (New York: Verso, 1991); Eric Hobsbawm, Nations and Nationalism since 1780: Programme, Myth, Reality, 2nd ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992); and Miroslav Hroch, Social Preconditions for National Revival in Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985). Back.
Note 4: Anderson, Ch. 6. The classic example of a dynasty assuming the mantle of nationalism is the Hohenzollern dynasty in Prussia and later in the unified Germany. See Hans-Ulrich Wehler's analysis in The German Empire 1871-1918 (Leamington Spa: Bergversity Press, 1985). Back.
Note 5: Regarding the various plans for reform see Kann, The Multinational Empire, 2 vols. (New York: Columbia University Press, 1950). Specifically about Renner's notion of personal autonomy see Wistrich, Socialism and the Jews: The Dilemmas of Assimilation in Germany and Austria-Hungary (East Brunswick, New Jersey: Associated University Presses, 1982), 299-308. Back.
Note 6: Alan Sked, The Decline and Fall of the Habsburg Empire 1815-1918 (London: Longman Books, 1989). Back.
Note 7: The declaration of the "language of daily usage" (Umgangssprache) was to determine to which nationality one belonged. The reform proposal in Bukovina circumvented this rule by proposing that membership in the Jewish curia would be assigned according to religion. Regarding this see below. Back.
Note 8: Horst Glassl, Der mährische Ausgleich (Munich: Veröffentlichungen des Sudetendeutschenarchivs, 1967); Gerald Stourzh, "Die Gleichberechtigung der Volksstämme als Verfassungsprinzip 1848-1918," in Adam Wandruszka and Peter Urbanitsch, eds., Die
Habsburger Monarchie (Vienna: Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaft, 1980), Vol. 3, no. 2, 1171-1186. Back.
Note 9: Friedrich Walter, Österreichische Verfassung- und Verwaltungsgeschichte (Vienna: Böhlau Verlag, 1972), 185-203; an excellent explanation of the Austrian provincial administration is in Bruce Garver, The Young Czech Party and the Emergence of the Multi-Party System (New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University Press, 1977), Chs. 2, 4. Back.
Note 11: After the death in 1904 of the founder of political Zionism, Theodor Herzl, the World Zionist Organization shifted its emphasis from obtaining a charter on Palestine to strengthening Jewish national identity in the Diaspora, what was known in the contemporaneous nomenclature as Gegenwartsarbeit (work of the present). By this they accepted some of the postulates of Diaspora Nationalism; however, this was to be only an intermediary stage. Back.
Note 12: "Eine Judenkurie in Österreich," Die Welt, December 8, 1905, 1. Back.
Note 14: Mathias Acher, "Die nationale Autonomie der Juden, Der Weg. 1, no. 14 (December 30, 1905). This article was reprinted along with some of Birnbaum's lecture notes and other material pertaining to his activity for a Jewish curia in Joseph Fraenkel, ed., The Jews of Austria (London: 1967), 131-145. On the fascinating political transformation of Birnbaum see Wistrich, The Jews of Vienna. in the Age of Franz-Joseph (Oxford, 1990), Ch. 12. Back.
Note 15: Die Welt, November 5, 1909. Back.
Note 16: Very little has been written about the history of Jews in Bukovina and not everything which has been written is indeed useful. The following works are the best introduction to the subject: Martin Broszat, "Von der Kulturnation zur Volksgruppe: die nationale Stellung der Juden in der Bukowina im 19. Und 20. Jahrhundert," Historische Zeitschrift 200, no. 3 (1965), 572-605; Hugo Gold, Geschichte der Juden in der Bukowina: Ein Sammelwerk, 2 vols. (Tel Aviv: Edition Olamenu, 1958 and 1962); Salomon Kassner, Die Juden in der Bukowina (Vienna: R. Lowit Verlag, 1917); and Theodor Lavi, "Toldot Yehudei Bukovina," Pinkas ha-Kehilot: Romania, Vol. 2 (Jerusalem: Yad ve-Shem, 1980), 419-432. Regarding the relationship between embourgeoisement and assimilation see Steven Aschheim, Brothers and Strangers: The East European Jew in German and German-Jewish Consciousness 1800-1923 (Madison, Wisconsin: University of Wisconsin Press, 1982) and Broszat.a href="#txt16"> Back.
Note 17: Carl Schorske, Fin-de-Siècle Vienna: Politics and Culture (New York: Vintage Books, 1980). Back.
Note 18: On the career of Benno Straucher see N.M. Gelber, "Geschichte der Juden in der Bukowina 1774-1914" in Gold, 11-66, and Adolf Gaisbauer, Davidstern und Doppeladler: Zionismus und jüdischer Nationalismus in Österreich 1882-1918 (Vienna, 1988). Back.
Note 19: The reluctance of Zionists to cooperate with Straucher emanated from ideological and personal reasons. There was much opposition at the time to the notion of Gegenwartsarbeit (see note 11) and Straucher's populist style created mistrust regarding his ideological commitment. Gaisbauer, 184-185, 511-512. Back.
Note 20: Ibid., 514-515. Back.
Note 21: "Dr. Straucher al ha-Kataster he-Yehudi be-Bukovina," Hamicpe, October 15, 1909; "Die Regierung gegen die jüdische nation," Selbstwehr, October 1, 1909, 1-2; Ami (pseudonym), "Die Landtagreform in der Bukowina: Czernowitzer Brief," Dr.Blochs Österreichische Wochenschrift, October 8, 1909. Back.
Note 23: Details about the reform were culled from the following sources: Benno Straucher, "Die jüdische Kurie," Selbstwehr, November 19, 1909; Isaak Kohn, "Der jüdische Kataster," Jüdische Zeitung, August 27, 1909; Ami (pseudonym), "Die Landtagreform in der Bukowina: Czernowitzer Brief," Dr. Blochs Österreichische Wochenschrift, October 8, 1909, "Die Wahlreform für den Landtag in der Bukowina," Neue Freie Presse, September 20, 1909. Back.
Note 24: "Nitzkhon ha-leom ha-yehudi," Hamicpe, August 6, 1909, 2-3. Back.
Note 25: Jüdische Zeitung, August 6, 1909. Back.
Note 26: Regarding assimilation, integration and acculturation see the following works: David Sorkin, "Emancipation and Assimilation: Two Concepts and their Application to German-Jewish History," Leo Baeck Institute Yearbook, Vol. XXXIV (1990), 17-33; Wistrich, The Jews of Vienna and Socialism and the Jews; Hillel Kieval, The Making of Czech Jewry: National Conflict and Jewish Society in Bohemia 1870-1918 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988); Marsha Rozenblit, The Jews of Vienna 1867-1914: Assimilation and Identity (Albany, New York: State University of New York Press, 1983); Ezra Mendelsohn, "A Note on Jewish Assimilation in the Polish Lands" in Bela Vago, ed., Jewish Assimilation in Modern Times (Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press, 1981), 141-149; and Gary Cohen, "Jews in German Society: Prague 1860-1914," Central European History 10 (1977), 28-54. Back.
Note 27: Wistrich, "Karl Lueger and the Ambiguities of Viennese Antisemitism," Jewish Social Studies 45 (1983), 251-262; Wistrich, "Georg von Schoenerer and the Genesis of Modern Austrian Antisemitism," Wiener Library Bulletin 29 (1976), new series number 39/40, 20-28; Peter Pulzer, The Rise of Political Antisemitism in Germany and Austria (London: John Wiley & Sons, 1964); Kieval, "Nationalism and Antisemitism: the Czech-Jewish Response," in Jehuda Reinharz, ed., Living With Antisemitism: Modern Jewish Responses (Waltham, Massachusetts: Brandeis University Press, 1987), 210-233. Back.
Note 28: Regarding the question whether the Jews in Bohemia and Moravia underwent a process of "secondary acculturation" see Kieval, The Making of Czech Jewry; Cohen, "Jews in German Society"; and Christoph Stoelzl, Kafka böses Böhmen: zur Sozialgeschichte eines Prager Juden (Munich: Edition Text+ Kritik ,1975). Back.
Note 29: "Mikhtavim me-arei ha-medinah: Czernowitz," Hamicpe, 27 August 1909, 4. Back.
Note 30: On the contemporaneous stature of Theodor Gomperz see Kann, A History of the Habsburg Empire, 555 and Die Habsburgermonarchie, 1193. Back.
Note 31: Theodor Gomperz, "Das Wahl-Ghetto," Neue Freie Presse, September 26, 1909, 2. Back.
Note 32: Henry Wickham Steed wrote the following lines about the Neue Freie Presse: "The leading Austrian journal with influence probably unsurpassed by any journal of equal circulation in the world." The Hapsburg Monarchy, nd ed. (London: Constable, 1914), 186-187. Back.
Note 36: Oswald Byk, "Ist die Schaffung jüdischer Wahlkurien nützlich?," Österreichische Wochenschrift, October 15, 1909, 714-715. Back.
Note 39: "Freiherr von Haerdtl über die jüdische Wahlkurie in der Bukowina," Neue Freie Presse, October 6, 1909. Back.
Note 40: "Memorandum an seinen Exzellenz Herrn Minister des Innern," Jüdische Zeitung, October 8, 1909; "Die Ablehnung der jüdischen Kurie," Jüdische Zeitung, October 8, 1909, 2-3. Back.
Note 41: The first elections under the new arrangement took place in April 1911 and 10 Jewish candidates were elected in them. Back.
Note 42: Benno Straucher, "Die jüdische Kurie," Selbstwehr, November 19, 1909, 4. Back.
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