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The Jewish Community of Vienna ( or IKG) is the body that represents
Vienna Vienna ( ; ; ) is the capital city, capital, List of largest cities in Austria, most populous city, and one of Federal states of Austria, nine federal states of Austria. It is Austria's primate city, with just over two million inhabitants. ...
's
Orthodox Jewish Orthodox Judaism is a collective term for the traditionalist branches of contemporary Judaism. Theologically, it is chiefly defined by regarding the Torah, both Written and Oral, as literally revealed by God on Mount Sinai and faithfully tra ...
community. Today, the IKG has around 10,000 members. Throughout history, it has represented almost all of Austria's Jews, whose numbers are sufficient to form communities in only a few other cities in Austria.


Organisation

The IKG provides its members with a range of services in social, religious, and educational affairs. It publishes an official newspaper () twice monthly. The ''Contact point for Jewish victims of National-Socialist persecution in and from Austria'' supports and advises affected individuals and their families with regard to reparations and compensation. The current president of the IKG is Oskar Deutsch, who has been in office since 2012. was appointed Chief Rabbi of Vienna in August 2020.


History

The history of Vienna's Jewish population dates back to the time of the
Roman Empire The Roman Empire ruled the Mediterranean and much of Europe, Western Asia and North Africa. The Roman people, Romans conquered most of this during the Roman Republic, Republic, and it was ruled by emperors following Octavian's assumption of ...
, but for a long time, Vienna's Jews were prevented from forming an organisation to represent themselves, as a result of legal and social discrimination. This situation first began to change with Emperor
Joseph II Joseph II (13 March 1741 – 20 February 1790) was Holy Roman Emperor from 18 August 1765 and sole ruler of the Habsburg monarchy from 29 November 1780 until his death. He was the eldest son of Empress Maria Theresa and her husband, Emperor F ...
's
1782 Edict of Tolerance The 1782 Edict of Tolerance (''Toleranzedikt vom 1782'') was a religious reform of Emperor Joseph II during the time he was emperor of the Habsburg monarchy as part of his policy of Josephinism, a series of drastic reforms to remodel Austria in ...
. The emancipation of Vienna's Jewish population began in 1848. In a speech held on 3 April 1849, the young emperor,
Franz Joseph I Franz Joseph I or Francis Joseph I ( ; ; 18 August 1830 – 21 November 1916) was Emperor of Austria, King of Hungary, and the ruler of the Grand title of the emperor of Austria, other states of the Habsburg monarchy from 1848 until his death ...
, used the words ''Israelite Community of Vienna'' for the first time; three years later, a provisory constitution for the community was enacted, and 1852 is therefore considered the year in which Vienna's Kultusgemeinde was founded. The community's offices were established in the
Stadttempel The Stadttempel (), also called the Seitenstettengasse Temple, is an Orthodox Jewish synagogue, located at Seitenstettengasse 4, in the Innere Stadt 1st district of Vienna, Austria. Completed in 1826, it is the main synagogue in Vienna. The con ...
in the Seitenstettengasse. Vienna's Jewish community had around 185,000 members at the time of Austria's
Anschluss The (, or , ), also known as the (, ), was the annexation of the Federal State of Austria into Nazi Germany on 12 March 1938. The idea of an (a united Austria and Germany that would form a "German Question, Greater Germany") arose after t ...
with the
Third Reich Nazi Germany, officially known as the German Reich and later the Greater German Reich, was the German state between 1933 and 1945, when Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party controlled the country, transforming it into a totalitarian dictat ...
in 1938. In that same year, the Nazis closed the IKG down. It was re-opened in May 1938 as the Vienna Jewish Community, with the task of acting as a buffer organisation between the Nazis and Vienna's Jewish population. This body was also forced to organise the emigration, and later the deportation, of Vienna's Jews for the
Central Office for Jewish Emigration Central Office for Jewish Emigration () was a designation of Nazi institutions in Vienna, Prague and Amsterdam. Their head office, the Reich Central Office for Jewish Emigration ('), was based in Berlin. Their purpose was to expel Jews from Nazi-c ...
. The title has been in use again since 1945. On 29 August 1981, a terrorist attack was made on the synagogue in the Seitenstettengasse, using hand grenades and firearms. Two people died, and another 21 were injured in the attack. The attack is attributed to the Palestinian extremist
Abu Nidal Organisation The Abu Nidal Organization (ANO; ), officially Fatah – Revolutionary Council ( ), was a Palestinian militant group founded by Abu Nidal in 1974. It broke away from Fatah, a faction within the Palestine Liberation Organization, following th ...
. Since then, strict security has been in place at the entrance to the synagogue, while the Seitenstettengasse is guarded by the police. In January 2022 an international campaign was launched calling on IKG President Oskar Deutsch to intervene in the case of Beth Alexander who had been denied access to her twin sons following a custody battle in the Austrian courts some years earlier.


Presidents of the IKG since 1853

* Leopold Edler von Wertheimstein (1853−1863) *
Josef Ritter von Wertheimer Josef may refer to *Josef (given name) *Josef (surname) * ''Josef'' (film), a 2011 Croatian war film *Musik Josef Musik Josef is a Japanese manufacturer of musical instruments. It was founded by Yukio Nakamura and is the only company in Japan spec ...
(1864−1867) * Jonas Freiherr von Königswarter (1868−1871) * Ignaz Kuranda (1872−1884) * Moritz Ritter von Borkenau (1884−1885) *
Arminio Cohn ''Arminio'' ( HWV 36) is an opera composed by George Frideric Handel. The libretto is based on a libretto of the same name by Antonio Salvi, which had been set to music by Alessandro Scarlatti. It is a fictionalisation of events surrounding the ...
(1886−1890) *
Wilhelm Ritter von Gutmann Wilhelm may refer to: People and fictional characters * William Charles John Pitcher, costume designer known professionally as "Wilhelm" * Wilhelm (name), a list of people and fictional characters with the given name or surname Other uses * Wilhe ...
(1891−1892) * ''1893 − 1896 vacant'' * Gustav Simon (1896−1897) *
Heinrich Klinger Heinrich may refer to: People * Heinrich (given name), a given name (including a list of people with the name) * Heinrich (surname), a surname (including a list of people with the name) *Hetty (given name), a given name (including a list of peo ...
(1897−1903) * Alfred Stern (1904−1918) *
Alois Pick Alois (Latinized ''Aloysius'') is an Old Occitan form of the name Louis. Modern variants include ''Aloïs'' ( French), ''Aloys'' (German), ''Alois'' (Czech), '' Alojz'' ( Slovak, Slovenian, Croatian), '' Alojzy'' ( Polish), '' Aloísio'' ( Port ...
(1920−1932, new elections, first use of proportional voting) * Desider Friedmann (murdered in the
Auschwitz concentration camp Auschwitz, or Oświęcim, was a complex of over 40 Nazi concentration camps, concentration and extermination camps operated by Nazi Germany in Polish areas annexed by Nazi Germany, occupied Poland (in a portion annexed into Germany in 1939) d ...
) (from 1933) * David Brill (1946−1948) *
Kurt Heitler Kurt is a male given name in Germanic languages. ''Kurt'' or ''Curt'' originated as short forms of the Germanic Konrad/Conrad, depending on geographical usage, with meanings including counselor or advisor. Like Conrad, it can also a surname an ...
(September 1950 to May 1951) *
David Shapira David S. Shapira is an American businessman. He is Chairman, Chief Executive Officer, and President of Giant Eagle, Inc. He joined the company in 1971 and has been President and CEO since 1980. Until 2009, he was the chairman of Carnegie Mellon Un ...
(1948−1952) *
Emil Maurer Emil may refer to: Literature *''Emil and the Detectives'' (1929), a children's novel *"Emil", nickname of the Kurt Maschler Award for integrated text and illustration (1982–1999) *''Emil i Lönneberga'', a series of children's novels by Astr ...
(1952−1963) * Ernst Feldsberg (1963−1970) * Anton Pick (1970−1981) * Ivan Hacker (1982−1987) * Paul Grosz (1987−1998) *
Ariel Muzicant Ariel Muzicant (; born 1952 in Haifa, Israel) is an Austrian-Israeli businessman, who served as the president of the Viennese Jewish community (Israelitische Kultusgemeinde Wien). He is the president of the Bnai Brith lodge Zwi-Perez-Chajes and ...
(1998−2012) * Oskar Deutsch (since 2012)


Rabbis of the IKG since 1824

* Isaak Noah Mannheimer (1824−1865) *
Adolf Jellinek Adolf Jellinek ( ''Aharon Jelinek''; 26 June 1821 in Drslavice, Moravia – 28 December 1893 in Vienna) was an Austrian rabbi and scholar. After filling clerical posts in Leipzig (1845–1856), he became a preacher at the Leopoldstädter Temp ...
(1865−1893) *
Moritz Güdemann Moritz Güdemann (; 19 February 1835 – 5 August 1918) was an Austrian rabbi and historian. He served as chief rabbi of Vienna. Biography Moritz (Moshe) Güdemann attended the Jewish school in Hildesheim, and thereafter went to a Catholic ''G ...
(1894−1918) * Zwi Perez Chajes (1918−1927) *
David Feuchtwang David Feuchtwang (27 November 1864 – 6 July 1936) was a Jewish scholar and author, and chief rabbi of Vienna from 1933 until his death in 1936. David Feuchtwang was born in Nikolsburg, Moravia (now Mikulov, Czech Republic) on 27 November 1864, t ...
– Chief Rabbi (1933−1936) * Israel Taglicht – interim Chief Rabbi (1936) * Isidor Öhler – Preacher in the Stadttempel (1946) * Akiba Eisenberg – Chief Rabbi (1948−1983) * – Chief Rabbi (1983–2016) * – Chief Rabbi ''(designated)''


Cantorates

* Shmuel Barzilai, Chief Cantor Salman Klahr, until 1938, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfred_Klahr


The IKG's archive

The IKG's archive is the only archive of a Jewish community known to have been maintained in its entirety from the founding of the community to the time after
World War II World War II or the Second World War (1 September 1939 – 2 September 1945) was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War II, Allies and the Axis powers. World War II by country, Nearly all of the wo ...
, and is thus one of the most important archives in German-speaking Europe. It contains meeting minutes, decrees, protocols, reports, letters, emigration and finance documents, lists of deportees, indexes, books, photographs, plans, and posters which bear witness to the history of the IKG and its members. The oldest documents date from the 16th century. The archive has been in existence since 1816; it was increasingly professional from the middle of the 19th century. The indexes and files that were produced between 1938 and 1945 were the basis for Nazi management of Jewish emigration and deportation. Today, these documents are a record of the fate of exiled and murdered Jews, and are used to aid survivors' claims for restitution and compensation. In 1995, archival evidence was discovered of the 1945
Deutsch Schützen massacre The Deutsch Schützen massacre was a 1945 mass killing of at least 57 Hungarian Jewish forced laborers by the Waffen-SS in Deutsch Schützen-Eisenberg in Austria. The Hitler Youth-''Bannführer'' Alfred Weber, who was responsible for construction ...
, which led to prosecution in 2009.


See also

*
Rothschild Hospital The Rothschild Hospital, named after its founder Baron Anselm von Rothschild, was the hospital of the Israelitische Kultusgemeinde in Vienna, Austria. The hospital lasted from its opening in 1873 until its closure by the Nazis in 1943. After Wo ...
– hospital of the IKG from 1873 to 1943


References


Further reading

*
Doron Rabinovici Doron Rabinovici () is an Israeli-Austrian writer, historian and essayist. He was born in Tel Aviv in 1961 and moved to Vienna in 1964. His literary work includes short stories, novels and essays, but also drama. Life Doron Rabinovici was born ...
, ''Eichmann’s Jews: The Jewish Administration of Holocaust Vienna, 1938-1945''. Translated by Nick Somers. (Cambridge, UK: Polity Press, 2011) * Felicitas Heimann-Jelinek,
Lothar Hölbling Lothar or Lothair (disambiguation), Lothair is a Danish language, Danish, Finnish language, Finnish, German language, German, Norwegian language, Norwegian, and Swedish language, Swedish masculine given name, while Lotár is a Hungarian language, H ...
und Ingo Zechner: ''Ordnung muss sein - Das Archiv der Israelitischen Kultusgemeinde Wien.'' Jüdisches Museum Wien, Wien 2007.


External links


Website der IKG Wien
; same official site
Jewish Community in Vienna

Anlaufstelle der IKG Wien für jüdische NS-Verfolgte in und aus Österreich
; same official site



Ausstellung im Jüdischen Museum Wien (4. Juli 2007 - 21. Oktober 2007) {{Authority control European Jewish Congress * Religion in Vienna Jewish Austrian history Orthodox Judaism in Austria