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it does remind us that in dealing with things Austrian, a degree of irony,
paradox, and sensitivity to what are often cruel and tragic ambiguities is
requisite for the historian. Nowhere is this more the case than in re–
examining the complex mosaic that was Habsburg Jewry.
In the century before its collapse in 1918, the Habsburg
Vielvolker–
staat
harbored the second largest agglomeration of Jews in Europe–
exceeded on ly by Tsarist Russia. On the eve of World War I there were
two million Jews in the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy (as it was called
after 1867)-approximately 4.5 percent of the population. In the west–
ern, non-Hungarian half of the Empire, there were nearly 1.3 million
Jews. Though not recognized by Habsburg officia ldom as a "nationa l–
ity," they were in fact more numerous than the Serbs, Croats, Slovenes,
or Italians who did enjoy this designation.
However, most Austrian Jews during the nineteenth century, did not
regard themselves as a distinct nationality, tending rather to identify
with the Germans in the western half of the Danubian Monarchy
(Cisleithania) just as their Hungarian co-religionists in Transleithania
linked their future with the dominant Magyars. In 1910, ten million
Magyars represented just over half of the population in Greater Hun–
gary, with 900,000 Jews holding the demographic and political balance
that facilitated the retention of Magyar hegemony over millions of
Romanians, Germans, Slovaks, Serbs, and Croats. This was one impor–
tant reason why Hungarian nationalism
before
the Bolshevik coup of
Bela Kun in 1917/18 was relatively tolerant of Jews, and successive lib–
eral governments regarded them as a patriotic Magyar element of first–
rate economic importance. Hence they were protected against the
irresponsible demagogy of anti-Semitic populists.
The situation in Cisleithanian Austria was significantly different for
several reasons. The ten million Austro-Germans in the western half of
the Dual Monarchy represented only one-third of the tota l population
in Austria. By the end of the nineteenth century they felt even more vul–
nerable than the Magyars, in the face of rising Slav national movements.
This was especially true for German Austrians living in the Czech lands
and among the Southern Slav peoples. Jews, too, responded to the
increasing passions generated by centrifugal nationalisms in the various
Habsburg territories-in particular by adopting (often under external
pressure) different local languages. Since language and nationality were
so inextricably connected in the Habsburg Empire, this was bound to
have political consequences. By 1900 a majority of Jews in Bohemia and
Moravia had declared themselves to be of Czech nationa lity; and in
Galicia they were registered in the official Austrian censuses as Polish-
