Vienna's 'respectable' antisemites offers a radical challenge to conventional accounts of one of the darkest periods in the city's history: the rise of organised, politically directed antisemitism between the late-nineteenth and mid-twentieth centuries. Drawing on original research into the Christian Social movement, the book analyses how issues such as nationalism, mass poverty and social unrest enabled the gestation in 'respectable' society of antisemitism, an ideology that seemed to be dying in the 1860s, but which was given new strength from the 1880s. It delivers a riposte to portrayals of the lower clergy as a marginalised group that was driven to defend itself from liberal attacks by turning to anti-liberal, antisemitic action, as well as exposing the nurturing role played by senior clergy. As the book reveals, the Church in Vienna as a whole was determined to counter liberalism, to the point of welcoming any authoritarian regime that would do so.
Autorentext
Michael Carter-Sinclair is a Visiting Research Fellow in the Department of History at King's College London
Klappentext
Vienna's 'respectable' antisemites offers new interpretations of one of the darkest periods in the city's history: the rise and sustained presence of organised, politically directed antisemitism between the late-nineteenth and mid-twentieth centuries. The book draws on considerable original research into central players in the antisemitic Christian Social movement, namely bourgeois social organisations and activists from the lower clergy. It delivers a riposte to portrayals of the lower clergy as men driven to anti-liberal, antisemitic action, defending themselves against sustained attacks by a liberal state that marginalised them as a group. Instead, it shows the clergy as being determined to undermine liberalism and pluralism, regardless of anything that liberals did. The book also exposes the role senior clergy played in this, showing that the Church in Vienna came to favour the use of any tactics that would counter liberalism, even to the point of embracing authoritarianism. Providing analyses of how issues such as nationalism, mass poverty and social unrest affected the development of the Christian Socials, Vienna's 'respectable' antisemites reveals how antisemitism, which seemed to be dying in the 1860s, came to flourish in the heart of Viennese bourgeois society, to the point that the Archbishop of Vienna could sign a proclamation welcoming the German annexation of Austria in 1938 with a resounding 'Heil Hitler'.
Inhalt
Introduction1 Before the rise of the antisemites2 Antisemites begin to organise, 1873893 To the brink of power, 1889954 A Christian, socially engaged movement? 189619145 A German movement? 189619146 War and the end of empire, 1914187 An unloved republic? 1919268 The right asserts itself, 1927339 Building a Christian and German Austria? 1934810 An end to Austria? 11 Principal conclusions and further questionsIndex