Vienna has long been a flourishing Jewish community ever since the medieval times. During the period of the 1800s till the beginning of the 20th century, many of them became famous. This ended before WWII with the arrival of Adolf Hitler on the world scene, forcing them to seek refuge somewhere else.
At this latest period of time, Vienna had many Jewish personalities among its intellectual elite. It included composers like Gustav Mahler(1860-1911) or Arnold Schoenberg(1874-1951); prominent writers like Stefan Zweig(1881-1942), Elias Canetti(1905-1994), Arthur Schnitzler(1862-1931), or Vicki Baum(1888-1960); Dr. Sigmund Freud(1856-1939), the founder of psychoanalysis. There was also Theodor Herzl (1860-1904), the founder of modern Zionism.
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| Jewish Square |
Amidst the narrow streets of central Vienna [Innere Stadt], the memory of the Jewish Quarter is still alive in the area of the synagogue, built in 1825. Many restaurants or cafés now stand in this old section of town. But the narrow, cobbled streets reveal many lovely façades of the past. They lead to a picturesque central square known locally as Judenplatz ('Jewish Square', Judenplatz). At the center of the square stands the Holocaust Memorial. The square is also the place for the Jewish Museum of Vienna (at the Misrachi-Haus, 1694) and the imposing Bohemian Court Chancellery [Böhmische Hofkanzlei, 18thcentury], which is now the seat of the Austrian Administrative Supreme Court.
Christian Sorand
Links:
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| Jewish Museum (1990) |
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| Jewish Memorial |
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| Shop on Judenplatz |
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