The Arc of History Lecture Series: Austria 1900 - 2020

We are excited to launch a new series of lectures held throughout 2024, reflecting on Austrian history, identity and creativity over a turbulent 120 year span.

The lectures will be of particular interest to those who have recently acquired Austrian citizenship, or are considering applying.

For new Austrian citizens: In case the event is sold out, please write an email to office@acflondon.org to join the waiting list.

Lecture 3: Vienna’s Ringstrasse – A Jewish Boulevard

By Gabriele Kohlbauer-Fritz

When a magnificent boulevard was built around Vienna's city centre after the city walls were torn down, it became the prime address for the nobility and the upper middle class. Among the builders of the magnificent palaces along the Ringstrasse were numerous Jewish entrepreneurs and bankers who contributed to the economic boom of the Gründerzeit and distinguished themselves as art collectors and patrons. However, behind the glamorous Ringstrasse façades were social problems and increasing political radicalisation, which emerged in the course of the massive economic and social changes in Vienna at the end of the 19th century. As the classic losers of modernisation, the petty bourgeoisie in particular was susceptible to politically fuelled antisemitism, which made use of the stereotypes of the “poor, ragged Eastern Jew”, the “socialist, Jewish agitator” or the “capitalist Viennese stock exchange Jew”.

This lecture will discuss the highs and lows of the Ringstrasse era, the social rise of a small Jewish elite and the everyday struggle for survival of the broad Jewish masses, the political instrumentalisation of antisemitism and its consequences.

Gabriele Kohlbauer-Fritz studied Slavic studies and Jewish studies in Vienna and Moscow. Since 1993, she is curator at the Jewish Museum Vienna, since 2011, head of collection department. Exhibitions and catalogues: Der schejne Jid: Images of the Jewish Body in Myth and Ritual; East Meets West: Galician Jews and Vienna; The Liebens: 150-Year History of a Viennese Family; Beste aller Frauen: Weibliche Dimensionen im Judentum; Ringstrasse: A Jewish Boulevard; Comrade. Jew. We only wanted Paradise on Earth; The Ephrussis. Travel in Time; The Vienna Rothschilds. A Thriller.

Katherine Klinger is the initiator of the lecture series The Arc of History. Previously, she was director of Second Generation Trust, a UK-based charity specialising in post-Holocaust generational consequences. She organised a number of ground-breaking conferences in London, Berlin and Vienna in the nineties, aimed at bringing together descendants of both victims and perpetrators. Katherine ran the Education Department of the Wiener Holocaust Library for a decade. She has recently acquired Austrian citizenship.

About the Arc of History Lecture Series:

The series commences with the last decades and the onset of Modernity from 1900. This was a profoundly significant period both artistically and intellectually, with far-reaching influence and importance, both nationally and internationally. Against this backdrop, the lectures consider significant Jewish contributions to the period, alongside the darker forces gathering momentum, culminating in the tragic fate of Austrian Jewry and other victims.

Austrian complicity, together with a postwar victim narrative, led many to shun a country that formally had nurtured some of the greatest achievements and minds of the early 20th century. With a growing recognition of the need to reassess its history, Austria finally commenced, in the mid-nineties, its own unique process to repair some of the mid-century rupture. The announcement in 2020, enshrined in law, that all Austrian descendants of NS persecution have the right of citizenship, is an important and significant contribution to this process. To date, over 35,000 people from across the world have acquired Austrian citizenship and it is estimated that the numbers will rise considerably in the next decade.

The final lecture in the series will reflect on the implications and meaning of citizenship in a country where connection has often been associated with tragedy and ambivalence, and many have rarely, if ever, even visited. As a new chapter opens, perhaps a new sense of purpose, opportunity and responsibility emerges.

Further lectures in the series (TBC):

• Margarete Schutte-Lichowski - The Frankfurt Kitchen