In fin de siècle Vienna, Jewish women figured prominently as heroines and victims in Jewish tales of the ghetto and as subjects of Freud’s most famous case studies of hysteria. They attended the University of Vienna when it opened its doors to women, built new and progressive schools, organized more than a dozen charity societies, and joined political movements, contributing many important ideas. They became doctors, teachers, scientists, socialists, psychoanalysts, Zionists, and writers. However, a perusal of the literature on Vienna, both in Jewish and general history, gives the reader a very different impression. In fact, Jewish women are virtually...

In her memoirs, the Viennese Jewish socialist, sociologist, and advocate for working women, Käthe Leichter (Marianne Katharina Pick) (1895–1942), recalled that her appearance—lanky, with long blond braids and gray eyes in a rosy-cheeked, boyish face—helped her, but that she did more than necessary in order to fit in. She wore her hair combed back flat, wore socks and a school uniform until the age of fourteen, and sailor blouses and a school bag on her back until the age of sixteen.¹ Minna Schiffmann Lachs (1907–1993) recalled her new teacher hitting her hands for making a cross...

Recent historical works on Jewish women have argued that in Western Europe, women held on to Jewish religious practices in the home long after most Jewish men had abandoned traditional Jewish culture.¹ In Eastern Europe, on the other hand, where assimilation did not threaten Jewish group survival, women remained ethnically Jewish; however, they became increasingly secular and drawn to various political movements.² Neither of these patterns adequately describes the Viennese Jewish women who wrote about their lives. Because they were living in the crossroads between east and west, their Jewish ethnic identity endured more than in Western Europe, giving them...

Viennese Jewish women who entered the University as well as those who entered politics differed from those who looked to the community and spirituality as the means to negotiate their way into modernity. However, both groups clearly shared a tendency to combine modern and traditional values and to attract attention and sometimes criticism. This chapter will focus on those women who pursued a higher education, those who dedicated their lives to careers in areas such as academia and science, and those who turned to politics, such as socialism, communism, and feminism. In most instances these categories overlap, with university women...

In an address before the Women’s Zionist Association in Vienna in 1901 (Wiener Zionistische Frauenverein) Theodor Herzl (1860–1904), the founder of political Zionism, declared that women had not contributed significantly to the Zionist cause.¹ He began the speech (which he described in his diary as “a rather absent-minded lecture”)² by suggesting that while women had contributed practically nothing to Zionism, they could potentially, through the use of successful propaganda, become everything. Poor women, he asserted, would make good Zionists, except that they lacked the means and free time to devote to the cause. Traditional observant women, while praiseworthy for...

Writing about the sexual development of girls in 1923, Sigmund Freud (1856–1939), the father of psychoanalysis, asserted that “unfortunately we can describe this state of things [the development of sexuality] only as it affects the male child; the corresponding processes in the little girl are not known to us.”¹ He also wrote the following in 1926: “The sexual life of adult women is a ‘dark continent’ for psychology. But we have learnt that girls feel deeply their lack of a sexual organ that is equal in value to the male one; they regard themselves on that account as inferior,...

The flourishing of Viennese culture at the turn of the century has been the subject of many works, and the Jews’ role in this phenomenon has commanded a great deal of attention as well.¹ Despite the extensive treatment of these topics, the role of the Jewish woman in Viennese culture has not been adequately addressed. This final chapter will discuss the representations of Jewish women and their participation in Viennese literature, theater, journalism, and art. Viennese Jewish women found an arena for their creativity in literature and culture on the one hand, while they were often portrayed with stereotypes by...

Since the publication of Carl Schorske’sFin-de-Siècle Vienna: Politics and Culture, historians have discussed and debated his thesis and have focused on his analysis of liberalism, the relationship of politics and culture, and his understanding of modern culture, for which the culture of fi n de siècle Vienna is seen as paradigmatic.¹ Schorske proposes that accompanying the decline of liberalism, a new politics emerged in which the leaders “grasped a social-psychological reality which the liberal could not see. Each expressed in politics a rebellion against reason and law which soon became more widespread.”² As this rebellion spread throughout Viennese politics,...