Language:
English
Year of publication:
2008
Titel der Quelle:
Historical Journal
Angaben zur Quelle:
51,1 (2008) 49-85
Keywords:
Jews History 1800-2000
;
Antisemitism History 1800-2000
;
Jews Legal status, laws, etc.
Abstract:
Discusses the 1808 passage of a law by the Lower Austrian Estate of the lesser nobility that denied membership to persons of Jewish origin, both male and female, to the third generation. This action, taken in the context of a provincial patriotic and incipient Austrian nationalistic reaction to the threat of Napoleon and napoleonic social liberalism, went counter to the recent Austrian monarchical tradition of tolerance. The rejection of descendants of Jews also reflected resentment at Jewish social and economic acculturalization (e.g. in intermarriages with the Austrian elite). Restrictions on land ownership by Jews and descendants of Jews reflected the same attitudes. This unique 19th-century blood purity legislation resemble medieval Spanish laws and the 20th-century Nuremberg laws, but had no direct connection with either. This anti-Jewishness was primarily a social, not governmental, phenomenon and indicated a fracture in the social structure. There was a parallel but less strong and less successsful movement to exclude descendants of Jews from joining the consortion of the upper nobility. The 1808 ban was in effect until 1827; the lower nobility accepted their first Jewish descendant in 1830. As in Britain, the most prestigious sector of the nobility was closed to Jews until the second half of the 19th century.
DOI:
10.1017/S0018246X07006589
URL:
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