!!!Siebengemeinden

Siebengemeinden, Schewa Kehillot: Jews who had been expelled from 
Styria at the end of 1496, from Oedenburg (now Sopron) in 1526 and 
from Vienna in 1670/71 settled in villages in western Hungary (now 
Burgenland) under the protection of the  Esterházy family and 
other Hungarian nobles. From the 18%%sup th/%  century the chief 
municipalities of Deutschkreutz, Eisenstadt, Frauenkirchen, Kittsee, 
Kobersdorf, Lackenbach and Mattersdorf (now Mattersburg) formed the 
association of Siebengemeinden (= "seven communities") with 
a largely Jewish internal administration. Eisenstadt remained a large 
municipality with a Jewish mayor until 1938. The strictly orthodox 
municipalities produced numerous famous rabbis and celebrities such as 
Moses Sofer and Akiba Eger, the politician R.  Blum, the violin 
virtuoso J.  Joachim and the composer K.  Goldmark.

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Jewish cemeteries have largely been preserved; however, except for 
Kobersdorf the synagogues were demolished under the Nazis. The 
approximately 4,000 Jews of the area were moved to Vienna immediately 
after Austria´s Anschluss to the German Reich in 1938, 
approximately 65 % of them were able to flee the Nazi regime and 
save their lives. Today, only twelve Jewish families live in 
Siebengemeinden. The "Wertheimerhaus" in Eisenstadt houses 
the Austrian Jewish Museum ( Jewish Museums). In memory of their 
hometown, Jews from Mattersdorf founded the settlement of Kiriat 
Mattersdorf in Jerusalem.

!Literature
B. Wachstein, Urkunden und Akten zur Geschichte der Juden 
in Eisenstadt und den Siebengemeinden, 1926; F. Hodik, Beitraege zur 
Geschichte der Mattersdorfer Judengemeinde im 18. und in der 
1. Haelfte des 19. Jahrhunderts, 1975; H. Gold (ed.), 
Gedenkbuch der untergegangenen Judengemeinden des Burgenland, 1970.


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