Page - 301 - in Wien und die jüdische Erfahrung 1900-1938 - Akkulturation - Antisemitismus - Zionismus

Gender and Identity 01 emigrated to Palestine. Most Jewish university women saw themselves as culturally Ger- man, but some of the Galician-born women, like the psychoanalyst Helene Rosenbach Deutsch, identified themselves as Polish by culture and nationality. For the most part, however, they were not ardent nationalists of any kind. At least half of the Jewish university women in my study population, including some of the Zionists, identified themselves as Socialists or Communists. Some of more prominent left-wing activists and functionaries, like Käthe Pick Leichter and Marie Glas Langer, officially left the Jewish community ; but most Social Democratic supporters remained within the fold. As one Socialist respondent, a lawyer, who was born in 1902 in Vienna to Galician-born, Social Democratic parents, explained in a letter, “One could be a Social Democrat in pre-war Vienna and still be a religious Jew … We had a kosher home (bought kosher meat and did not mix milk and meat together), and went to temple on the high holidays with our grandparents. Our fam- ily always paid the religious tax.” At the age of 92, this woman was still attending synagogue on the High Holidays. More typically perhaps, Edith Foster, a psychologist born in Vienna, who belonged to a socialist youth group, the Association of Socialist Middle-Schoolers (Verband So- zialistischer Mittelschüler), described her family background as follows : “My parents were freethinkers, socialists, pacifists and internationalists. Rationality, science and human cooperation would improve the world in the near future. They were nominally Jews. I can only remember two visits to temple, however : the first time in the twenties for Aunt Frieda’s wedding and my own wedding in 1937. At this point the Catholic Austro-Fascist regime had declared civil marriage illegal. […] We were assimilated Jews. We celebrated Christmas, Sylvester [New Year’s Eve], May 1 and November 12, Republic Day.” Helga Embacher commented that for Edith Foster and many other leftists, Jewish religion had long since given way to belief in scientific progress : “Be- ing Jewish had become meaningless for [such a] family and they only acknowledged Judaism because they did not want to recognize the ridiculousness of baptism as an entry ticket into society. Like the majority of Jews living in Vienna they felt them- selves politically tied to Social Democracy, whose ‘Festkultur’ also helped replace the Jewish tradition.” Helene Deutsch, Confrontations with Myself : An Epilogue, New York 1973, pp. 30, 50, 67 and 196– 197. Questionnaire for Marta Friedlaender Garelik, completed by Susan E. Cernyak-Spatz, Charlotte, nc, and letter, September 10, 1993. As quoted in Helga Embacher, „Außenseiterinnen : bürgerlich, jüdisch, intellektuell – links“, L’Homme Zeitschrift für Feministische Geschichtswissenschaft Vol. 2, No.2 (1991), p. 160. Ibid.