Page - 302 - in Wien und die jüdische Erfahrung 1900-1938 - Akkulturation - Antisemitismus - Zionismus

0 Harriet Pass Freidenreich For Marie Jahoda, a social psychologist born in Vienna in 1907, being a Socialist was far more important than being Jewish. As she later recalled, “My Jewish identity only became a real identification for me with Hitler. Not earlier. It played hardly any role in my thinking and feeling.” According to Jahoda, “Both my parents were not religious. Both grandparents were very interested in Judaism religiously and cultur- ally. […] And through the contact of my parents with their parents there developed a respect for Judaism without this influencing [our] daily life in any way. […] We preferred to go to our grandparents for the major Jewish festivals. The Jewish tradition was a family tradition — but not something alive for us.” Jahoda, however, defined herself primarily as a Socialist, not as an Austrian ; her unfulfilled aspiration was to become the Austrian Minister of Education, despite the antisemitism that she recognized within the Austrian Social Democratic Party. Like most of the university women whom I classify as “Modern Jews”, Jahoda was a Jew not only by birth but also by association. She never left the Jewish community by becoming konfessionslos and labeled baptized Jews as “third-class”. She claims that she scarcely knew anyone who was not a socialist, but most of the left-wing intel- lectuals in Vienna, and hence most of her friends and colleagues, were Jews, as were both of her husbands. That her social circle was predominantly Jewish was not a matter of conscious choice, but simply a reality of life in Vienna and a consequence of antisemitism. Unlike the “Modern Jews”, who acknowledged their Jewishness and felt ashamed of renouncing their origins, the “Former Jews”, those who officially opted out of Ju- daism through baptism or becoming konfessionslos, generally had a very negative, or else a non-existent, sense of Jewish identity. Some, like the art historian Erica Tietze- Conrat, the writer Hilde Spiel and the psychoanalyst Else Pappenheim, were baptized at birth ; their parents were baptized as well. As children, they knew little or nothing about being Jewish, but nevertheless, as adults, Tietze-Conrat and Spiel both married baptized Jews ; Spiel wrote books and articles on Jewish topics ; and Pappenheim, who considered joining her baptized father in Palestine, married an American Jew. Even without the impact of the Anschluss, being of Jewish origin was certainly not an ir- relevant factor in the personal and professional lives of baptized Jews. Elise Richter, the first woman professor in Vienna with her doctorate and Ha- bilitation in Romance philology, was raised as konfessionslos but received a Protestant Marie Jahoda, „Es war nicht umsonst“, in Hajo Funke, ed., Die andere Erinnerung, Frankfurt 1990, pp. 336–342. See also Marie Jahoda, „Ich habe die Welt nicht verändert“ : Lebenserinnerungen einer Pio- nierin der Sozialforschung, edited by Steffani Engler & Brigitte Hasenjürgen, Frankfurt am Main 1997. Ibid.