Page - 309 - in Wien und die jüdische Erfahrung 1900-1938 - Akkulturation - Antisemitismus - Zionismus

From White Terror to Red Vienna 0 and considered the numerus clausus a necessary form of “racial self-defense.” As such, the Hungarian numerus clausus was the first piece of antisemitic legislation in post- war Europe. Hungarian Jewish Students in Vienna Whether fleeing from the White Terror or the numerus clausus, many Hungarian Jew- ish students went abroad in 1919 or the early 1920s, joining the ranks of other stu- dents — from Poland, Romania, Ukraine and elsewhere — who had fled revolution, civil war, pogroms and privation during World War I or in its aftermath. Hungarian Jewish students, who were often proficient in the German language, flocked to Ger- man-language institutions of higher learning in the former Habsburg Empire and beyond. The Technische Hochschulen in Prague and Brno (Brünn) had particular allure, but neither could compete with the University of Vienna and the Viennese Technische Hochschule in their ability to attract Hungarian Jewish students (fig. 1). Hungarian Jewish students were far outnumbered by their coreligionists from Poland and Romania, but they still constituted almost 7 % of Vienna’s Jewish students in 1919, a year before the numerus clausus was introduced in Hungary. By the follow- ing year, “several hundred Hungarian students, who have been driven out of their country, or who have been refused admittance to the university” had taken refuge in Vienna. Indeed, when Arthur Koestler applied to the Technische Hochschule in 1922, there were already more than 700 Hungarian Jews studying in Vienna alone. (An English Jewish newspaper claimed that there were 2,347 Hungarian Jewish stu- dents in Vienna.) Vienna’s venerable institutions of higher learning were not the sole allure for Hun- gary’s Jewish students. The monumental splendor of the former Kaiserstadt, its rich cultural offerings and even its relatively hospitable political climate contributed to Vi- Paul A. Hanebrink, In Defense of Christian Hungary : Religion, Nationalism and Antisemitism, 1890–1944, Ithaca and London 2006, p. 82–83. Victor Karady, “La migration internationale d’étudiants en Europe, 1890–1940”, in : Actes de la recherche en sciences sociales 145 (December 2002), pp. 47–60. Jewish University-Committee, Vienna ; American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (JDC) Archives, New York, 19/2, no. 117 (Austria, Culture-Religion). According to this report, there were more than five thousand Jewish students in Vienna in 1919. On the basis of a questionnaire submitted to 3.586 of these students, 2.205 (61 %) came from Poland (Galicia), 805 (22 %) from Romania (Bukovina), and 231 (7 %) from Hungary. Only 134 (4 %) Jewish students came from German-Austria ! Ibid. A Magyar Zsidóság Almanachja : Numerus Clausus, Budapest, [1925], pp. 139–142.