Self-Assertion in the Public Sphere: The Jewish Press on the Eve of Legal Emancipation

Abstract

Jews like Adolf Fischhof and Ludwig August Frankl were prominent participants in the revolution of 1848. Their speeches, poems, and portraits circulated in Vienna and throughout the Empire. With the suppression of the revolution, most of these prominent Jews had to either leave Vienna or retreat to the private sphere. Only in the late 1850s did Jews regain their public presence, starting with the opening of the Leopoldstaedter Tempel in 1858 and the building of the Ringstrasse from 1860 onwards. Many Jews hoped that the new liberal era would grant them civil rights and legal emancipation. Jewish intellectuals and journalists supported this struggle from within and outside the growing Jewish community. An important weapon in their struggle were Jewish newspapers. These newspapers not only provided information, but also served as mouthpieces for different Jewish movements. They featured biographies with portraits (in words and images) of distinguished Jewish leaders (mostly men and a few women), which were supposed to present the social achievements of a certain group within Jewish society to a broader audience. In fact, these portraits served as a form of self-assertion for the publisher as well as for the audience. It projected the message that Jews not only merited emancipation, but also struggled for it on various levels. The paper therefore addresses questions of biography and the (Jewish) identity these portraits at once reflected and shaped.

1. Introduction

In 1862, Franz Gaul (1802–1874) published a cartoon with the title Viennese or Austrian Parnass (Wiener bzw. österreichische Parnass). In this cartoon, Gaul appropriated the familiar illustration of Apollo with his muses and transferred it to a new genre. In the Viennese Parnass, 59 novelists and journalists are tightly squeezed around the Austrian God of Poets (Dichtergott) Franz Grillparzer (1791–1872), who stands with a lyre under a large tree [1,2]. Only one Jewish woman—namely Betti Paoli (1814–1894)—became part of this illustrious crowd. Most of the authors depicted wrote novels and published their writings in Jewish and non-Jewish newspapers. They knew each other, and several of them were even friends. Their lectures, poems, and features circulated in Vienna and throughout the whole territory of the Habsburg Empire. Some of them, such as the Jewish writers Ludwig August Frankl (1810–1894) and Leopold Kompert (1822–1886) earned political fame for participating in the revolution of 1848. Frankl became famous for his poem Die Universität and his newspaper the Sonntagsblätter; Kompert was one of the prominent journalists of the Jewish newspaper Oesterreichisches Centralorgan für Glaubensfreiheit, Cultur, Geschichte und Literatur der Juden, the most important Jewish periodical in Vienna in 1848. There, Kompert published his influential article “On to America” (Auf nach Amerika), an article that promoted Jewish migration to the New World. From the Jewish point of view, the main issues of the revolution of 1848 were the political and legal emancipation of Jews; at the same time, however, journalists wrote in the Centralorgan about education, religious developments, cultural questions, and social tensions. Aside from Kompert and Frankl, more than ten percent of the depicted writers in Gaul’s cartoon were Jewish. Originating from different parts of the monarchy, they met in the capital of the Empire and formed a network of Jewish journalists and intellectuals. They exercised their influence over the Jewish and non-Jewish public of the whole monarchy, and even beyond its borders [3].

One of their mouthpieces was the Centralorgan. In its fourth issue, it published a list of contributors. This list includes prominent rabbis, publishers, poets, teachers, and journalists who shaped the Jewish press in the Habsburg Monarchy over the course of more than thirty years, from the Vormärz period until the legal emancipation of Jews in 1867. Even though most of the authors lived in Vienna, they were in regular contact with their allies in the other parts of the Empire through their publications and correspondence. Following Gaul’s famous cartoon, we will call the Austrian contributors to the Centralorgan members of the Austrian Jewish Parnass; they include Mortiz Barach (Vienna), Jacob Goldenthal (Vienna), Isidor Heller (Budapest), Rabbi Saul Isaac Kämpf (Prague), Siegfried Kapper (Vienna), Rabbi Abrahm Kohn (Lwow/Lviv), Leopold Kompert (Vienna), Moses Israel Landau (Prague), Rabbi Leopold Löw (Papa), Rabbi Isaak Noah Mannheimer (Vienna), Wolf Mayer (Prague), Rabbi Shlomo Juda Rapoport (Prague), Moritz Rappaport (Lwow), Max Emanuel Stern (Vienna), Joseph and Simon Szantó (Vienna), Aron Alfred and Joseph Samuel Tauber (Vienna), Josef Weiss (Vienna), Joseph Wertheimer (Vienna), and Wolfgang Wessely (Prague) [4,5,6]. To complete this list, we have to add the names of the editors; namely, Isidor Busch/Bush and Meir Letteris (Vienna). However, some well-known Jewish journalists and publishers—like Ignaz Einhorn (1825–1875) and Adolf Neustadt (1812–1875)—are missing. Einhorn published a Jewish revolutionary paper in Budapest called Der Ungarische Israelit. Wochenschrift zur Beförderung des politischen, sozialen und religiösen Fortschritts unter den ungarischen Israeliten, and Neustadt wrote for the Pressburger Zeitung before leaving Pressburg/Poszony/Bratislava during the revolution, moving first to Vienna and then to Prague. He continued writing for several non-Jewish papers. Only in 1850 did he start publishing a Jewish weekly in Vienna, the Wiener Blätter, together with Meir Letteris [7,8]. Like Neustadt, other journalists also moved from one city or region of the Empire to others, due to political and professional reasons; but they continued writing and publishing on similar topics. Through these activities, they tied together the Empire’s different regions. In this paper, I will focus on the cooperation of four journalists and publishers who established modern Jewish newspapers in order to promote Jewish affairs in Vienna.

2. Meir Letteris (1800–1871) and Isidor Busch (1822–1898)

Meir Letteris and Isidor Busch were the driving forces behind the Centralorgan in 1848. They complemented each other perfectly. Letteris had already earned his fame with Hebrew and German poems and Hebrew translations of ancient and contemporary European literature, such as Byron, Ludwig August Frankl, Goethe, Lucian, Schiller, and Virgil. With his extensive oeuvre of original compositions and translations, he broadened the literary section of the paper but also modernized the Hebrew language [9,10,11]. In the only Hebrew supplement of the Centralorgan, entitled Meged Geresh Yerachim, Letteris published a long biography of Nachman Krochmal (1785–1840), who was his mentor and friend [12]. Isidor and his father Jakob Busch were the first Jewish printers in Vienna. In 1838, they bought parts of Anton Edler von Schmid’s famous printing house [13]. From 1842 onward, Isidor Busch published the Almanach und Jahrbuch für Israeliten in his father’s printing shop, which, in addition to a Jewish calendar and miscellaneous notices, contained articles on Jewish topics, ranging from the history of communities to education and schools. A special article discussed the life of Israel Hönig von Hönigsberg (1724–1808), who, with his ennoblement by Joseph II in 1789, became the first Jew in and from the Habsburg Monarchy to receive a hereditary noble title. Hönigsberg, it should be noted, was also the great-grandfather of Isidor Busch ([14], pp. 82–84; [15,16]). Additionally, Busch promoted the achievements and the presence of Jews in the public sphere with the publication of the Jüdische Plutarch in 1848, which was edited by the non-Jew Franz Gräffer (1785–1852) and the Jewish journalist Simon Deutsch (1822–1877). Among others, the already mentioned Ludwig August Frankl, Meir Letteris, Max Emanuel Stern, and Josef Wertheimer earned entries in the Plutarch [17]. Nevertheless, Busch belonged to the small group of Jews who believed in the appeal made in Kompert’s “On to America”. In January 1849, he arrived with his family in New York. Soon thereafter, on 30 March 1849, he started publishing the short-lived Israel’s Herold, the first German Jewish weekly in the United States. The weekly was modeled on the Centralorgan and was devoted to the social and religious issues of the time. Busch stayed in contact with his former friends and colleagues and published political reports from Austria by Simon Szantó and articles by Leopold Zunz [18]. Additionally, on 7 May 1849 he published a catalogue of 214 Hebrew books, which he had brought with him from his publishing house in Vienna. He sold the books in his newly opened bookstore on 411 Grand Street [19,20].

Defying his own words, Leopold Kompert (the author of “On to America”), as well as Meir Letteris (the second editor of the Centralorgan) stayed in Vienna and continued working as writers and journalists. After the suppression of the revolution in Vienna in October 1848, the Centralorgan vanished. The last volume appeared on 20 October 1848. With the suppression of the revolution, most of the prominent Jews who contributed to the journal had to leave Vienna or retreated out of necessity to the private sphere. Only in the 1850s, step by step, did Jews regain their public presence; it started with the recognition of the Jewish community by the emperor in 1852, the opening of the representative Leopoldstädter Tempel in 1858, and finally the building of the Ringstrasse from 1860 onwards. Jewish journalists and Jewish newspapers formed a crucial part of the Jewish presence in the public sphere in the decades before legal emancipation. One of the few journalists who managed to publish Jewish newspapers in Vienna in the years immediately following the revolution was Meir Letteris. Most of Letteris’ journals were ephemeral. His first efforts were driven by his hope for equality. Even though he was widely known for his Hebrew writings and was regarded as an innovator of modern Hebrew, he opted for the German language. This decision was probably informed by reflections about his potential audience, which no longer mastered Hebrew. Furthermore, there already existed a Hebrew newspaper in Vienna, called Kokhve Yitzḥaḳ (1845/47–1873) that was edited by his college Max Emanuel Stern; Letteris obviously did not want to compete with Stern for the few Hebrew readers that lived in the city and the Empire ([14], p. 84).

In 1849, Letteris edited the Wiener Monatsblätter für Tagesgeschichte, Kunst und Literatur, where he published articles about the Mendelssohn family and the work of the celebrated Jewish composer Giacomo Meyerbeer, as well as articles about Erzherzog Johann and other non-Jewish topics. His approach—which favoured liberal Austrian patriotism and a Christian–Jewish symbiosis—did not succeed in the restoration period. After having published eleven volumes in several months, Letteris started cooperating with the renowned journalist Adolf Neustadt. Together, they launched the journal under a slightly different name—Wiener Blätter—and gave it a new profile [21]. The first issue was published on 11 July 1850. The relaunch of the paper coincided with difficult times for Jews in Vienna, leading the editors to reconsider its content and turn to an explicitly Jewish audience. They wrote about Jewish communities in the Habsburg Monarchy, anti-Jewish violence, the relationship between Slavs and Jews, and educational matters; additionally, they published poems and novels of Jewish authors like Leopold Kompert, Adolf Dux (1822–1881), and, under his penname Ludwig Märzroth, Moritz Barach (1818–1888). A remarkable article discussed the establishment of the first Jewish school for girls in Vienna, which started under the headmistress Caroline Szantó, Simon Szantó’s sister-in-law, in October 1850 [22].

In addition to serving as the editor of the Jewish journal Wiener Blätter, Letteris also wrote about Jewish topics in other journals and newspapers. He succeeded in publishing an outstanding 40-page general history of the revolution under the title “Rückblick auf die Jahre 1848 und 1849” (Review of the Years 1848 and 1849) in the Jahrbuch für Israeliten 1850/51. There he gave an overview of the crucial stages of the revolution, not only in Vienna, but also in Prague and Hungary. He also highlighted the common involvement of Jews and non-Jews in the revolution. He did not hesitate to mention the names of Adolf Fischhof and Joseph Goldmark, both persecuted after the revolution, and he printed the sermon of the Viennese rabbi Isaak Noah Mannheimer at the funeral of the victims of the March revolution. He added a list of laws in different European states that favoured or opposed Jewish emancipation as well as the March Constitution of 1849 [23]. However, reflecting the official political line in his article, Letteris praised the new emperor Franz Joseph and played down the suppression of Count Alfred Windischgrätz’s regime after the defeat of the revolution in Vienna. He did not mention the shooting of Robert Blum, Alfred Julius Becher, and Hermann Jellinek in November 1848. Such concessions helped the article to pass censorship rules and to receive the right of publication. Interestingly, the Jahrbuch für die Israeliten was still edited by “J. Busch.” Since Isidor Busch already lived in the United States at that time, the editor must have been his father Jakob Busch. Jakob Busch had stayed in Vienna after his son’s leave and sold his share of the printing house to Adalbert della Torre, who is mentioned as the printer of the volume [24]. With the December Constitution of 1851, the government revoked most of the legal achievements of the 1848 revolution and laid the foundations for the neo-absolutist state [25]. Letteris had to adapt to this new political reality. In terms of his professional life, these changes meant that he started working for the Christian “British and Foreign Bible Society of London” as a corrector for their Hebrew Bible. He based his work on the Masoretic studies of the Protestant theologian Everardus van der Hooght (1642–1716). The first edition was printed in Vienna at J. P. Sollinger’s widow in 1852; the revised second edition that appeared in London in 1866 became the basis for the most widespread Masoretic Hebrew Bible—i.e., the authoritative text with vocalization and accentuation that was used by Christians and Jews until the 20th century ([9], p. 160). Additionally, he succeeded in publishing a Jewish newspaper in the period of neo-absolutism, when most of his colleagues had to leave Vienna after the revolution or had to retreat from political journalism, like Ludwig August Frankl.

After the withdrawal of Neustadt from the Wiener Blätter, Letteris edited the newspaper from 1854 to 1869 under the name Wiener Mittheilungen. In the 1850s, it was the only German Jewish journal published in Vienna; usually, it appeared as a weekly. After the failed emancipation during the 1848 revolution, Letteris turned to the German-Jewish Enlightenment; he made Moses Mendelssohn and Heinrich Heine his heroes [26]. Furthermore, he covered Enlightenment topics like education and Jewish schools, as well as Jewish history and literature. He also published biographies, and, from time to time, Hebrew translations of poems in a supplement called Avne Nezer (crown jewels). The most famous of these poems was his translation of Ludwig August Frankl’s “An Jerusalem”, from Frankl’s book Nach Jerusalem (1858). He published it in two columns, the German original and his Hebrew translation side by side [27,28]. Authors like Frankl contributed regularly to the Wiener Mittheilungen. From 1861 onwards, the paper was in decline and appeared with only four pages. The date of release was moved from Monday to Friday, which indicates that it became a supplement to general newspapers over Shabbat. Most of the articles were now written by Letteris himself. One of the main reasons for the journal’s failure was the publication of Die Neuzeit (The Modern Era) by Simon Szantó, as we will see later. Another reason might have been the changing social and religious makeup of Vienna’s Jewish community. In 1848, about 4,000 Jews lived in the city. Following the revolution, residence and migration patterns changed. In the 1850s the influx was slow, since the government was still reluctant to accept the settlement of Jews in the city, but in the 1860s, freedom of movement became part of the political system. Thereafter, we see a rapid increase of the Jewish population, to more than 6000 in 1857 and to over 40,000 in 1869; this was 6.6 percent of the total Viennese population. First, many Jews from Bohemia and Moravia as well as from Hungary migrated to the capital; later on, the migration wave from Galicia started. Every group brought their own language (German, Yiddish, Hungarian, Polish, etc.) and religious customs with them. Around 1880, two thirds of Vienna’s Jews lived in the first (Innere Stadt), second (Leopoldstadt), and ninth districts (Alsergrund) [29].

Over the years, Letteris intensified his efforts in the Jewish press and reiterated his commitment to the enlightenment of Austrian Jewry. At the same time, he complained that he had to fight the religious and national aversions of Jews and Christians alike—i.e., the aversions of both Jewish “Orthodoxy” and government officials. In one of his articles, in December 1866, he referred to new Jewish journalists and their recently founded newspapers. He wished them success, but also stressed his own achievements and those of his colleagues like “Zunz, Geiger, Jost, Fürst, Philippson, Jellinek, Zacharias Fraenkl” [30]. He did not specifically mention the names of new Jewish journals; it is apparent, however, that in the 1860s, Jewish newspapers multiplied. These newspapers not only provided information, but also served as mouthpieces for different Jewish ideologies and movements, from Reform to Orthodoxy. The newspapers’ feature articles were often biographies with portraits of distinguished Jewish leaders (mostly men and a few women). These portraits (in words and images) presented the social achievements of a certain group within Jewish society and transmitted them to a broad audience. On the one hand, these portraits served as a form of self-assertion for the publisher as well as for the audience; on the other hand, they advocated the view that Jews merited emancipation and promoted the struggle for this aim. The newspapers were closely interconnected, since their editors knew each other personally. They even advertised the newspapers of their ”competitors”. The new papers that appeared in the 1860s (and to which Letteris might have referred) included the following: Die Neuzeit (1861–1903), Deborah (1865–1866), Illustrirte Monathshefte (1865–1866) from Vienna, Das Abendland (1864–1869) of Prague, the Illustrirte Judenzeitung (1860–1861) of Pest, and Ben Chananja (1858–1867) from Szeged. In addition to these German-language newspapers and the Hebrew Kokhve Yitzḥaḳ (1845–1872), the 1860s also produced Judeo-Spanish papers like El Dragoman Liberale (1865–1878) and Coreo de Viena (1864–1879), the Italian Il Corriere Israelitico (1862–1925) in Trieste and the Magyar Zsidó (1867–1870) in Budapest; the latter was published in Hungarian and German ([14], pp. 82–86).

The foundation of those papers was mostly connected with the effort for the legal emancipation of Jews in the Habsburg Monarchy; some of them ceased to appear shortly before or right after the declaration of legal emancipation in December 1867. In contrast to his colleagues, Letteris did not glorify this achievement at all. The reasons for this rather curious stance are unclear. Given his experience after 1848, he probably did not believe that the new law would last ([21], pp. 16–21). However, after legal emancipation, Letteris no longer played a central role as a Jewish journalist. He continued his literary projects and published his memoirs in Hebrew (Zikaron ba-sefer) in 1869. Hebrew literature was one of his lifelong passions. Launching a new poetic form, the lyrical verse, Letteris contributed to the development of nineteenth-century Hebrew poetry. In fact, Letteris shaped the language of lyrical Hebrew with his own poetry and his translations, thereby paving the way for his successors from the 1870s onwards [11]. After his death in 1871, Letteris was mainly remembered for his contributions to Hebrew literature. Even more influential than his poetry and translations, however, was his editing project of the Masoretic Hebrew Bible. His role in the establishment of the Jewish press in the Habsburg Monarchy, on the other hand, was almost entirely forgotten. Letteris’ descent into oblivion as a journalist is linked to the rise of Simon Szantó as a leading Jewish journalist and publisher.

3. Simon Szantó (1819–1882) and Leopold Kompert (1822–1886)

Simon Szantó, a native Hungarian from Nagy-Kanizsa, received his education at the yeshivot of Lackenbach (formerly Hungary, today Austria) and Gross-Jenikau/Velký Jeníkov (Bohemia). Like many young yeshive bachurim, he moved from one place to another in order to enhance his education. However, Szantó was also interested in general education. He attended gymnasium in Pressburg/Pozsony (today Bratislava, Slovakia) and then headed to Prague for university studies. In Prague he also continued his religious education and studied under the venerated Chief Rabbi Solomon Rapoport (1786–1867). In 1844, Szantó was ordinated as a rabbi; one year later, he moved to Vienna, where he established himself as an educator and journalist. He published in Jewish and non-Jewish newspapers like the Wiener Zeitung. In 1848, he got involved in the revolution and promoted the revolutionary cause in the Centralorgan of Letteris and Busch. Szantó supported the appeal expressed in Leopold Kompert’s “On to America” and published further articles about Jewish emancipation and education. Probably the most provocative of his publications in the Centralorgan was the poem “Des Juden Vaterland” (Fatherland of a Jew), which alluded to and was modelled after Ernst Moritz Arndt’s poem “Was ist des Deutschen Vaterland” (What is the fatherland of a German) from 1813. Szantó preceded his poem by a prologue from Jonah 1:8–9 that can be read as an implicit answer to the question posed in the verses: “[What is thine occupation?] and whence comest thou? what is thy country? [and of what people art thou?] And he said unto them, I am a Hebrew; and I fear the Lord, the God of heaven” [31,32]. After the revolution, in 1849 Szantó established a Jewish school for boys in Vienna, together with his brother Joseph. In the 1850s, both worked as teachers in this school. However, Simon Szantó also continued working as a journalist. His efforts culminated in the foundation of the Jewish weekly Die Neuzeit in 1861. In the late 1860s, he also served as an editor of Busch’s famous Jahrbuch für Israeliten, taking this position over from Leopold Kompert [33].

Kompert, a native Bohemian from Münchengrätz/Mnichovo Hradisté (today Czech Republic), went to gymnasium in the neighboring town of Jungbunzlau/Mladá Boleslav, where one of his schoolmates was the writer Moritz Hartmann (1821–1872). From 1837 onwards, Kompert was employed as a private teacher in Prague, Vienna, and Pressburg, and worked at one point for Count Georg Andrassy. During those years he wrote for different newspapers as well, such as Pannonia, the supplement of the Pressburger Zeitung edited by Adolph Neustadt, and the Wiener Sonntagsblätter, published by Ludwig August Frankl. The latter convinced Kompert to publish his famous book Aus dem Ghetto after he returned to Vienna, in 1847. The book appeared right before the outbreak of the revolution in 1848. Family ties strengthened the deep friendship that thereafter developed between Kompert and Frankl. In 1857, Kompert married Marie Pollak, the widow of Frankl’s cousin Leopold Pollak. In general, the network between the Jewish intellectuals was very tightly knit. In 1882, Jakob Rappaport (1840–1886), the son of Moritz Rappaport, the already mentioned writer for the Centralorgan who made a living as a well-known doctor in Lemberg, bought the Palais Schey at the Ringstrasse in Vienna. One of the tenants in this house was Ludwig August Frankl, a close friend of Moritz Rappaport.

Kompert gained fame as a journalist of the Centralorgan with two editorial articles that were issued in May 1848, in No. 6 and 7, under the title “On to America”. As a consequence of pogroms that accompanied the revolution, Kompert did not believe in a prosperous future for Jews in Europe and therefore propagated the idea of emigration to the US as a solution to the “Jewish problem” in Europe. As we have seen, Isidor Busch followed Kompert’s advice and immigrated to the New World. The author himself, on the other hand, stayed in Vienna and made a public carrier in the city administration. In 1857, he was promoted to honorary doctor of the University of Jena. In 1859, he became a member of the Viennese Schiller Society, and 18 years later the society’s president. From 1864 onwards, he was a board member of the Jewish community in Vienna. In 1873, he was elected to the Viennese town council, and three years later he was appointed as Landesschulrat (school supervisor) in the crownland of lower Austria, to which the territory of the city of Vienna belonged [34,35,36]. Throughout this period, Kompert cooperated closely with Simon Szantó on the Centralorgan, and helped him to found the Neuzeit and the Jahrbuch der Israeliten.

The establishment of the Jewish newspaper Neuzeit in 1861 followed the appointment of Anton von Schmerling as the first liberal prime minister. Many Jews hoped that the new liberal area would grant them civil rights and legal emancipation. Jewish intellectuals and journalists supported this struggle from within and from outside the growing Jewish community; Szantó was one of them. As mentioned above, he had written for Jewish and non-Jewish journals since 1848 and was one of the headmasters of a private Jewish school that he had established together with his brother in 1849. His friendship with Rabbi Adolf Jellinek (1820–1893) also enabled him to teach at the Beit HaMidrash from 1863 onward. From the outset, the Neuzeit advocated a German-liberal tendency. Kompert retreated as co-editor after one year, but he continued publishing his literature in the journal.

With Kompert, Szantó had a partner and later a supporter, who provided the readers with high quality literature. Beginning from the second volume, Kompert published his novella “Die beiden Schwerter” (The Two Swords) as a serial in the Neuzeit, and in 1865 it became part of his collection of novellas, entitled Geschichten einer Gasse (Histories of a Street) [37]. This novella dealt with the emancipation of Jews during the reign of Joseph II and his Edicts of Toleration. Szantó wrote most of the editorials himself. He promoted modern education and the reform of religious services, and fought against religious Orthodoxy and the migration of Jews from Eastern Europe, who mostly supported the Orthodoxy. He saw the Neuzeit as a mouthpiece for the Habsburg Monarchy’s one million Jews, most of whom, he believed, were not represented in the general press. Owing to the liberal political climate of the era, Szantó could, in contrast to Letteris, write about political topics from the beginning. His debates about tradition and identity in a changing society touched upon the needs of a modernizing Jewish society.

From an early stage, Szantó also fought against anti-Semitism. In 1863, he supported Leopold Kompert in his trial against Sebastian Brunner, the editor of the Wiener Kirchenzeitung. Brunner had sued Kompert on charges of blasphemy, because Kompert had published an article by Heinrich Graetz called “Die Verjüngung des jüdischen Stammes” (The Rejuvenation of the Jewish Tribe) in the Jahrbuch der Israeliten (1863/64), wherein Graetz argued against a “personal Messiah” and declared that the Jewish people were to be considered collectively as the Messiah. Initially, nobody took notice of the article. Only after the Jahrbuch received credit in the Wiener Zeitung did the editor and notorious anti-Semite Sebastian Brunner start his campaign. Even Vienna’s rabbis Isaak Noah Mannheimer and Lazar Horwitz had to appear in court as witnesses. In the end, Kompert was acquitted of the charge of blasphemy, but was sentenced to a financial penalty for “neglecting his duty of supervision”, because the court understood one passage of the article to be referring to the Christian “redeemer” [38,39].

In his articles, Szantó always combined the fight against anti-Semitism with the fight for emancipation. After the emancipation of 1867, Szantó had to re-orientate the paper; he henceforth focused on the lack of social equality. Most of the Jewish journals mentioned here ceased to exist a couple of years after emancipation was granted. Even the famous Rabbi Leopold Löw stopped editing Ben Chananja in 1867, because his aims were fulfilled with the achievement of legal emancipation [40]. Under the impression of the pogroms in Russia, Szantó started to address anti-Semitism in the Habsburg Monarchy more regularly. He was the first to confront the notorious anti-Semite, priest, and Prague University professor August Rohling (1839–1931) with a series of articles from March 1881 onwards [41,42,43]. The trigger for Szantó was a new publication of Rohling’s 1871 book Talmudjude, in which Rohling attacked Franz Delitzsch, a Hebraist and professor of Lutheran theology in Leipzig who had published a very unfavorable review of the Talmudjude ten years earlier. Szantó confirmed that Rohling did not have a clue about the Talmud, that he was not able to read and understand a single page correctly. In fact, his book was nothing more than “a raked up story of Eisenmenger’s Neu entdecktes Judentum” [41]. Szantó’s claim actually anticipated the arguments of Rabbi Samuel Joseph Bloch (1850–1923) in his trial against Rohling some months later. In an article from June 1881, Szantó even declared that there was no “Jewish Question” for Jews; this phenomenon was a Christian issue, thus Christians had to fight it [42,44]. The breakthrough in the campaign and later in the trial against Rohling we owe, however, to Rabbi Joseph Samuel Bloch, who succeeded in publishing his allegations about Rohling (that were in fact very similar to Szantó’s) in a non-Jewish newspaper—namely, the Wiener Allgemeine Zeitung on 22 December 1882. The editor of this newspaper was the Jewish economist and journalist Theodor Hertzka [43].

The unexpected death of Simon Szantó on 17 January 1882 put the Neuzeit into a difficult situation. Szantó’s successor as the editor was his friend the Chief Rabbi Adolf Jellinek (1821–1893), who continued fighting incidents of anti-Semitism, such as the blood libel of Tisza-Eszlar in 1882/1883. In an obituary published in Die Presse on 21 January 1882, Leopold Kompert praised Szantó’s role in the revolution of 1848 and his engagement in the Neuzeit, emphasizing the fact that Szantó was first of all a Jewish journalist [45].

4. Summary

Jewish newspapers played an important role in enabling Jewish self-assertion and the emancipation of Jews in the public sphere after the suppression of the revolution of 1848. Jewish journalists, who were the pillars of those newspapers, came from different parts of the Empire; most of them shared many biographical details. At different stages of their life, they formed networks which supported their work and helped them to gain a foothold in the non-Jewish society as well. The two well-known journalists Meir Letteris and Simon Szantó established the Wiener Mittheilungen and the Neuzeit; these two journals provided the growing Jewish community in Vienna and Jews throughout the Monarchy with news about Jewish communities, Jewish history, and educational matters, as well as biographical information about prominent Jews. In contrast to Letteris, Szantó succeeded during the liberal era by promoting Jewish emancipation and addressing inner-Jewish debates about religious reform. After the legal emancipation in December 1867, most Jewish newspapers lost their socio-economic task and therefore disappeared within a short period, like Letteris’ Wiener Mittheilungen. Jewish readers now increasingly turned to general newspapers. Simon Szantó re-oriented the Neuzeit to the struggle for social equality. From the 1880s onwards, new Jewish newspapers, like the Österreichisch-ungarische Cantorenzeitung or Dr. Bloch’s Wochenschrift focused much more on religious aspects, community affairs, and anti-Semitism. However, Szantó and Letteris, as the most prominent editors of Jewish newspapers, earned a place in the Austrian Jewish Parnass for their lifelong journalistic efforts. Even though Franz Gaul did not include them in his Viennese Parnass cartoon in 1862, twenty years later, in 1882, Alexander von Helfert incorporated Szantó and many other Jewish journalists of the 1848-generation into his famous book Der Wiener Parnaß im Jahre 1848 [46]. Letteris, however, is missing; as a journalist, he had already faded into obscurity.