This book presents a radical reconsideration of the role of key players in developing an organised, politically oriented antisemitism in Vienna in the decades leading to the 1938 Anschluss. It pays particular attention to the clergy and how their antisemitism fitted the worldview of an authoritarian, hierarchical society. -- .
Viennas respectable antisemites offers a radical challenge to conventional accounts of one of the darkest periods in the citys history: the rise of organised, politically directed antisemitism between the late-nineteenth and mid-twentieth centuries. Drawing on original research into the Christian Social movement, the book analyses how issues such as nationalism, mass poverty and social unrest enabled the gestation in respectable society of antisemitism, an ideology that seemed to be dying in the 1860s, but which was given new strength from the 1880s. It delivers a riposte to portrayals of the lower clergy as a marginalised group that was driven to defend itself from liberal attacks by turning to anti-liberal, antisemitic action, as well as exposing the nurturing role played by senior clergy. As the book reveals, the Church in Vienna as a whole was determined to counter liberalism, to the point of welcoming any authoritarian regime that would do so.
This book presents a radical reconsideration of the role of key players in developing an organised, politically oriented antisemitism in Vienna in the decades leading to the 1938 Anschluss. It pays particular attention to the clergy and how their antisemitism fitted the worldview of an authoritarian, hierarchical society.
