Project "Am Karmelitermarkt"

A micro-historical analysis of the social structure in the "Jewish Quarter" in the Viennese Leopoldstadt.

In the last few decades, an entire series of investigations into the history of Jews of Vienna has appeared.  However, these studies have, for the most part, been concerned with traditional cultural history and research into anti-Semitism. A troublesome lack still exists in the social history of this population group.  In the wake of the Shoah, what has disappeared from the historiographical perspective is the fact that Jews were not just objects of anti-Jewish hostility, nor were all Jews culturally productive, but that a majority of them (for the majority of the time) lead a rather ”normal life” in their respective social milieus during the 19^th and in the beginning of the 20^th century.  Especially in the view of these circumstances, it seems to me that an investigation into the social structure of Jewish residential areas could provide a very useful addition to the existing analyses.

The central goal of this project is the documentation of the variety of living conditions of the Jewish as well as the non Jewish part of the population of this part of Vienna before the Shoah. To which extent was the minority integrated or isolated in the local area?

Investigated period: 1848-1939.

Sources:

Census lists, address books, registration records, marital registers, land registers, tax cadastres, inventories, wills,
interviews, letters, diaries.

Example: Konskription Wien-Leopoldstadt 1857 (Vienna City Archives, Konskriptionsamt/Volkszählung 1857 /3.Reihe, Leopoldstadt 217 / 5)

Database:

The data contain information about 427 Persons: ID, sex, marital status, position in household, prename, surname, year of birth, occupation, origin, religion, house number, flat number, street, year of investigation.

Data in SPSS-portable-Format (for the import in SPSS independent of the OS)
Data in dbf Format (for the import in various database systems)

Publications:

Jüdische Handwerker und ihr sozialer Hintergrund in Wien während des Liberalismus, in: Aschkenas. Zeitschrift für Geschichte und Kultur der Juden Vol. 4/2 1994, 337-363.

Social Structure of the Jewish Quarter in Vienna during the Liberal Era, in: The History of the Family: An International Quarterly (in print).

For all questions and suggestions please contact
Heinz Berger.