Between Class and Nation: The Political Lives of Orthodox Jews in Late Habsburg Galicia

• In Event: National Emancipation and the Attainment of Group Rights: Perspectives from Early 20th-Century East-Central Europe

Abstract

When Austria emancipated Galician Jews as individuals in 1867, it failed to accord the Jews the broad national rights that it had promised their Polish and Ukrainian neighbours. Securing group rights subsequently became a major preoccupation of the budding Jewish nationalist movement, inspiring attempts to cultivate national consciousness among Galicia's majority-Orthodox Jews, who rather prioritized their religious and socioeconomic interests. This paper explores the challenges facing nationalists as they tried to mobilize Orthodox Jews behind national politics, looking at the struggle between Jewish nationalism and socialism, intra-party ideological conflict, and the increasing exclusivity of non-Jewish politics during the 1907 and 1911 Reichsrat elections.

Author

• Sydney Shiller, Princeton U