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Karl Lueger
Photograph by Ludwig Grillich, c.1897
Mayor of Vienna
In office 8 April 1897 (1897-04-08) – 10 March 1910 (1910-03-10)
Preceded by	Josef Strobach
Succeeded by	Josef Neumayer
Personal details
Born	(1844-10-24)24 October 1844 Wieden, Austrian Empire
Died	Vienna, Austria-Hungary
Political party	Christian Social Party
Profession	Lawyer
Religion	Roman Catholic

Karl Lueger (German pronunciation: [ˈlu̯eːɡɐ], not * [ˈlyːɡɐ]) (24 October 1844 – 10 March 1910) was an Austrian politician and mayor of Vienna. The populist and anti-Semitic politics of his Christian Social Party are sometimes viewed as a model for Hitler's Nazism.^[1]

Career[link]

Born at Wieden (since 1850 the 4th district of Vienna) the son of an usher, Lueger came from a modest background. He nevertheless was able to attend the renowned Theresianum boarding school and graduated in law from the University of Vienna, receiving his doctorate in 1870. He established his own lawyer's office in Vienna and soon became known as a "little people's" counsel, a development that brought him into politics. In 1875 he was elected deputy of the city's Gemeinderat municipal assembly, strongly agitating against the government of liberal mayor Cajetan Felder. In 1885 he achieved a seat in the Abgeordnetenhaus of the Austrian Reichsrat parliament.

From the late 1880s onwards Lueger was a regular attendee at the influential circles of clerical social conservative politicians around Karl von Vogelsang. In view of the rising labour movement, the participants on the basis of Catholic social teaching developed ideas to overcome social polarisation by several measures of social security legislation and the common Catholic faith. Morevover, after a 1882 electoral reform had expanded the electorate suffrage, Lueger focussed on petty bourgeois tradespersons, who assumed the Jewish competition to be the underlying cause of their precarious situation, and discovered that raising the "Jewish Question" earned him enormous popularity.

Lueger (2nd from right) with CS leaders

In 1893 he founded and led the Christian Social Party (CS), which quickly rivaled with the Social Democrats for the majority of votes. After the 1895 elections for the Vienna Gemeinderat it took political power from the ruling liberals and subsequently helped Lueger win the mayoralty. It did however take him two more years to prevail against the resistance of Prime-Minister Kasimir Felix Badeni and three refusals by Emperor Franz Joseph (who allegedly loathed him as a person). After personal intercession by Pope Leo XIII his election was finally sanctioned in 1897.

Lueger served as mayor of Vienna until his early death from diabetes mellitus in 1910. He was buried in the crypt of the newly erected St Charles Borromeo Church at the Zentralfriedhof (also called Dr. Karl Lueger Memorial Church), whose groundbreaking ceremony he had performed himself.

Performance as Municipal Administrator[link]

Burgtheater on Universitaets-Ring, part of Vienna's famous Ringstraße

He was a zealous Catholic, and wished to “capture the university” for the Church. He would have neither Social Democrats nor Pan-Germans nor Jews in the municipal administration. He secured good treatment for Czech immigrants.^[2]

In his incumbency, Lueger is credited with the extension of the public water supply by its second main aquifer (Hochquellwasserleitung), which provides tap water of mineral water quality to large parts of the city. He also pursued the municipalization of gas and electricity works as well as the establishment of a public transport system and numeorus institutions of social welfare, most of which strongly relied on debt financing.

He planned to make Vienna one of the most beautiful of garden cities.^[2]

A bachelor throughout his life, der schöne Karl ("handsome Karl") achieved tremendous popularity among the citizens. During his tenure, Vienna ultimately changed its appearance as the capital of a great power of the pre-World War I era - an heritage that remained even in Red Vienna after the dissolution of Austria-Hungary in 1918. A significant part of the infrastructure and organisations that are responsible for the high standard of living in the contemporary city were created during his terms of office.

Lueger and anti-Semitism[link]

Lueger was known for his anti-Semitic rhetoric and referred to himself as an admirer of Edouard Drumont, who founded the Antisemitic League of France in 1889. Decades later, Adolf Hitler, a Vienna citizen from 1907 to 1913, saw him as an inspiration for his own view on Jews. Though not an explicit pan-Germanist, Lueger advocated racist policies against non-German speaking minorities in Austria-Hungary and in 1887 voted for a bill proposed by his long-time opponent Georg von Schönerer to restrict the immigration of Russian and Romanian Jews. He also overtly supported the völkisch movement of Guido von List and created the nickname Judapest for the rivaling Hungarian capital.^[3] The historian Léon Poliakov wrote in The History of Anti-Semitism:

It soon became apparent that especially in Vienna any political group that wanted to appeal to the artisans had no chance of success without an anti-Semitic platform. [...] It was at that time that a well-known phrase was coined in Vienna: "Anti-Semitism is the socialism of fools." The situation was exploited by the Catholic politician Karl Lueger, the leader of Austrian Christian-Social party with a program identical to that of the Berlin party of the same name led by Pastor Stoeker. In 1887, Lueger raised the banner of anti-Semitism. [...] However the enthusiastic tribute that Hitler paid him in Mein Kampf does not seem justified, for the Jews did not suffer under his administration.^[4]

Other observers contend that Lueger's public racism was in large part a pose to obtain votes, being one of the first who made use of populism as a political tool. Historian William L. Shirer wrote that "…his opponents, including the Jews, readily conceded that he was at heart a decent, chivalrous, generous and tolerant man. So there is not a lot of evidence to support his large effect on the views of Adolf Hitler."^[5] According to Amos Elon, "Lueger's anti-Semitism was of a homespun, flexible variety - one might almost say gemütlich. Asked to explain the fact that many of his friends were Jews, Lueger famously replied: 'I decide who is a Jew.' "^[6] Viennese Jewish writer Stefan Zweig, who grew up in Vienna during Lueger's term of office, recalled that "His city administration was perfectly just and even typically democratic."^[7]

Further influence on Austrian politics[link]

His general style of politics later inspired some of the right-wing leaders of the First Austrian Republic in 1918-1933, such as Ignaz Seipel, Engelbert Dollfuss and Kurt Schuschnigg, who led the Austrian society towards Austrofascism. Unlike with Hitler, he did not so much inspire antisemitism in them (none of these three were particularly anti-Semitic), but rather provided one important role model for their generally combative, unrelenting stance towards ideological political opponents, which ultimately proved to be detrimental to the cohesion of the Austrian state.

Damaged plaque at Lueger's birthplace

In Vienna, Lueger has a square named after him, at least two statues were erected in his honour and until April 2012 a section of the Ringstraße bore his name. It has been very difficult to decide what to do with monuments honoring historical figures whose reputation has been widely called into question as Europeans (and others) reflect on the historical background to the holocaust. With the Anschluss of Austria in 1938 street names carrying Jewish names or the names of pacifists were changed. After World War II, Austria started a full-scale program of de-Nazification on both cultural and topographical levels. Nazified street signs were torn down and their names changed back from Nazi to Habsburg heroes.^[8] Lueger's monuments present a difficult case because they are genuinely local, yet he was inspirational for the Nazis.

For some, the Lueger monuments show that Vienna has sacrificed its obligations to war crimes victims in exchange for keeping its nostalgic appeal as the grand Imperial City. For example, when Austrian-born neurobiologist Eric Kandel won the Nobel Prize in 2000, he "stuck it to the Austrians" by saying it was certainly not an Austrian Nobel, it was a Jewish-American Nobel. After that, he got a call from then Austrian president Thomas Klestil asking him, "How can we make things right?" Kandel said that first, Doktor-Karl-Lueger-Ring should be renamed. Kandel was offended that the address of the University of Vienna is on that street.^[9]After yearlong debates, the Ring was renamed to Universitätsring in April 2012.^[10] Lueger was the subject of a 1943 biopic Vienna 1910, in which he was played by Rudolf Forster.

References[link]

External links[link]

• Catholic Encyclopedia entry
• Photo of the monument to Karl Lueger in Dr-Karl-Lueger-Platz, Vienna
• Karl Lueger And The Twilight Of Imperial Vienna
• Pressure group to transform the Karl Lueger statue into a monument against anti-Semitism and racism in Austria

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Karl Lueger

Elise Richter.

Elise Richter (2 March 1865 – 23 June 1943) was a philologist. Born in Vienna to a middle-class Jewish family, the daughter of Dr. Maximilian (died 1891) and Emelie Richter (d. 1889), sister of Helene Richter who wrote on and translated English literature and drama, she studied Philosophy at the University of Vienna and received a Doctorate in 1901.

In 1905 she was the first woman to receive the Habilitation for her work on Romance languages. She became the first female Dozent (or assistant professor) in 1907, and was appointed an "Extra-Ordinary Professor" in 1921, although she never received an Ordinary Professorship. From 1920 she chaired the Association of Austrian Academic Women (Verband der Akademikerinnen Österreichs).

After the Anschluss, and the introduction of Nazi anti-semitic policies in Austria, which excluded people of Jewish origin from public life, Richter was dismissed from her post. Along with her sister Helene, who lived with her, she was deported to the Theresienstadt concentration camp on 9 October 1942. She died there on 23 June 1943.

The Elise Richter Program of the Austrian Science Fund (FWF), which provides support for women studying towards a career as a professor, is named in her honour.

External links[link]

• Biography (Ariadne Project] of the Österreichische Nationalbibliothek) (German)
• Elise Richter Program at the University of Vienna

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