When Karl Lueger was elected Mayor of Vienna in 1895, Vienna at the time being the second most Jewish city in the world, like New York is today, his antisemitism felt modern, even progressive. Ideas of race, nationality, and science dominated enlightened discourse in coffee shops and opinion pieces. The new hatred of Jews therefore felt detached from the hatred of old. Although Lueger was a Catholic, his antisemitism appealed to the rational and educated, people who had discarded Christianity and its traditional modes of bigotry, and were looking to the future.
Lueger promised, throughout his campaign, that he had no problem with certain Jews. There were some Jews he liked, some Jews he would allow into his office, some Jews whose security he would ensure if elected. This led swaths of Jews in Vienna into supporting Lueger’s candidacy, as they believed the behavior of the other Jews — the bankers, the communists, the religious, were endangering their place in society. When asked to explain how Jews could support him despite his incendiary rhetoric, Lueger famously replied:
“I decide who is a Jew.”
Leuger made clear, however, and it was a centerpiece of his campaign, that there were other Jews who were not worthy of protection, as they were the embodiment of everything evil, corrupt, and regressive in the empire.
One young man living in Vienna at the time was especially inspired by Lueger’s rhetoric and was thrilled by his level of support. This man would grow up to annihilate European Jewry forty years later — leaving the continent, and its iconic Jewish cities, shells of what they once were.