c. 2007 Religion News Service

(UNDATED) Vienna is always associated with frothy Strauss waltzes and excellent chocolates.

But Austria’s capital also has a darker side: a history of anti-Semitism that was especially virulent in 1897, when Karl Lueger, running on an openly anti-Semitic platform, became Vienna’s mayor. It was a post he held until his death 13 years later, and scholars believe Lueger’s anti-Jewish policies influenced young Adolf Hitler, who moved to Vienna in 1907.

Two remarkably gifted Viennese Jews of the same period _ Gustav Mahler, the famous composer and conductor, and Theodor Herzl, the founder of modern Zionism _ responded to the venomous hatred of Jews and Judaism in highly different ways.

Mahler and Herzl were born in the same year: 1860. And ironically, heart disease claimed both at an early age; Mahler died at age 50 and Herzl at 44.

Today we take it for granted that many Jews including Leonard Bernstein, James Levine, Lorin Maazel, Michael Tilson Thomas, Georg Solti and others serve as conductors of major symphony orchestras without regard to their religion.

But it was not so for Mahler in 1897. He was superbly qualified for the directorship of both the Vienna State Opera and the Vienna Philharmonic, but because he was a Jew, those positions were closed to him.

Mahler described himself as “thrice homeless, as a native of Bohemia in Austria, as an Austrian among Germans, and as a Jew … never welcomed.” He was told the “price” he had to pay to reach his goal: renounce his Jewish heritage and undergo a Roman Catholic baptism.

Mahler paid the “price” and was baptized. Afterward, he told a friend, “I simply changed my coat.” During the last 14 years of his life (some of which were spent in New York City), Mahler never once went to Mass or confession.

Despite his conversion, Mahler was booed by anti-Semitic Viennese audiences and attacked in the press. When the Nazis came to power, Mahler’s music was banned and Vienna’s “Mahlerstrasse” (“Mahler Street”) was renamed.

In 1994 I was involved in the planning of the Vatican concert, hosted by Pope John Paul II, to commemorate the Holocaust. Mahler’s “Kindertotenlieder” (“Songs on the Death of Children”) was suggested for the concert, but Vatican officials rejected the idea, believing it was inappropriate to use a Jewish convert’s music at a Holocaust concert. Instead, Bernstein’s “Chichester Psalms,” sung in the original Hebrew, was chosen.

Like Mahler, Herzl was another sophisticated Austrian Jew who felt the sting of anti-Semitism. In the 1890s, Herzl was the Paris correspondent for a leading Viennese paper. He covered the arrest, trial, public disgrace and imprisonment of a French Jewish army officer, Alfred Dreyfus, who was falsely accused of selling French military secrets to Germany.

Herzl was shattered when he heard French crowds shout “A bas les juifs!” (“Death to the Jews”) as Dreyfus was being humiliated. The Viennese journalist noted in his diary the hostile Parisians did not shout “Death to the traitor!” Instead, it was the chilling anti-Semitic cry.

Herzl concluded that hatred of the Jews was permanently embedded within European society, even in enlightened France. He became disillusioned with the “clamor against the Jews,” and with eerie prescience, he understood there was no future for the Jewish people in Europe. “We shall not be left in peace,” he said.

Herzl’s response to his grim conclusion was a personal breakthrough: neither assimilation nor conversion, but rather “the restoration of the Jewish state,” which had not existed for nearly 2,000 years. “The world needs a Jewish state,” he said, “therefore it will arise.”

In 1897, the year Lueger was elected and Mahler converted, Herzl convened the first Zionist Congress, in Switzerland. The Congress adopted this statement: “Zionism seeks to secure for the Jewish people a publicly recognized, legally secured home in Palestine.”

Fifty years later in 1947, the United Nations General Assembly called for the creation of a Jewish state and an Arab state in British Mandate Palestine. A year later, Israel gained its independence, but an Arab state remains elusive 60 years later.

I first visited Israel in 1967 following the Six Day War. While in Jerusalem, I heard Bernstein and the Israel Philharmonic perform Mahler’s Second Symphony. I think Mahler would have been proud.

(Rabbi Rudin, the American Jewish Committee’s senior interreligious adviser, is the author of the recently published book “The Baptizing of America: The Religious Right’s Plans for the Rest of Us.”)

KRE/PH END RUDIN

775 words

A photo of Rabbi Rudin is available via https://religionnews.com.