Israëlitische Kultusgemeinde Wien

Official recognition of the Israëlitische Kultusgemeinde Wien (Jewish religious community of Vienna) dates from 1852, when its provisory statutes were approved. Vienna had been one of the centres of the Haskalah movement. Its intellectuals were at the avant-garde of the 1848 revolution, and it would also become one of the first centres of Zionism. By 1923 it was the third largest Jewish community in Europe, counting ca. 200,000 souls. Apart from religious institutions and facilities, many educational, cultural and social organisations were associated with the IKG Wien – several seminaries, schools, the first Jewish museum (°1896), Jewish sport clubs etc. After the Anschluss and the introduction of anti-Semitic legislation, the Jewish community would be gradually more and more isolated, its organisations dissolved and its assets confiscated. From May 1938 onwards, the IKG Wien organised the emigration of thousands of Viennese Jews. In 1942 the IKG Wien was abolished and replaced by the Ältestenrat der Juden in Wien (Council of Elders of the Jews in Vienna). Reconstruction of the devastated community, re-established shortly after the war, was complicated due to various difficulties including financial issues and the unwillingness of many survivors to return to Vienna. The IKG Wien remained a dynamic but fairly small community, counting ca. 7000 members by the end of the 1990s as opposed to over 185,000 in 1938. Since the closing decades of the 20th century there have been new signs of life such as the inauguration of new synagogues and Schulen, a new Jewish centre, and the return of a small Sephardic community.