Talk:List of Austrian Jews

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Please be careful in using the previous version, as it was riddled with errors (with both non-Jews and non-Austrians). I hope the new version is a significant improvement. -Udzu 21:53, 28 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Is this a JOKE? I read

This list is incomplete; you can help by expanding it.

, I add a couple of names, and a few hours later they are deleted again, but it still says

This list is incomplete; you can help by expanding it.

? <KF> 23:14, 28 Jul 2004 (UTC)

You'll need to ask Udzu why he/she deleted your entries. Rick K 23:20, Jul 28, 2004 (UTC)

Erm ... I thought that's what I've just done (see above). <KF> 23:22, 28 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Very nice. Now {{listdev}} has been removed, which makes me look like a complete idiot who has no argument whatsoever. And what does that mean now? That the list is already complete?

Instead of moving nonsensical templates across articles and removing {{listdev}}s, could we focus on the essential things, for example the content? <KF> 23:35, 28 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Your personal attacks are unacceptable and unwarranted and do not deserve a response. I suggest you take a deep breath and learn how to deal with other editors in a more collegial manner. Rick K 19:00, Jul 29, 2004 (UTC)

First, apologies to <KF>. The previous version of the page was a mess - no introduction, most links didn't have write-ups, some links were in German, some of the people listed weren't Jewish, and some weren't even Austrian. So I cleaned it up (heavily) and added some new names, as part of the List of Jews by country series. Unfortunately I did this offline and forgot to check recent changes when I commited. I've now re-added Spiegl and Askin. I don't think Frederic Morton is prominent enough to go on a partial list like this, and is better placed at List of Jews, but feel free to add him if you want. (Also, RicK: I've put the template back at the top - it's part of the point of the series and is useless at the bottom - and put back the listdev.) Hope that all made sense - if not, please ask. -Udzu

People will probably have different opinions on whether someone like Teddy Kollek should be included in a list of Austrian Jews: He was born in Austria and spent the first 24 years of his life there but has been living in Israel since 1935. Leon Askin has returned to his native Vienna, so there seems to be no doubt about his name being included.

The problem obviously is that both criteria -- being Jewish and being Austrian -- are vague: It's not just that someone may have done their fair share of globetrotting and living abroad. After the end of the First World War, Austria itself was reduced to a small percentage of its former size (see the ancient discussion about Gregor Mendel on the Hyncice talk page). And of course someone can be half (or three quarter, or whatever) Jewish. (But should we really mention that? Sounds as if we were stressing the fact that they are also half Aryan.)

As both criteria for inclusion versus exclusion are vague, you can be "generous" (see List of Austrians) or restrictive. This is why I've added List of Austrian Jews to Wikipedia:Pages needing attention -- if more people get involved we might achieve a more satisfying result.

As far as the genesis of this page is concerned, some anonymous users seem to have put a lot of time and effort into compiling the old (inadequate?) list. They have even linked to Wikipedias in other languages or to external sources, obviously for future reference. Fortunately, the old version can easily be retrieved through the edit history, and hopefully a collaborative effort will materialise and someone will carefully check those old entries. <KF> 00:52, 29 Jul 2004 (UTC)

You're right - both criteria are vague. This is of course true for all similar lists of people by ethnicity/nationality or religion: see for example the recent discussion on List of Belgians. Generally, all such lists tend to be fairly specific on the minor criteria and more generous on the major ones. Hence this page doesn't include Kafka (since he's never refered to as an Austrian writer, even if he's not simlpy a Czech writer), but List of Austrians does. Similarly, this list contains people of partial Jewish ethnicity (within limits). (The case for marking out those cases is that many of those people, though influenced by the Jewish part of their ethnicity, may have also been just as influenced by the non-Jewish one; I agree however that phrases like '3/4 Jewish' sound bad, and I've removed those).

Regarding the old page: as you say, it's still there for reference, and has already been very useful. However, the links to German Wikipedia really shouldn't have been part of the article (though a link to a German copy of the list is clearly good). Off the top of my head, a couple of the prominent people listed who weren't Jewish include: Alban Berg, Christian Doppler, Lotte Lehmann and Lotte Lenya. -Udzu 08:44, 29 Jul 2004 (UTC)

One second thoughts, I also agree that I was too rash in replacing the old page. Basically, I panicked when I saw names like Hermann Bahr (catholic) and Elias Canetti (Bulgarian), and reasoned that any page is better than a wrong page. I still think the new page is/will be an improvement, and I will continue to verify, categorise and re-add names from the old list. (Note that the new list also has a significant number of original entries.) -Udzu 09:14, 29 Jul 2004 (UTC)

1 A few more mistakes
2 Thomas Morgenstern
3 Otto Robert Frisch and Ludwig Wittgenstein
4 Removed people
5 In the List?
6 Jewish Encyclopedia articles

[edit] A few more mistakes

Me again :-) To give people a better idea here's a few of the more prominent mistakes on the old list:

Not Jewish: Alban Berg, Christian Doppler, Lotte Lehmann, Lotte Lenya, Hermann Bahr
Barely Jewish: Ernest Gold (1/4 jewish), Richard Tauber (1/4 Jewish)
Probably not Jewish: Karl Renner, Peter Drucker, Friedrich Gulda, Elfriede Jelinek, Joseph Schumpeter
People I wouldn't describe as Austrian:
- Bulgarian: Elias Canetti
- Czech: Max Brod, Franz Werfel, Edmund Husserl (Czech/Germans but not Austrian)
- German: Oskar Morgenstern, Bruno Walter, Stefan Wolpe, Carl Flesch
- Hungarian: Emmerich Kálmán, George Szell, Carl Flesch (also German)
- Romanian: Paul Celan (also French)
- Russian: Anton Rubinstein

(Corrections welcome). -Udzu 11:24, 29 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Doesn't this depend on the definition of Austrian? You could argue that before 1919, many people throughout the Austro-Hungarian Empire would regard themselves as Austrian. This might be particularly true in cosmopolitan middle-class circles, and most prominent jews would probably be in that category. RachelBrown 14:56, 8 Jun 2005 (UTC)

I deleted listdev because it said the list wasn't complete. NO Wikipedia article is ever complete. That template seems pretty useless, IMHO. Rick K 18:58, Jul 29, 2004 (UTC)

Umm, the List of US Presidents and the List of Nobel Prize winners are complete. I think the point of listdev is to mark a list that is not a stub, but could still do with more input. I think that's appropriate in this instance (though I agree that it gets overused in general). -Udzu 19:36, 29 Jul 2004 (UTC)

I restored former version. See List of Austrian Jews (alphabetical order). You can edit it. User:211.128.71.202

[edit] Thomas Morgenstern

Is he Jewish? de:Thomas Morgenstern

Most probably not. Successful Jewish winter athletes are rare enough to be noteworthy, and post-war Austrian Jewish athletes are almost unheard of – yet there doesn't seem to be anything online in English or German. Still, the surname is commonly Ashkenazic, so maybe there's some remote ancestry? I think it's best to leave this until someone finds better evidence either way. Juko 23:06, 28 Feb 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Otto Robert Frisch and Ludwig Wittgenstein

The extent of his Frisch's Judaism is unknown. I have added an "unconfirmed." Wittgenstein had a Jewish paternal grandfather. Whether or not his parternal grandmother was Jewish is unknown.

There are countless sources that state Frisch is Jewish ([1], [2], [3], etc.), and that Wittgenstein had a fully Jewish father and half-Jewish mother ([4]]

Wittgenstein's father was Jewish but only through his Jewish paternal grandfather, and that his mother even had Jewish ancestry is highly disputable. Also, I stated before that Frisch's EXTENT of Judaism is unknown, not that he didn't identify with it. I don't think it seems fair to include them as full Jews, if there are good chances they are not.