Benno or Beno Straucher (August 11, 1854 – 1940) was a Bukovina-born Austro–Hungarian lawyer, politician and Jewish community representative, who spent the final part of his career in Romania. A Jewish nationalist influenced by classical liberalism and Zionism, he first held political offices in Czernowitz city. After 1897, he was one of the noted Jewish representatives in the Austrian Parliament's Abgeordnetenhaus. Straucher, who was instrumental in creating the reformist Progressive Peasants' Fellowship, maintained his Abgeordnetenhaus seat throughout the remainder of Austria–Hungary's existence. From 1906, he led the Jewish National People's Party locally and helped establish the pan-Austrian Jewish National Party. He vied for political direction over the Bukovina Jews with several other groups, most notably the Zionist People's Council Party of Mayer Ebner, who became his personal rival.
Straucher supported maintaining tight connections between Jews and Bukovina Germans while endorsing a personal version of Jewish autonomism, and was a Habsburg loyalist during World War I. Upon the region's incorporation into Greater Romania, he began cooperating with the larger Union of Romanian Jews. Forming successive alliances with the People's Party and the National Liberal Party, he also served two non-consecutive terms in the Romanian Chamber of Deputies. Despite such moves, and although he endorsed a version of Jewish assimilation, Straucher made himself known as a strong critic of Romanianization measures.
Born in the village of Rohozna near Sadhora (later incorporated into Czernowitz, now in Ukraine), Straucher was a student of law, a graduate of Vienna University[1] and a practicing attorney.[2] He made himself known for supporting social policies, becoming a leader of the local Kehilla in 1882 and a deputy to the Czernowitz local council (Stadtrat or Gemeinderat).[1] He subsequently became involved in Jewish nationalist circles, and, as such, intensely campaigned for the Austrian authorities to recognize a separate Jewish community in Bukovina, as part of a process to grant all ethnic groups proportional representation.[3] Their request was supported by Yulian Romanchuk, a representative of the Ruthenians (Ukrainians) in Galicia (the Kingdom of Galicia and Lodomeria), whose participation in the move followed a tradition of collaboration between Ukrainian and Jewish activists.[4] Straucher also tightened his contacts with the region's large ethnic Romanian community: as early as 1883, he spoke at a cultural meeting of the local Junimea society, offering his praise to the Romanian Orthodox clergy.[5]
In 1897, Straucher became a member of the Abgeordnetenhaus, which represented Bukovina as part of Cisleithania.[6] He was subsequently one of four deputies for the early Jewish National Party to be elected that year, alongside Heinrich Gabel, Arthur Mahler and Adolf Stand (all of whom were elected in Galicia).[7] American historian Joshua Shanes, who researched the political climate at the time of the election, noted that the result was "not so grand", since the list had also endorsed 19 other candidates throughout Cisleithania.[8] Straucher, who was reelected with a large margin during the next suffrage,[8] kept this office for the following decades, throughout World War I and down the end of the Habsburg Monarchy. As parliamentarian, he did not rally with organized factions, but was briefly member of a "Jewish Club", formed by representatives in Vienna.[9] After 1903, he was confirmed as president of the Czernowitz Kultusgemeinde (the Kehilla's representative body),[10] and the following year came to preside over the Czernowitz city council, where his followers controlled 20 out of 50 seats (giving him a decisive say in the election of a Czernowitz mayor).[1]
As a representative of the Jewish community in urban Bukovina, Straucher stood for the political and economic regional elite: at the time, the Jewish community was much represented among investors in the city's industry and, according to his own estimate, provided some 75% of the tax income in Czernowitz and almost 50% in all of Bukovina.[11] In this context, Straucher represented the movement identifying itself with German-speaking Europe and Austro–German liberalism, favoring secularism and the preservation of rule from Vienna.[12] One of statements called Bukovina Jews "followers of the gigantic German culture".[13] According to historians Michael John and Albert Lichtblau: "Since [...] there was no traditionally established, non-German elite to speak of in Bukovina and the hegemonial powers of German-Austrian domination in the areas of education and administration still played a leading role, the Jews of Bukovina oriented themselves in this direction. The positions of power of the two large national groups, the Romanians and the Ruthenians, were still too weak to cause a shift in this orientation on the part of the Jews. In their situation as a people living in a Diaspora, the Jews were forced to rely on the protection of the hegemonial powers and this seemed, as before, to emanate from Vienna."[14]
However, according to historian William O. McCagg, the "inimitable character" Straucher made a point of opposing Jewish assimilation, and was elected on this platform, while also speaking out against all forms of Zionism and suggesting that the Jewish destiny was linked to Central Europe.[15] McCagg refers this agenda as being addressed to "the 'little man' who was overlooked by the elegant elders of the Jewish community"—an outlook he also attributes to the Galician supporters of Jewish autonomism, as well as to the Transleithanian Vilmos Vázsonyi.[16] He also believes that Straucher's role was similar to that of assimilationist Josef Samuel Bloch (editor of the Oesterreichische Wochenschrift), who believed that Jews were supposed to prove themselves modern Austrian citizens.[17]
According to Lichtblau and John, Straucher initially stood for "an unusual mixture of German Liberalism and Jewish Nationalism—a sort of half-hearted Zionism."[2] By the 1890s, the Jewish leader, whom Lichtblau and John designate "the most important political representative of the Jews of Bukovina", decided to end cooperation between local Jews and ethnic Germans, and concentrated on advancing the interests of his community—a gesture which broke with the tradition of Jewish politicians such as Josef Fechner representing a common German-Jewish vote.[2]
A significant part of Benno Straucher's pre-1918 political activity was dedicated to combating antisemitism: himself exposed to antisemitic allegations voiced by his colleagues in parliament, Straucher was among those who dismissed blood libel claims made during the Hilsner Affair of 1899.[18] According to Lichtblau and John, the rise of antisemitism among Austrian German communities was a contributing factor to the rift between German and Jewish liberalism in Bukovina: "Naturally, those secular Jews—whose acculturation had been a modern one, for whom religion and tradition retained little significance and for whom German [culture] had assumed almost mythological stature as a substitute for the traditional culture they had given up—were shocked by the rise of German Nationalist anti-Semitism in the western provinces of the Monarchy, since it endangered their perspective of their own identity."[18] The first tensions between the two communities had occurred in the early 1890s, when Bukovina German students began organizing themselves into bodies which promoted a Christian identity and religious antisemitism, and took on a political character during 1897, when the Society of Christian Germans in Bukovina was founded (being soon after joined by parliamentarians Arthur Skedl and Michael Kipper).[19] In reaction, young Jewish activists such as Mayer Ebner embraced Zionism.[20] Their group was subsequently divided between supporting immediate Aliyah or investing their energies into a local political movement.[21] In this context, Ebner reluctantly endorsed Straucher, and, in 1904, founded with him a pan-nationalist group called Jüdischer Volksverein ("Jewish People's Union").[22]
Lichtblau and John illustrate the split between the German and Jewish communities with a sample from one of Straucher's parliamentary speeches, which reads: "Why [...] are the Germans engaged in an economic and political war against the Jews? I as well have been raised and educated only as a German. Why am I inferior? [...] [In stating we are Jews and not Germans,] we are drawing the obvious conclusion! And nevertheless we remain friends of the German people because we are admirers of the prodigious German culture. We as a people want to be loyal friends of the German people and of other peoples, if and to the extent that they acknowledge our equal rights and equal worth!"[18] Straucher also reacted against the claims of Viennese politicians that Bukovina was destitute and "semi-asiatic", deeming them "most unfair".[23] His other statements of the time evidence Austrian patriotism and loyalism toward Hasburg Emperor Franz Joseph.[24]
According to McCagg, his was by then "a vaguely Zionist platform".[25] Other academics agree: Jess Olson describes Straucher as "the Zionist Reichsabgeordneter [Member of Parliament]";[26] Emanuel S. Goldmith calls him "the only nationally inclined Jewish representative" in the Viennese Parliament.[27]
In 1903, he had established personal ties with members of Bukovina's other main communities, the Romanian Aurel Onciul and the Ukrainian Nikolai von Wassilko, with whom he set up the Freisinnige Verband ("Freethinkers' Alliance", as in Germany's Freisinnige Partei), a group noted for condemning the spread of antisemitism.[1][28] The unifying idea of the Verband was electoral reform, that is the attempt to reduce the number of seats allocated to boyars and reallocate them based on a system designed by Straucher; all nationalities involved agreed to follow their own agendas to greater emancipation.[29] More likely to interpret political events as evidence of class conflict rather than national emancipation, it notably reacted against the regional conservative groups (who generally sought to slow down the devolution of Bukovina) and the newly-founded Romanian National People's Party (PPNR) of boyar Iancu Flondor (whose platform was linked to the Romanian national revival).[28][30]
Onciul, who was convinced that reform was in the benefit of Romanians, negotiated with Flondor, hoping to create unified district committees for the Romanian factions, and even a "Unitary Romanian Party".[31] The divergence between the Freisinnigen Verband and Flondor escalated when the latter used his position in the Diet of Bukovina to reject Straucher's proposal for electoral reform, and peaked when the democrats accused Flondor of supporting antisemitism, based on speculation that he had been the author of virulent unsigned pieces published by the Bukowinaer Journal.[28][32] The matter was investigated by a special Diet commission, who found in favor of Flondor, reportedly evidencing that the newspaper's editor, Max Reiner, had been paid 1,000 Kronen to incriminate the PPNR leader.[28][33] The attempt to defame Flondor, attributed by some to Onciul and Straucher's frustration over Flondor "anti-democratic" stance, became known locally as Die Flondor Affair ("The Flondor Affair").[34] Reportedly, Straucher was personally involved, speaking in Diet against Flondor and his family, accusing him of having intrigued against PPNR co-founder Gheorghe Popovici.[35]
For a while, Benno Straucher was involved with a new union formed by the 1903 "Freethinkers", which was to facilitate the adoption of radical reforms. Called Progressive Peasants' Fellowship, it was presided by him and Onciul, together with Skedl, Georg Graf Wassilko von Serecki and "Young Ukrainian" Stepan Smal-Stotskyi, taking the majority vote in 1904 elections for the Diet (when Georg Wassilko became Landeshauptmann).[36]
In 1906, Straucher and lawyer-activist Max Diamant together created Bukovina's Jewish National People's Party.[37] At an imperial level, he joined up with Austrian Zionists to set up a new Jewish National Party, which adopted the "work in the present" ideology of Ze'ev Jabotinsky, that is the focus on autonomy for the more sizable Jewish communities of East-Central Europe.[27] Some of his efforts were dedicated to building the Kehilla-run Jewish House of Culture, a major Art Nouveau palace, decorated with his bust.[38] In parallel, allegations about "Jewish" corruption in the Czernowitz local council, targeting Straucher's leadership, resulted in ethnic tensions. During autumn 1910, after the accuser, engineer Woitechowski, was called to order by Straucher, the city's Christians organized vigils and strikes.[39]
By that moment, Straucher's option in favor of Jewish secularism and modernization possibly implied his reevaluation of Yiddish as a national Jewish language.[40] Reportedly, his advocacy of both autonomy and Yiddishist identity was largely shaped by the Folkist ideology of Jewish groups in the Russian Empire.[41] The Yiddishist view, which placed him among the first Jewish intellectuals to identify with what had been hitherto viewed as a regional dialect of German (reportedly, Straucher himself had earlier designated Yiddish as merely a "jargon"),[42] brought him into conflict with Jewish traditionalists, who supported instead a Hebrew revival.[43] However, Straucher did not support education in Yiddish, and favored German-language schools, for which he demanded special Jewish inspectors and teachers.[44]
Notably, Straucher received support from scholar Nathan Birnbaum, who spoke in his favor at Jewish National Party caucuses during the 1907 Austrian elections.[45] Together with Diamant and Birnbaum, Straucher organized the first Conference for the Yiddish Language, held in Czernowitz between August 31 and September 3, 1908.[46] The initial demand was for the proceedings to be held at the Jewish House, but the Conference was ultimately hosted by a similar institution of the local Ukrainians and the local Music Society. The reason for this failure is disputed: some attribute it to opposition from the "Hebraist" adversaries,[47] others suggest that Straucher was in reality unconvinced about the Conference platform, sabotaging his own Yiddishist campaign.[48]
Largely as a result of political restructuring at a provincial level, the Austrian authorities granted the "Bukovina Settlement" in stages between 1909 and 1911. This followed an agreement between the three ethnic groups: the Romanians (represented by Onciul and Alexandru Hurmuzaki), the Ukrainians (Georg Wassilko) and the Jews (Straucher himself), who subsequently negotiated the matter with Oktavian von Bleyleben, Bukovina's Landespräsident.[49] Cultural historians Amy Colin and Peter Rychlo view it as "one of the most progressive accords between ethnic groups in the Austro-Hungarian Empire", and argue: "Growing ethnic tensions necessitated such a treaty to protect peace in Bukovina by insuring ethnic autonomy in political decisions [...]. The fruitful cooperation [...] proved that peaceful ethnic interaction was still possible [in Bukovina] five years before the outbreak of World War I."[50] The agreement provided for a highly complex electoral reform which provided proportional representation to Bukovinan ethnic groups within the local Diet, but, in accordance with the wishes of mainstream Jews and in an effort to combat antisemitic agitation, did not generally award separate recognition to Jews (apart from a few separate electoral districts, they were included in the same group as Germans).[51] Lichtblau and John argue that, through this measure, the Austrian monarchy marked "the final demarcation point [...] which linked together the Jews of Bukovina and the Germans."[52]
The failure to acknowledge Jews a separate group disappointed the Jewish National People's Party leadership, and caused Straucher to produce a number of official letters of protest.[53] The 1911 elections consecrated a split between Straucher's group. and Zionists such as Ebner. They accused Straucher of having set up a dictatorship and of having failed to obtain Jewish representation,[54] and moved on to create the separate People's Council Party. Together, the two competing parties won 10 seats, one more than secretly predicted by the Bienerth-Schmerling cabinet in Vienna.[52] At the time, Straucher's liberal group was also competing with the regional Bundistn and sympathizers of the Poale Zion movement, who supported Jewish autonomism within a socialist framework.[55]
The Kultusgemeinde became his prime basis of support for maintaining his parliamentary seat, and, after the 1911 elections (during which he faced no opposition from Ebner's group),[54] he was the only one among the four of his fellow candidates in the 1907 suffrage to maintain his seat.[56] Of the latter, Arthur Mahler left the Jewish nationalist movement and returned to his career as an art historian.[57]
During World War I, Straucher supported Austria–Hungary's commitment to the Central Powers. Before Bukovina was turned into a battleground (see Brusilov Offensive) he, like other Jewish leaders, expressed hopes that Eastern Front victories against the Russian Empire would signify the effective emancipation of Russian Jews, as well as the end for a threat on Europe's safety.[58] Soon afterward, he participated in a large political debate regarding the creation of a central democratic institution for Austria–Hungary, which was intended as a replica of the American Jewish Congress, a test of Jewish autonomy and an instrument in combating antisemitism.[59] Speaking in 1916, he offered his full support to the initiative, and argued in favor of replacing the various other representative bodies, but the move was opposed by the non-Zionist lobby (who preferred a Kehilla-based structure of shtadlanim).[60]
Straucher subsequently used the Abgeordnetenhaus tribune for condemning the antisemitic violence linked with the various political changes. In spring 1918, soon after Austria signed the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk with the Ukrainian People's Republic, granting it territories claimed by Poles, he expressed alarm that Polish nationalists were attributing the events to the Jews, organizing pogroms and planning their eviction from Galicia.[61] Straucher, like fellow Jewish nationalists Hermann Kadisch and Robert Stricker, continued to express his support for Habsburg ruler Charles I throughout those years but. Nevertheless, according to social historian Marsha L. Rozenblit, their views on the matter were by then contrasting with those of their Jewish partners in the Czech lands (a group formed around Selbstwehr journal, and more mindful of the local independence movement).[62] In a statement of 1917, the Bukovina delegate claimed Jews were "an upholding element [standing] unconditionally and without reservations for Austria."[63] He was however also demanding autonomy within a new democratic Austria, in terms which Rozenblit finds similar with those proposed by both mainstream Zionists and the Galician Poale Zion.[64]
Straucher was still at the Abgeordnetenhaus during late autumn 1918, as the monarchy was collapsing. On October 4, shortly before German Austria emerged as a rump state, he was among the regional delegates to Vienna who voted in favor of keeping Bukovina in union with the central government.[65] At home, the situation was degenerating, as Romanians openly demanded incorporation into the Romanian Kingdom and Ukrainians opted for the Ukrainian People's Republic. These tensions flared into riots, quelled when the Romanian Army entered the region and brought into Romania (a union internationally sanctioned by the 1919 Treaty of Saint-Germain-en-Laye).[66]
In this context, Straucher joined Ebner and the socialist Iacob Pistiner in founding the National Jewish Council, which stood for the defense of community rights.[67] The new group's program was generally suspicious of union with Romania, where Jewish emancipation had not yet been enacted, and looked into other political alternatives—for this reason, it was placed under close supervision by the new authorities.[68] The Council clashed with Ion Nistor's nationalist Romanian group, the Democratic Union Party, which, using antisemitic language, spoke about a Jewish danger to the Romanian cause.[69] At the time, other segments of Bukovina's Jewish community began criticizing Straucher for his settlements with Wassilko's Ukrainians, allegedly to the detriment of his own coreligionists.[70]
Shortly after the creation of Greater Romania, the Council boycotted the 1919 general election, thus refusing to send its representatives into the Parliament of Romania. Ebner voiced the mistrust of his coreligionists for the Romanian electoral law, arguing that it was meant to dilute the Jewish vote in that region.[71] This decision was contested by businessman Jakob Hecht, who stood as a Jewish candidate on the same platform as Nistor.[72] Hecht's statements, which gave recognition to an unconditional union, were received with consternation by other Jewish activists, who called him a "traitor".[73] By 1923 however, the entire community leadership had come to accept Romania's rule over the region, and Ebner even claimed that there was never any opposition on its part.[69]
In later years, Benno Straucher stood for a platform advocating the preservation of Jewish rights in Bukovina and throughout the Jewish-Romanian community. In the early 1920s, he and his followers began a close cooperation with Wilhelm Filderman's nation-wide Union of Romanian Jews (UER).[74] The UER nevertheless failed in rallying to its cause the other representatives of Jewish nationalism, such as the Zionists following Straucher's old rival Ebner. The UER initially supported the People's Party of Alexandru Averescu (despite signs that the group was sympathetic of antisemitic causes).[75] Standing in for the deceased Hecht, Straucher and Ebner became the Jewish Council bids for the 1920 election, with additional support from the German Council; Straucher ran in the "Cernăuţi-city" circumscription, for both Chamber and Senate.[76] At the time, those Jewish voters who did not agree with such maneuvers rallied behind Friedrich Billig, founder of a Jewish Democratic Party.[76] Straucher was the only one elected to the Chamber, effectively on Averescu's ticket.[77]
The entire UER eventually threw its support behind the National Liberal Party: in the 1922 suffrage, alongside Nistor, former leader of the Democratic Union Party, Straucher endorsed the National Liberal platform for Bukovina.[78] In contrast, Ebner's Zionist faction had entered an alliance with Averescu, and, in the 1926 suffrage, the move got Ebner elected to the Chamber.[79] Straucher too was elected after running against Ebner's colleagues (Karl Klüger, Henric Streitman), a second term which marked his split with the Bukovina Zionists.[80] Straucher, who did not present himself for the 1926 vote,[81] was reelected in the 1927 vote. He had extended his agreement with the National Liberals and, remarkably, ran against a bloc of minorities formed nationally around the Magyar Party, the German Party and Zionist organizations.[82] Ebner, also reconfirmed as deputy, subsequently rallied with the National Peasants' Party.[83] Opposing all alliance with the UER, he formed a Jewish parliamentary club of non-UER Jewish nationalist representatives, and defined Filderman's policy of alliances with groups suspect of antisemitism as immoral.[84] In the 1928 election, having again obtained Nistor's support, Straucher again took his parliamentary seat.[85] With support from the National Liberals, he became a Senate candidate in the 1932 suffrage, but did not receive the vote.[86]
Taking precautions against the Ebner's goal of propagating Zionism through Jewish day schools, Straucher gave his approval to the teaching of Romanian language classes, and therefore to a measure of assimilation, while preventing Zionists from reforming the curriculum.[87] In this context, he made himself known for protesting the Romanianization policies promoted by the governments in Bucharest, in particular in the educational field. During the mid 1920s, he was in correspondence with National Liberal leader Ion I. C. Brătianu and Filderman, documenting cases in which Bukovinan schools had been "purged" of Jewish teachers and administrators were being dismissed, pensioned or demoted by the Ministry of Education, as well as the state-condoned underfunding of state-run Jewish schools.[88] He contrasted these incidence with the traditional status of Jews in Czernowitz (then designated as Cernăuţi), whom, he assessed, formed 50% of the city's population and 90% of its taxpayers.[89] At the time, the authorities had restructured the secondary education institutions into five high schools, divided by ethnicity, and Straucher's writings attest a significant reduction in attendance numbers for the Jewish Lycée No. 3.[90] Jewish parents were then opting in favor of sending their children to privately run day schools.[91]
According to McCagg, Benno Straucher's last years were spent in a dispute with younger Yiddishist activists "who felt that one could only get through to the Jewish masses by using Yiddish."[25] The aging politician died in 1940, one year after the outbreak of World War II.[92]