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Hakoah Vienna and the International Nature of Interwar Austrian Sports

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 December 2011

William D. Bowman
William D. Bowman
Affiliation:
Gettysburg College
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Extract

Hakoah Vienna was the most important Jewish sports organization in interwar Austria. Indeed, Hakoah, which means strength or power in Hebrew, was one of the most significant sports clubs on the continent of Europe during that period. This article examines the early history of Hakoah, its rise to international fame, and its demise in 1938 at the hands of the Nazis and their sympathizers in Austria.

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Articles
Information
Central European History , Volume 44 , Issue 4 , December 2011 , pp. 642 - 668
Copyright
Copyright © Conference Group for Central European History of the American Historical Association 2011

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References

1 Three of the best secondary works on the history of Hakoah Vienna are Baar, Arthur, 50 Jahre Hakoah, 1909–1959 (Tel Aviv: Verlagskomitee Hakoah, 1959)Google Scholar; Bunzl, John, Hoppauf Hakoah: Jüdischer Sport in Österreich. Von den Anfängen bis in die Gegenwart (Vienna: Junius, 1987)Google Scholar; and Betz, Susanne Helene, Löscher, Monika, and Schölnberger, Pia, eds., “. . . mehr als ein Sportsverein.” 100 Jahre Hakoah Wien 1909–2009 (Innsbruck: Studienverlag, 2009)Google Scholar. There is also a wealth of biographical information on individual members of Hakoah in Körner, Ignaz, Lexikon jüdischer Sportler in Wien, 1900–1938, ed. Patka, Marcus (Vienna: Mandelbaum, 2008)Google Scholar.

2 Betz, Löscher, and Schölnberger, “. . . mehr als ein Sportsverein,” 11. On Nordau and the notion of the muscular Jew in general, see Presner, Todd Samuel, Muscular Judaism: The Jewish Body and the Politics of Regeneration (New York: Routledge, 2007)Google Scholar.

3 On the Jews of Vienna, see Rozenblit, Marsha, The Jews of Vienna, 1867–1914: Assimilation and Identity (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1983)Google Scholar; Berkeley, George, Vienna and its Jews: The Tragedy of Success, 1880s–1980s (Cambridge, MA: Lanham, 1988)Google Scholar; and Beller, Steven, Vienna and the Jews, 1867–1938: A Cultural History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989)Google Scholar.

4 On the history of the Sokol movement, see Zidek, Iveta, SOKOL, der tschechoslowakische Turnverein. Seine Idee, Methode, Organisation und sein geschichtlicher Zusammenhang (Zurich: Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule, 1984)Google Scholar. The Turnverein movement in Germany dates from the early nineteenth century and is usually associated with Friedrich Ludwig Jahn, about whom there is an extensive literature and some controversy, especially in regard to the nationalistic nature of his ideas and their possible connections to National Socialism.

5 On anti-Semitism in Vienna, see Beller, Vienna and the Jews, passim. For example, the Erster Wiener Athletik und Sportklub (EWASK), one of Hakoah's chief sporting rivals in Vienna, was decidedly anti-Semitic in its orientation.

6 Hakoah and EWASK members clashed on several occasions throughout the 1920s and 1930s.

7 An old but interesting account of this process is Gluck, Charles A., Austria from Habsburg to Hitler (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1948)Google Scholar.

8 Interwar Vienna was decidedly a newspaper culture with dozens of daily, weekly, and weekend publications. Some of these newspapers are now available online through the Austrian Newspapers Online (ANNO) project of the Austrian National Library. Even a highbrow liberal newspaper such as the Neue Freie Presse had regular sports reporting by the 1930s. See, for example, its article on football (“Gegen die scharfe Note im Fußballsport”) from the September 1, 1931, edition on page 10. (In this article, football refers to the sport commonly known as soccer in the United States.)

9 Hakoah published at least three separate journals/newsletters about its various sporting activities. In addition to a general publication on Hakoah (Hakoah. Offizielles Organ des Sportklubs Hakoah), there were also newsletters dedicated to the swimming (Nachrichten des Schwimmclub Hakoah) and alpine/mountaineering divisions (Touristik und Wintersport. Offizielles Organ des Touristik und Skiklub Hakoah). As far as I can determine, none of these journals/newsletters exists today in their complete original runs. Some of their numbers can be found in the Austrian National Library, however.

10 Katrin Sippel, “!!Hakoahner, erscheint in Massen!! Feste und kulturelle Aktivitäten beim SC Hakoah Wien,” in “. . . mehr als ein Sportsverein,” ed. Betz, Löscher, and Schölnberger, 241–265.

11 Baar, 50 Jahre Hakoah, 21.

12 Ibid., 22.

13 The relationship of Hakoah to Zionism in the interwar period is complex and deserves a complete study unto itself. On Zionism in general, see Brenner, Michael, Zionism: A Brief History (Princeton, NJ: M. Wiener, 2003)Google Scholar.

14 Austria Wien is one of the oldest and best-known sporting clubs in the country. It remains prominent today.

15 As reported in the popular Austrian boulevard newspaper the Kurier, October 21, 2009, 26. The claim of Jewish functionaries being part of the early history of Rapid Vienna was made by Albert Stern, a Jewish fan of the club. In interwar Vienna, workers' athletic clubs thought of themselves as “amateurs” in a world of professionalizing sports organizations such as Rapid Vienna, Austria, and Hakoah, and therefore historians have assumed that workers' clubs and middle-class clubs did not have that much to do with each other in their foundational years. Moreover, it has often been assumed that as workers' and middle-class clubs grew out of different social backgrounds that there was not much contact between their sponsors, dignitaries, and athletes. This was not always the case.

16 Beller, Vienna and the Jews, 44.

17 On the modern Olympic Games, see Guttmann, Allen, The Olympics, the History of the Modern Games (Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 1992)Google Scholar.

18 Bunzl, Hoppauf Hakoah, 84. Hirschl later gave an interview about his life. The interview was conducted by Gabriele Anderl on June 24, 1988, during a visit by Hirschl to Vienna. A transcript of the interview can be found in the Jewish Museum in Vienna.

19 Bunzl, Hoppauf Hakoah, 86. Not surprisingly, Hirschl later joined the military in Palestine, before emigrating to Australia where he later died.

20 Baar, 50 Jahre Hakoah, 165; and Bunzl, Hoppauf Hakoah, 85.

21 Hirschl's physique greatly exceeded Nordau's notion of muscular Judaism, which was primarily based on medical and health considerations. In addition to being a friend and confidant of Theodor Herzl, Nordau was a physician.

22 See, for example, the Sport-Tagblatt, which reported on the 1932 Olympic Games every day between July 30 and August 14 and carried an article on Hirschl on August 5.

23 The 1936 Olympic Games had been awarded to Berlin at an official meeting of the International Olympic Committee held in Barcelona on April 26, 1932. On the Berlin Olympics, see Large, David Clay, Nazi Games: The Olympics of 1936 (New York: Norton, 2007)Google Scholar; and Bachrach, Susan, The Nazi Olympics: Berlin, 1936 (Boston: Little, Brown, 2000)Google Scholar.

24 One useful overview of Nazi policies toward the Jews can be found in Bergen, Doris, War and Genocide: A Concise History of the Holocaust (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2003)Google Scholar. The literature on the topic is immense and grows each year.

25 Bunzl, Hoppauf Hakoah, 116–120.

26 Ibid., 119.

27 Ibid., 120.

28 The Austrian process of acknowledging crimes and misdeeds during the Nazi era has been slow and sometimes halting. Restitution for property confiscated during the so-called process of Aryanization has only been conducted in the last decade or so, for example. The Historical Commission of the Republic of Austria was established in October 1998 to research and report about the whole complex of “looting of property in the territory of the republic of Austria in the Nazi era and acts of restitution and/or compensation (including economic and social benefits) by the republic of Austria after 1945.” As quoted in the Vienna Web service, www.wien.gv.at.

29 Josef Yekutieli, a Polish Jew, was instrumental in setting up the Maccabiah Games. In recent years, Israeli Arabs have also competed in these games.

30 For an overview of British problems in the Middle East in the 1930s, see Cohen, Michael Joseph and Kolinsky, Martin, eds., Britain and the Middle East in the 1930s: Security Problems, 1935–39 (New York: St. Martin's, 1992)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

31 The year 1932 was finally selected for the first Maccabiah Games because it was the 1,800-year anniversary of the beginning of the Bar Kochba revolt against Roman rule. Bar Kochba was also the name of a famous Jewish sporting club based in Berlin.

32 Theodor Herzl was one of the founding fathers of modern Zionism. See Robertson, Ritchie and Timms, Edward, Theodor Herzl and the Origins of Zionism (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1997)Google Scholar; and Pawel, Ernst, The Labyrinth of Exile: A Life of Theodor Herzl (New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 1989). Quote in Bunzl, Hoppauf Hakoah, 114–15Google Scholar.

33 Bunzl, Hoppauf Hakoah, 114–15. For an example of a report from the first Maccabiah Games in the Sport-Tagblatt, see the March 31, 1932, issue, p. 1, col. 1.

34 Baar, 50 Jahre Hakoah, 117 and 249; and Körner, Lexikon jüdischer Sportler, 193.

35 Baar, 50 Jahre Hakoah, 128.

36 Ibid., 128 and 147–48. Czechoslovakia finished second with 127 points, the United States third with 75 points, followed by eight other nations that sent athletes.

37 See reports and results for various Maccabiah Games held after World War II, beginning in 1950 until 2009, when the last Maccabiah Games were held. Examples of these reports can be found in the Jewish Museum in Vienna or in the Pierre Gildesgame Sports Museum in Ramat Gan, Israel.

38 Baar, 50 Jahre Hakoah, 128–29.

39 In particular, Ramat Gan, a suburb to the east of Tel Aviv, has developed into the international headquarters of worldwide Jewish athletics.

40 Pictures of swimming events in the interwar period would frequently feature the Dianabad in Vienna.

41 Baar, 50 Jahre Hakoah, 102; 106–08; and 108–136, esp. 115, 122, and 131.

42 Ibid., 54–88.

43 Ibid., 69 and 74.

44 On the 1927 Hakoah U.S. tour, see ibid., 76–78.

45 Ibid., 65.

46 Ibid., 66. The game against Westham United remains famous today in Hakoah circles.

47 As quoted in ibid., 68.

48 Arbeiterzeitung, September 1926, as quoted in Bunzl, Hoppauf Hakoah, 83. In the interwar period, workers' sports clubs thought of themselves as preserving the “amateur” nature of sports and often resented the growing professionalization of athletic competitions, which they sometimes associated with clubs such as Hakoah.

49 Baar, 50 Jahre Hakoah, 72.

50 In some cases, local “Hakoah” clubs sprang up after the famous Viennese Hakoah football team had played matches in an area, such as in Bielitz and Troppau in Silesia after an early tour in 1913. See ibid., 56.

51 On the confiscation of club property, see David Forster and Georg Spitaler, “Der geraubte Platz. Der lange Weg zur Restitution der Hakoah Sportstätte im Prater,” in “. . . mehr als ein Sportverein,” ed. Betz, Löscher, and Schölnberger, 207. Efforts to revive the football team in the post-World War II era have not produced much. Presently, the club Hakoah Vienna does not have a football team per se. It does, however, support another Jewish football team, Maccabi Wien, which plays in one of Austria's lower divisions.

52 See various editions of the Sport-Tagblatt from the interwar period, for example.

53 See the various interwar Hakoah publications. For example, Touristik und Wintersport. Offizielles Organ des Touristik und Skiklub Hakoah has an advertisement for a camera appropriate for outdoor use in its January 1929 (no. 31) edition on page 7. There are numerous camera advertisements in the Hakoah publications.

54 Bunzl, Hoppauf Hakoah, 90. On the cult of the body in Weimar Germany, see Kaes, Anton and Jay, Martin, eds., The Weimar Republic Sourcebook (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1994), 673–92.Google Scholar

55 Philipp Wagner, “‘Schejne Körper.’ Jüdische Körper als Brennpunkte antisemitischer Stereotype,” in “. . . mehr als ein Sportsverein,” ed. Betz, Löscher, and Schölnberger, 37–47.

56 Forster and Spitaler, “Der geraubte Platz,” 207.

57 Bernhard Hachleitner, “Bannerträger jüdischer Stärke. Die Wiener Hakoah als Vorbild für hunderte Vereine in aller Welt,” in “. . . mehr als ein Sportsverein,” ed. Betz, Löscher, and Schölnberger, 131–49.

58 The most important club history was clearly Baar's 50 Jahre Hakoah 1909–1959, written for the fiftieth anniversary of the founding of Hakoah Vienna and published in Israel. The most important newsletter was that created by Valentin Rosenfeld and published primarily in London under various titles (Hakoah in Emigration, Hakoah in Liberty, and finally Hakoah News) and sent to former Hakoah members throughout the world.

59 The recent book, “. . . mehr als ein Sportsverein,” edited by Betz, Löscher, and Schölnberger, commissioned for the 100-year anniversary of the club and published in fall 2009, goes some way toward updating the history of Hakoah Vienna by placing it in several contemporary scholarly contexts, such as discussions on gender relations in sports. Much remains to be researched and written about this important Jewish sports organization, however.

60 See Hirschl, Interview, transcript, Jewish Museum of Vienna.

61 Körner and Baar also became some of the first historians of the club. Körner's index of Vienna's Jewish athletes, which featured numerous Hakoah members, was later found in the archives of Ramat Gan by Marcus Patka of the Jewish Museum in Vienna, who published it as Lexikon jüdischer Sportler in Wien, 1900–1938. Although Körner's text has errors and inconsistencies in it (he was often working from memory and without the aid of documents that had been destroyed after the Anschluss and during the war), it is still an invaluable source not only for the history of Hakoah but of sports in interwar Vienna in general. Baar would later publish the fifty-year anniversary text on Hakoah (50 Jahre Hakoah, 1909–1959). Baar's work, which often celebrates the exploits of Hakoah's athletes and creates a heroic aura around them, is still an indispensable book for understanding the activities and international range of the club in the 1920s and 1930s. Like most published texts on Hakoah, it also contains a wealth of photographs from the period, which themselves are a useful way to understand the athletes' and club's ideas about a range of issues, including self-presentation and their beliefs about the virtues of physical exercise and the development of the body.

62 See Oxaal, Ivar, Pollak, Michael, and Botz, Gerhard, eds., Jews, Anti-Semitism, and Culture in Vienna (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1987)Google Scholar.

63 See the numerous biographical sketches found in the margins of the pages in Baar, 50 Jahre Hakoah, 143–282.

64 Karen Propp, “The Danube Maidens: Hakoah Vienna Girls' Swim Team in the 1920s and 1930s,” in “. . . mehr als ein Sportsverein,” ed. Betz, Löscher, and Schölnberger, 81–93.

65 Körner, Lexikon jüdischer Sportler, 180.

66 Ibid., 28.

67 Ibid., 129; and New York Times, June 6, 1996Google Scholar, “Obituary: Ruth Langer Lawrence” (accessed online on July 27, 2010). In England, Langer met and married John Lawrence, with whom she had a son and a daughter.

68 Bunzl, Hoppauf Hakoah, 120.

69 Ibid., 121. The Pierre Gildesgame Maccabi Sports Museum is located in Ramat Gan, Israel. Hugo Meisl was also an interesting study in the international dimensions of interwar sports and politics. As a journalist, he had helped to popularize the “modern” game of football by emphasizing the virtues of movement and short passing over rigid play in his reporting. Before the war, he worked primarily for a German newspaper, the Vossische Zeitung. After the war, Meisl wrote a book, Soccer Revolution (London: Phoenix Books, 1955)Google Scholar, on his philosophy of the game.

70 Bunzl, Hoppauf Hakoah, 121.

71 Ibid., 121.

72 Ibid., 121. Goldner was also one of the coaches of the Australian Olympic team in 1956.

73 Baar, 50 Jahre Hakoah, 158–59.

74 Körner, Lexikon jüdischer Sportler, 31–2 and 183–4; Baar, 50 Jahre Hakoah, 169; and Bunzl, Hoppauf Hakoah, 135–36. There is a photograph, well known in Hakoah circles, that shows Scheuer and Donenfeld together in Marseille during the war. See Bunzl, Hoppauf Hakoah, 136.

75 Most of the historical documentation on Hakoah Vienna, however, can be found either in the Jewish Museum in Vienna or in the Maccabi Sports Archive housed in the Pierre Gildesgame Maccabi Sports Museum in Ramat Gan, Israel. The new Hakoah center in Vienna, named after Karl Haber, one of the club's most important post-World War II members, also houses a school. A retirement home is being built as part of the center as well. For the post-World War II history of Hakoah Vienna, see Stefanie Lucas, “‘. . . der erste und einzige Sammelpunkt für all die Entwurzelten.’ Die Wiederbelebung des SC Hakoah in der ersten Nachkriegsdekade,” and Thomas Feiger, “Vom Krieauer Sportplatz 1922 zum ‘S.C. HAKOAH Karl Haber Sport- und Freizeitzentrum’ 2008,” in “. . . mehr als ein Sportsverein,” ed. Betz, Löscher, and Schölnberger, 185–206 and 319–328, respectively.

76 Hakoah Vienna had strong ties to Bar Kochba in Berlin and Hagibor in Prague, for example.

77 See Claussen, Detlev, Bela Guttmann. Weltgeschichte des Fussballs in einer Person (Berlin: Berenberg, 2006), passimGoogle Scholar.

78 Perhaps this is why Hakoah Vienna is the only club whose history is individually chronicled in the Pierre Gildesgame Maccabi Sports Museum in Ramat Gan, Israel.