Social Networks, Demography, and Identity
A Prosopographic Study of Vienna’s Jewish Upper Class
1800-1938
Research Proposal – Sara Yanovsky
Keywords: Jewish families in Vienna, social history, social networks, Jewish
bourgeoisie, religious affiliation, marriages, children, education, professional
choices, names, identity
Social Networks, Demography, and Identity
A Prosopographic Study of Vienna’s Jewish Upper Class
1800-1938
Background information on the proposed study
In 2011, Georg Gaugusch published the first part of a monumental work on
the genealogy of Jewish families of Vienna’s upper bourgeoisie from the late
18th century until World War II, titled Wer einmal war.
While the biographies of a number of individuals mentioned by Gaugusch are
well known to historians, the wide ranging genealogical data of hundreds of
Jewish families, tracked for up to 7 generations, offer an unprecedented
opportunity to evaluate those sources from a social historical perspective.
The aim of the study
The aim is to gain a better overview and understanding of social patterns,
particularly related to the self understanding of the Viennese Jewish upper
class throughout the decades and centuries, in which the imperial capital’s
Jewish community is known to have prospered economically and culturally,
but at the same time also faced multiple political, economic, and social
challenges.
Questions related to name changes, marriage patterns, conversions,
professional and demographic developments are among the topics on which
comprehensive statistical data can be drawn from genealogical sources. The
aim is not only to gain an overview of the changing patterns, but to put them in
a historical perspective, in order to understand their relation to various
developments of the time.
Related questions to be asked include:
Names: When and why did Jews tend to change their names, both first and
last names, in relation to historical dates, their own age, or personal life
circumstances?
Marriage: When did the Jewish upper class tend to get married and to whom?
Can any specific patterns be defined throughout the decades? How many
children did Jewish upper class families have?
Change of religious affiliation: Who officially left the Jewish religion, what did
he or she do afterwards, and when did the person make choices of religious
affiliation, both in relation to personal life circumstances and political/social
developments?
Educational and professional choices: Which type of education and profession
did the Vienna’s Jewish upper class choose and were the choices related to
economic, social or political developments?
Methodological Challenges
While a prosopographic study will need to combine quantitative with
qualitative analysis in order to evaluate wide ranging statistical data and then
put them in a historical context, some of the major challenges are related to
the sources themselves, primarily their reliability and integrity. Genealogical
and historical sources in general are rarely complete, relying on the
conservation and availability of documents. In addition, various sources can
show differing data, particularly when it comes to individual exact figures such
as dates of birth. In addition, genealogical sources tend to focus on male
lineages and an evaluation of female family members’ networks might need
different methods. Finally, the main source of this study is clearly defined as
the Jewish upper bourgeoisie, including several family members who
converted. It is necessary to keep this in mind, while keeping an eye on the
option to widen the research and study to a larger social circle.