Persecution of Jews in Austria

Roman emperors
Under Christian emperors, Jews were persecuted in the Roman Empire, which included forbidding Jews from marrying Christians, restricting Jewish ownership of slaves, and punishing those that converted from Christianity to Judaism.

Host desecration accusations
Jews were murdered after accusations of host desecration in Laa in 1294, Korneuburg in 1306, Wolfsberg in 1338, Salzburg and Hallein in 1404. After an accusation in 1420, Duke Albert V of Austria issued the Vienna Gesera (Viennese Decree) that had imprisoned, burned, and banished Jews from Austria. He ordered the children of the murdered Jews to be forcibly baptized into Christianity. Albert V later bragged: “... I burned my Jews.”

Persecution of Jews during the Black Death
Jews were falsely blamed for the Black Death or bubonic plague pandemic in Europe during the mid-1300s. They were persecuted and massacred. Jews were often used by Christians to blame due to their resentment of them considering the antisemitic Christian belief that Jews as a people hold the responsibility for killing Jesus Christ or Jewish deicide. Many Jews were murdered in Austria, Belgium, France, Germany, Poland, Spain, Switzerland, and the Netherlands.

Expulsions
Duke Albert V of Austria persecuted Jews, including imprisoning, killing, and expelling them in 1420-1421. There were also expulsions of Jews by rulers of the Archduchy of Austria. Archdukes Maximilian I in 1496 expelled Jews from Styria and Carinthia, Ferdinand I, who reigned from 1521 until his death in 1564, expelled Jews from Lower Austria, and Leopold VI in 1670 expelled Jews from Vienna and the Archduchy of Austria.

Blood libel
In a blood libel, Jews were falsely accused of the death of a child named Andreas in Rinn in 1462. Pope Benedict XIV wrote about the boy in his bull, “Beatus Andreas”: “... The Blessed Andreas from the region of the village of Rinn in the Diocese of Brixen, was butchered in the cruelest fashion before the completion of the third year of life in the year 1462 by Jews out of hatred toward the Christian faith. ...“ Other blood libels occurred in Vienna in 1305 and Lienz in 1442.

Ferdinand I
Archduke Ferdinand I of Austria required that all Jews in the hereditary lands of Lower, Upper, and Hither Austria wear a badge. He later expelled Jews from Lower Austria.

Ferdinand III
Jews of Vienna were forced to live in a ghetto in 1625 by Archduke Ferdinand III of Austria. He also compelled the Jews of Vienna to listen to missionary sermons by the Jesuits.

Karl Lueger
Karl Lueger, the mayor of Vienna (1897-1910), pursued antisemitic practices, mostly by not employing Jews in the city services and limiting them from educational institutions. Lueger supported politicians who actively perpetuated the myth that Jews ritually sacrificed Christian children and supported a bill against Jewish immigration from Russia and Romania. He also founded a Christian antisemitic political party.