Slivers on Zionism – Todesco, the Modern-Day German Academic Anti-Semitism and Appeasement

In 1989, the turning point in German history, the American historian Steven Beller correctly observed that Viennese modernism was defined, determined, and made possible in the first place by Jewish families.

The ‘One Other’, aka ‘scholar and scientist’, never gets tired of speaking of the “newly rich” Jew in his and her scientific literature and scholarly fairy tales. A highly denunciatory term for this adjective is “newly rich”. It is full of envy and denunciation.

It resonates with the anti-Semitic accusation of dishonest acquisition of wealth. An anti-Semitic trope that the “Jew” dishonetly earned his wealth through the stock exchange, that is, through speculation. “Jew” became a word of insult again. Marx did it. It was a left trope which, however, was widely welcomed across all political borders in former times. And again, today.

Scholars and scientists stated that the highest happiness, striving, and desire of the “Jew” is to imitate the non-Jewish gentile and the 1st society in a monkey manner.

The aim of the “Jew” is – according to the modern-day academic anti-Semitic scholar – finally to be assimilated. This is how anti-Semitism and devaluation of the subject, the Jewish subject, works and how facts are distorted to serve the ideology, aka ‘narrative’ of anti-Semitism within the realm of universities and like that, as we see it today again, for example in Germany.

So each squiggle is twisted until it fits into this obsessive narrative framework. On the other hand, all essential moments of modernity were indeed invented, created, and made possible by Jews.

Vienna and Todesco

The Jews of Vienna were trying to institutionalise a Jewish community in the 18th century, to maintain and pass on the historical heritage, and to modernise their Jewish identity. As has always been Jewish tradition.

For many Jews, being Jewish means being conservative and revolutionary at the same time: sticking to, preserving, and following the law of the future, the Torah, and therefore always being revolutionary and disruptive in attitude. Sidenote: This is why Israel is today a powerhouse of technical innovations.

In Vienna, in his great plans for the palace, Todesco sought to synthesise the figure of ‘Esther’ and Hellenism. A neo-renaissance with a Jewish core, with a Jewish identity. The result was Viennese Modernism like a bird of paradise during the K&K Habsburg monarchy.

The ‘Palais Todesco’ and its activities bear witness to this understanding. Anyone who passed through the Palaistor under the caryatid of ‘Queen Esther’, wearing a diadem with the ‘Magen David’, to find himself finally at the ‘Todescos’, a mocking literary and gentlemen’s club, the ‘Baumann’s Cave‘, of course on Wednesdays.

This cave was managed and founded by the poet Bauernfeld, who founded ‘Baumann’s Cave‘ in succession to the ‘Soupiritum‘ by Karl von Holtei, an actor. This is where the greats of Viennese society should put on their fool’s hats. Later, it became the ‘Gnome’s Cave‘, which was run by Heinrich Sichrovsky.

He also published the ‘Gnomen-Zeitung‘ for a time, which was only written by hand. The ‘Gnome Cave‘ was the place where conservative liberalism found itself in a waiting position, sponsored by the Todescos and Wertheims. Destroyed by Hitler.

The other, another 28 caryatids of the ‘Palais Todesco’ are a clear echo of the ‘Praise of Woman‘ by Melech Shlomo. Schlomo, the Jewish name of Sigmund Freud, who would soon become the therapeutic companion of the Todesco family: Anna von Lieben, aka ‘Cäcillie M.’, daughter of Eduard Todesco.

Jewish Renaissance – Zionism

Jewish Renaissance. A transformation was attempted here, a new Judaism, and reference was made to ‘Esther‘, not without meaning and purpose, as Grillparzer later did with his play ‘Esther‘, which was first performed in 1888 as a fragment in the reopening of the ‘Burgtheater‘ as the ‘K&K Hofburgtheater‘ under the patronage of the Todescos.

“The desire to return the longing to Zion was romantic and not realistic, but the intention was to make a public confession.” (Elana Shapira, Style and Seduction: Jewish Patrons, Architecture, and Design in Fin de Siecle, 2016, p.23) describes Sophie Todesco‘s intention in this way.

The question for Todesco and Ephrussi was not ‘assimilation or not‘, but the creation of a new, positive Jewishness, a renaissance of Judaism, in a prosperous world empire: Zionism. She, this search for a new Jewishness, was ultimately the essential momentum of the moderns (sic!).

The Jews of the ‘Fin de Siècle’ and modern Vienna did not want to (be) assimilate (-ed), rather it was the other way around: they absorbed, synthesised, and created new. The ‘One Other’, finally, the ‘Goi’, wanted to be assimilated into the new vision. That’s the real story, the way it developed. Not the Jews strived for assimilation, the ‘Gois’ strived to be part of it.

They, the Jewish modern Renaissance Men, offered an alternative that the ‘Gois’ regarded as desirable to strive for – Modernism. As a new house for Jews and Gentiles modelled after Hellenism and Judaism. An alternative to rigid German nationalism and Christianity.

The ‘Palais Todesco’, open to Jews and non-Jews alike, was (designed as) a new place for a new Jewish identity, a new ‘Jewish cultural centre’ as Shapira wrote, where the Renaissance and its Hellenistic recourse were re-spelt in Hebrew.

Todesco and Wertheim saw their ‘Jewish Renaissance‘ project more as a bulwark against Christianity. The recourse to Greek antiquity in the creation of this new magnificent boulevard was also an attempt to target non-Jews without offending them. Todesco did not want to give rise to feelings of anti-Semitism and hatred of Jews. A splendid, noble idea. However, as with any appeasement, it failed. Hitler.

Todesco was well aware of this threat, the threat of anti-semitism and its violent pogroms, and recognised clearly the danger. Todesco was a great strategist who liked to put on the dunce cap to show off dumb journalists.

Perhaps it was an afterthought when Leo Baeck later translated the Psalms into Greek during breakfast or when the philosopher Margareta Susman and her circle expressed their enthusiasm for Hellenism in her Lützow domicile in Berlin.

It was, of course, too late by then. The Shoah rolled on inexorably. The Viennese modernists (sic!) failed. The Jewish Renaissance in the guise of modernism in Vienna was the practical and cultural counterpart to German classicism. One of the deep roots of why the German academia, yesterday and today, is deeply anti-semitic and full of hate against Jews and Israel.

Paradoxically, the lever of the Jewish Renaissance was Hellenism. Todesco wanted to create a common cultural platform for exchange between Jews and non-Jews with his ‘Palais Todesco’. A kind of ‘House of One’, as Rabbi Andreas Nachama is trying to do again today in Berlin. That was Todesco much, even worth everything.

This idea of building bridges does not fit the anti-Semitic fairy tale of assimilation at any price. Assimilation needs no bridge. Because if assimilation alone had been the driving force and everything, one would simply no longer have had to go to the synagogue and simply be baptized. A path chosen by a few and regretted, like Hugo von Hoffmansthal.

The ‘Paris Judgment’, so the episode is told, that the large fresco on the piano nobile, the showpiece, and heart of the ‘Palais Todesco‘, the famous scene of ‘Paris Judgment’ should have been executed with ‘Esther’, according to Hansen‘s wish and vision, that Eduard Todesco firmly and loudly refused, to the chagrin of Sophie Todesco, who very much wanted to see ‘Esther’, too.

Not that Eduard Todesco didn’t find the vision coherent, quite the opposite, but he feared for the common cultural platform, the political vision that he had. He maybe rightly feared anti-Semitic reactions if the apple of ‘Paris’ had been presented to ‘Esther.’ Today, one suspects that it might have been better to give ‘Esther’ the apple. Appeasement does not pay off.

Finally, the Todescos were among the 70 founders (!!) of the Jewish community in Vienna, which was founded as a reform community (!) in 1825 with the building of the temple in Seitenstettengasse in Vienna, which was designed by Michael Lazar Biedermann, who also comes from Bratislava. Traders and bankers like Todesco, who took a detour via the small but for Jewish history pivotal village of ‘Hainburg’, largely financed and promoted the new Jewish community.

Lazar was elected head of the Viennese Jewry in 1792 and remained so until he died in 1843. In 1812, together with Isaak Löw Hofmann, who later became chairman, a kind of general secretary of the Jewish community, he founded the Israelite religious school, which was de facto an official, unrecognised religious community and was finally institutionalised. A very Austrian detour.

Hofmann was regarded as a representative of orthodoxy, Michael Lazar and the others as representatives of the reform, but they did not revolt in order not to weaken the position of the Viennese Jews. This joint school bore the official title of “Vienna Imperial-Royal Approved Public Israelite Religious School”.

In 1822, Issak Löw Hofmann took over the office of school supervisor, a kind of manager, for the school and in this capacity appointed the orthodox rabbi Lazar Horowitz, a student of Chassam Sofer from Bratislava near Hainburg, as informal chief rabbi of Vienna in 1828. Officially, his title was ‘Ritualienaufseher’ (ritual overseer), since there was no officially recognised Jewish community in Vienna before the law.

Rabbi Horowitz was always trying to find a balance within the various currents of Judaism (Reform) to maintain the bridges, as is reported. In 1824, Michael Lazar brought Rabbi Isaak Noah Mannheimer from Copenhagen to Vienna to be the director of the same Jewish religious school, a dedicated representative of the reform and reform Judaism, as well as the cantor Salomon Sulzer, who was called to Vienna and became chief cantor of the newly opened city temple in 1826 and remained so for 56 years.

The city temple was a reform synagogue, which was confirmed by the successor Rabbi Adolf Jellinek (1858) as rabbi of the reform, who understood Judaism not as a nation but as a tribe. Another step of appeasement that failed.

Two years later, Herzl was born. History rather shows that assimilation took place in the reverse direction through the force of the Moderns. The Moderns were a Jewish cultural achievement, in which all others attempted to assimilate themselves respectively gained massive impulses for innovations. They, the Moderns, were realiter Zionist manifestations. The later Zionism of a Herzl, by contrast, was an intellectual and cultural lightweight which should not diminish the merit of Herzel, but put him into the right place.

Learn more about Zionism and the amazing, yet untold history of the Todescos (Vienna) in the soon coming book ‘Die Kabbalah Formeln’. Are you interested in a subscription? The book ‘Die Kabbalah Formeln’ (approx. 1,000 pages) will be published in late spring 2026 with HIS help. Make me an offer for your personal subscription copy. Write to me at: kabbalahphilosophyscience@proton.me

photo: AI created. Symbolic