Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Martin Stechauner
1. Introduction
Over the last few decades the study of Sephardic communities has become
more popular, especially in the fields of Jewish and Romance Studies. The
growing interest in the history and language of Sephardic Jews has not
solely been limited to the traditional and well-known cultural centres of
Sephardic Jewry, for example the former Ottoman Empire (for example
Benbassa and Rodrigue 2000) or Northern Europe (for example Bodian
1997; Kaplan 2000). In the recent past, smaller, although no less significant
and thriving Sephardic communities such as the (historic) Sephardic com-
munity of Vienna, have taken centre stage in several studies (for example
Eugen 2001; Kaul 1989), exhibitions1 and symposia.2
This paper presents a study on the constitution and consolidation of
Sephardic identity in relation to a diasporic experience. Its aim is to high-
light another aspect of Sephardic Jewry that goes beyond the study of
Sephardic history and language, namely the notions of Sephardic diaspora
and identity in Vienna in the context of the late 19th century and early 20th
century. Animated by these objectives, the mechanisms responsible for the
emergence of Sephardic identity shall be brought to light. Furthermore, this
paper will also highlight how an experience of diaspora, as well as other
congregation in almost every major city of the Ottoman Empire,4 for exam-
ple in Constantinople, Izmir (Smyrna), Sarajevo, Belgrade, Bitola (Ma-
nast"r), Sofia, Plovdiv (Filipopolis/Filibe), Edirne (Adrianopolis/Ordin),
Rhodes, Jerusalem, and Safed, to name but a few, but also in other territo-
ries that where strongly affected by the Ottoman Empire and its expansion
politics (Díaz-Mas 1992: 39). For instance, after the Treaty of Belgrade had
been signed between the House of Habsburg and the Sublime Porte in 1739,
Ottoman citizens—including the Ottoman Jews—suddenly had the oppor-
tunity to trade and to move freely within Austria and its crown lands (Se-
roussi 1922: 148). This is the reason why Sephardic Jews could also estab-
lish congregations within the Austro-Hungarian Empire—most prominently
in Vienna—which were smaller in size but no less influential and important
than the affiliated communities in the Ottoman Empire.
Together with their Jewish faith, the Iberian expellees also took their
Spanish language, culture and customs with them. It is difficult to tell what
kind of language the medieval Jewry spoke before the great expulsion;
however, outside the Iberian Peninsula the development of ‘Djudezmo’,5
which is also known as Judeo-Spanish (‘Djudeo-Espanyol’ 6 ), ‘Djidio’, 7
‘Ladino’ 8 or simply (E)spanyol, 9 can be reconstructed quite accurately.
cially for newspaper headlines and book titles and for religious texts with
masoretic vowels (Díaz-Mas 1992: 99). In major Sephardic centres the
Rashi script was used to print books and newspapers until the 1920s (Tur-
key) or even until World War II (Salonika) (Harris 2005: 101). Also the
Judeo-Spanish text, which will be discussed later on in this paper and which
shall shed light on the constitution of Sephardic identity in Vienna, was
mainly printed in Rashi characters. However, in the course of the moderni-
sation of the societies in which Sephardic Jews were living and through
acquaintance with other languages like French, Italian, Turkish and Spanish
at the turn of the 20th century, other writing and printing systems had been
adopted. In most cases it was the Latin script (for example in Turkey14), but
in others the Cyrillic alphabet (in Bulgaria and Serbia) or the Greek writing
system was adopted (Bunis 1992: 400-401). Today, many speakers of
Djudezmo no longer know how to read the Rashi script and the few texts
produced in this language are usually published in Latin characters (Díaz-
Mas 1992: 95, 99-100). One of the most popular transliteration systems for
displaying Judeo-Spanish in Latin script nowadays is the graphic system
developed by Aki Yerushalayim (Revista Kulturala Djudeo-Espanyola), 15
one of the few remaining Judeo-Spanish periodicals published in Israel.
This graphic system is also used in the present paper in order to transliterate
Judeo-Spanish when originally printed in Rashi script. 16 For the sake of
convenience and comprehensibility, Hebrew square characters (...= ,# ,<),
instead of Rashi letters (...# ," ,!), will be used for displaying original
phrases in Judeo-Spanish. Further, quotations in Djudezmo will be trans-
lated into English, whereas the German quotations will remain untranslated.
the 1960s and the following ‘discursive turn’ in the early 1980s, discourse
analysis has become a popular methodological choice within most disci-
plines of the humanities and social sciences in order to study ‘how our lan-
guage use and [other] modes of representation fundamentally affect and
shape our understandings of reality and our constructions of meaningful
worlds’ (Moberg 2013: 4). Also in the fields of the Study of Religions dis-
course-analytical approaches have more and more frequently been applied
over recent years (see Wijsen 2013: 1-3), simply because such approaches
not only provide new perspectives on religious phenomena as such but also
because they offer new ways of (re-)evaluating and (re-)interpreting the
research material, namely the primary and secondary sources at our dis-
posal. In this regard discourse analysis also turns out to be a very useful tool
for examining certain aspects of religion and religious communities, such as
topics dealing with religious and cultural identity.
The term ‘discourse’ was coined by Michel Foucault (1969) who used it
in order to refer to representations (for example, representations constructed
through language) which are responsible for our understanding of reality.
Foucault’s aim was to reveal the continuing effects that discourses have on
modern society and culture (Moberg 2013: 7). However, by now other defi-
nitions of ‘discourse’ have been developed, as for example that of Stuart
Hall who is especially ‘interested in empirically exploring the function of
discourse in relation to certain social phenomena (such as religion, for ex-
ample)’ (ibid.: 9). According to Hall, discourses have to be seen as
However, it has to be acknowledged that there is not just one single defini-
tion of discourse but a large variety of definitions. As Marcus Moberg
points out, it is not only impossible to find an ‘“all-purpose” definition’ of
discourse ‘but even undesirable’ since the particular concept of discourse
has to be ‘understood in the context of [its] particular piece of research’
(Moberg 2013: 9).
Such an open—one might even say volatile—definition of discourse
makes this concept especially attractive for the Study of Religions which to
some extent has always had trouble in defining its own topic of research.
Thus, since there is no such thing as a neutral or innocent (unschuldige)
theory defining religion, Hans G. Kippenberg and Kocku von Stuckrad
suggest that we should think of religion rather as a discourse or a field of
IMAGINING THE SEPHARDIC COMMUNITY OF VIENNA 55
3. Imagining Sepharad
As mentioned above, this analysis of Sephardic group identity is largely
based on the theoretical approaches of Benedict Anderson. His reflections
56! MARTIN STECHAUNER
[every nation] is imagined because the members of even the smallest nation
will never know most of their fellow-members, meet them, or even hear of
them, yet in the minds of each lives the image of their communion. […] Fi-
nally, it is imagined as a community, because, regardless of the actual ine-
quality and exploitation that may prevail in each, the nation is always con-
ceived as a deep, horizontal comradeship (ibid.: 6-7).
today designates the modern country of Spain, for many Sephardic Jews it
has remained a rather volatile term, which was even expanded to the dias-
pora communities outside the peninsula as soon as the Iberian Jews were
forced to leave their homeland. So, although today the term Sepharad usu-
ally stands for Spain or the Iberian Peninsula, the term ‘Sephardic Jewry’
usually refers to Jewish diaspora communities in North-Western Europe
(for example Amsterdam, London, Hamburg), in Southern Eastern Europe
(the Balkans), in North Africa (for example Morocco), in the Middle East
(for example part of the old-established Jewish community of Jerusalem)
and even in the Americas (for example in the Caribbean and the Guianas).17
Despite the epochal changes, caused by the uprooting of the Iberian Jewry
in the late fifteenth century, the Iberian Peninsula should remain an impor-
tant point of reference for the identity and the heritage of Sephardic Jews.
However, some semantic changes to the term have occurred since the time
Jews who continued to practice their faith left the peninsula. By presenting
an example from 1775 Salonika, David Bunis expounds that after the expul-
sion from Spain and Portugal the term Sepharad could also refer to loci
other than the Iberian Peninsula:
These examples shall only make us aware of how the meaning and the use
of the term Sepharad began to change according to the new circumstances
in the diaspora. Consequently, this term also became used for the new lands
inhabited by Sephardic Jews after the gerush sepharad >)$7 ?@& ;E)CD, which is
the Hebrew term for the expulsion from Spain (1492) and Portugal (1497).
Being aware of the great consequences that the gerush entailed for the his-
tory of Sephardic Jews, Max Weinreich (1894–1969) proposed to think
about Sephardic history in two stages: the history of Jews in Sepharad I,
which refers to a period from the earliest Jewish settlements on the Penin-
sula up to the end of the fifteenth century, and in Sepharad II, referring to
the history of the diaspora communities which were established outside the
Peninsula after the expulsion (in the Ottoman Empire, North Africa etc.).18
17 The first Jewish settlements in the New World were, in fact, established by Dutch
Jews of Portuguese descent (see Arbell 2002 and Gonsalves de Mello 1996).
18 Here, Weinreich employs a terminology he has already used for describing the
history of Ashkenazi Jews, by dividing it in Ashekenaz I for the time when most Yiddish-
speaking Jews resided in German-speaking lands (for example the Rhineland), and Ash-
kenaz II for describing the period of Ashkenazi Jews after many of them had moved to
58! MARTIN STECHAUNER
Based on Weinreich’s model, another term has since been created in order
to refer to the Sephardic communities now living outside Sepharad I and
Sepahrad II, a result of the dispersions, re-settlements and migrations of
Sephardic Jews in the nineteenth and twentieth century, for example to the
United States or Israel. Thus, this secondary dispersion can be referred to as
Sepharad III (Šmid 2002: 114n1).
Such a conceptualisation of space very much resembles Edward Said’s
notion of ‘imaginative geography’ which depends, above all, on knowledge
(for example of one’s own ‘imagined’ history) and power (for example a
hostile or exclusive outside force). According to Said (1979: 54-55) geo-
graphic boundaries are always accompanied by social, ethnic and cultural
ones which, in the end, are all imaginative.
Finally, it also has to be mentioned that especially today the term
‘Sephardic Jewry’ does not necessarily have to designate Jews whose an-
cestors actually lived on the Iberian Peninsula or who still speak Djudezmo.
Since the term ‘Sephardic’ is also frequently used for referring to Oriental
Jewish communities who conform to the Sephardic minhag =$8&G*3 , that is, a
religious custom or tradition, it can also designate Jews of, for example,
Iraqi, Moroccan, and Central Asian descent or even any non-Ashkenazic
Jew. As such, we can conclude that in order to perceive themselves as a
community, Sephardic Jews necessarily had and still have to ‘imagine’
themselves as a group of people, by fixing the meaning of the term
Sephardic either to a common origin, common religious customs and laws
or a common vernacular language, just to name a few current examples.
Consequently—whatever definition is chosen—there will always be indi-
viduals who will drop out of a particular definitional framework.
As a matter of fact, this observation is definitely verifiable when looking
at Vienna’s Sephardic communities now and then. While only a hundred
years ago being ‘Sephardic’ in Vienna meant, first and foremost, being a
speaker of Djudezmo and having roots in South-Eastern Europe or the for-
mer Ottoman Empire, today’s Bucharan Jews who emigrated to Vienna in
the 1980s and 1990s naturally define themselves as Sephardic Jews too
because they confirm to the Sephardic minhag which was introduced in that
community about two hundred years ago (Labudovic 2009). Such a defini-
tion, however, might be rejected by other Sephardic Jews who exclusively
use the term Sephardic for referring to Jews of Spanish or Portuguese heri-
tage and who actually speak or spoke Judeo-Spanish (Lévy 2005). The
rejection of Jews who merely confirm to the Sephardic minhag but who
19 At this point we become aware of the fact that Anderson’s theories are actually
based on the methodological approaches of historical materialism and Marxism.
60! MARTIN STECHAUNER
languages or dialects that have been ‘unsuccessful (or only relatively suc-
cessful) in insisting on their own print-form’ (ibid.: 45).
Of course, ‘print’, as theorised by Anderson, should be understood as a
shibboleth. A similar cultural impact was precipitated, as Anderson main-
tains, by the invention of the radio in 1895 which ‘made it possible to by-
pass print’ and create an ‘aural representation’ of imagined communities,
thus also reaching people who were neither able to read nor write (ibid.:
54n28). As for the present, we can even conclude that new technologies,
such as the internet and social media, not only create virtual spaces but, in
fact, virtual—‘imagined’—web communities. In this regard, Michal Held
(2010), who researched two popular Internet platforms frequently used by
Sephardic Jews all over the world, calls such virtual spaces ‘Digital Home-
Lands’ which make it possible for a dispersed community to find common,
however imagined, ground. Here, we also become aware of the fact that
whenever we are talking about Sephardic communities, we are actually
dealing with diasporic communities which all happen to share some charac-
teristic features.
20 8L@< IK44@<>GK'? K@ 4> K?*44L J4> .8G44'# I4< 8JK44G<?4< %4J<)54 ><>4GK*K0 8J 4> <44)KL@4<
@K04)KL@4< @KL<> IK=4@ 44K<, see Appendix, Figure 4.
64! MARTIN STECHAUNER
accommodation in his palace while visiting Spain together with her father
Charles VI (1685–1740) several years ago. Summarily, d’Aguilar and his
mother decide to seek refuge in Vienna; however, according to the German
version of the legend his mother Sarah dies during the journey, never reach-
ing the Austrian capital. On reaching his destination d’Aguilar goes to see
Maria Theresa, begging her to let him and several other refugees from Spain
stay in her realm. Of course the Empress immediately recalls their former
Spanish host, and kindly invites him to stay as her guest in Vienna. Gladly
accepting her offer, d’Aguilar becomes an influential court Jew and the
leaseholder of the imperial tobacco monopoly. Using his great influence at
the court, Baron d’Aguilar becomes a patron of the Jews in Vienna as well
as of those in the entire Austro-Hungarian Empire. For example in lieu of a
synagogue, he offers a room in his own house to the first Sephardic immi-
grants from the Ottoman Empire in Vienna in order to provide a place of
worship for them. Furthermore, he donates two sets of rimonim H43GMN)3 , that
is, torah crowns, with an engraving of his name to the Sephardic congrega-
tions of Vienna and Temeswar (TimiOoara in modern Romania), the latter
also being blessed by his patronage. One day, when d’Aguilar learns about
a secret plan that all Jews shall be expelled from the Austrian territories, he
and one of his friends seek to confound this scheme by sending a letter to
the Sultan in Istanbul. Promptly the Sultan sends back a letter personally
addressed to Maria Theresa in which he tries to convince the Empress to
renounce her plans of expelling the Jews from her realms. Concerning this
affair, Zemlinsky’s original version and Papo’s alleged translation differ
from each other. While in the German version Maria Theresa gladly ac-
cedes to the Sultan’s petition, refraining from her plans to expel the Jews
from Austria, the Judeo-Spanish text renders a rather more unkind picture
of the Empress. Although in the Djudezmo version Maria Theresa also
ultimately decides to spare the Jews, d’Aguilar decides to flee Vienna be-
cause he suspects that the anti-Jewish Empress knows about his eager inter-
vention. In the German version, however, other reasons are said to have led
to the hero’s prompt departure, namely that the Spanish Inquisition has
finally gained knowledge of d’Aguilar’s residency in Austria and, more-
over, of his return to Judaism, wherefore his immediate extradition is de-
manded in order to put him on trial for apostasy. Be that as it may, in both
versions it is pointed out that d’Aguilar essentially leaves without a trace.
According to Zemlinsky and Papo, nobody knows for sure about his final
destination; some say he might have gone to Amsterdam, while others be-
lieve he may have found refuge in Bucharest (the latter is only mentioned in
the German version). In remembrance of and in reverence for his generosity
and advocacy the Sephardim of Vienna and Temeswar consider him the
IMAGINING THE SEPHARDIC COMMUNITY OF VIENNA 65
founder of their communities, wherefore every rosh hashana 8$GP $ 87 ;<9 ) (the
Jewish New Year) a kaddish ;4 3Q70 (mourner’s prayer) is prayed in his re-
membrance (Papo and Zemlinsky 1888: 2-6; see also Kaul 1989: 58-59 and
Studemund-Halévy and Collin 2013: 287-294).
It is interesting to note here that Diego d’Aguilar’s legend consists of
two slightly different endings in German and Judeo-Spanish. However, this
official version of the legend is most obviously based on an earlier source,
namely a two-part article (Geschichte Diego de Aguilar’s) by Ludwig Au-
gust Frankl (1810–1894) (1856a; 1856b) which was published in the Allge-
meine Zeitung des Judenthums (see also Studemund-Halévy and Collin
2013: 242, 248-262). At the beginning of his article, Frankl informs his
readership that he himself learned about the legend from Hakham Ruben
Barukh (d. 1875), the venerable leader of the Sephardic community of Vi-
enna at that time (Kohlbauer-Fritz 2010: 152). About thirty years later, in
1886, Aaron ben Shem Tov Semo, the son of Shem Tov Semo (1810–1881)
who was one of Vienna’s most famous publishers and editors of Judeo-
Spanish newspapers, published his own version of d’Aguilar’s legend
which, according to its author, is based on an earlier Hebrew version.21
However, he does not mention an exact source and it remains open to ques-
tion whether a Hebrew original of d’Aguilar’s legend has ever really existed
(Studenmund-Halévy 2010b). In 1888 Adolf von Zemlinsky (Shem Tov
Semo’s son-in-law) and Michael Papo’s version was finally published in the
above mentioned bilingual edition in which d’Aguilar is explicitly men-
tioned as the founder of the Sephardic community of Vienna:
Here we see that the authors initially declare that their version of Diego
d’Aguilar’s legend is actually based on a popular fable. In so doing, they
seem to admit that their account might not resemble the true historical facts,
which does not seem to disqualify the legend from being adopted as the
official story of the foundation of the Sephardic community of Vienna.
Even at this early stage we see that Ludwig August Frankl, the author of the
first known printed version, was not quite sure about the veracity of the
story, even though his informant was none other than the rabbi of the Se-
phardic community of Vienna:
Es ist offenbar, daß uns hier Dichtung und Wahrheit innig ineinanderver-
schlungen entgegentreten, daß aber selbst der Dichtung wirkliche Thatsa-
chen, nur poetisch ausgeschmückt, zu Grunde liegen mögen (Frankl 1856b:
658).
Indeed, the legend of Diego d’Aguilar should not be taken as merely the
invention of its authors or their informants; actually it is based on several
historical facts. However, while Zemlinsky and Papo did not make any
attempt to prove its historical authenticity, Frankl, on the other hand, pro-
vided a range of historical data that draw a more authentic picture of
d’Aguilar’s life. For example, Frankl found out that d’Aguilar’s decision to
leave Vienna was based on economical rather than other considerations
because his contract for holding the Austrian tobacco monopoly ended in
1748. By then, his business had already been greatly weakened by foreign
ambassadors who had repeatedly tried to bypass his monopoly (Frankl
1856b: 659). Zemlinsky’s and Papo’s assumptions that d’Aguilar withdrew
from Vienna because he was afraid of Maria Theresa’s vengeance (in the
Judeo-Spanish version) or because the Spanish government had ordered his
extradition in order to hand him over to the inquisition (in the German ver-
sion) seem to be no more than fictional literary elements. Particularly, the
fact that the authors offer two slightly different endings gives evidence that
they treated the source material at their disposal rather creatively in order to
serve different aims and maybe also a different readership. Obviously the
authors were eager to let Maria Theresa appear in a much more humane and
neutral light in the German version (Kaul 1989: 59), not least because this
version would address a much larger readership, including non-Jewish Aus-
trian officials. These officials eventually could have interpreted the Judeo-
Spanish accounts of affairs as a lèse-majesté since the reputation of already
defunct rulers of the House of Habsburg was protected by a law in the Aus-
trian Imperial penal code (cf. Strafgesetz of 1852: § 64; Czech 2010: 62,
69).
When it comes to d’Aguilar’s mysterious flight, Frankl already ascer-
tained that Diego d’Aguilar had not merely disappeared as the legend sug-
gests but, in fact, he left Vienna in order to return to his house in London
which also indicates that d’Aguilar must have lived in England before he
settled down in Vienna (ibid.). Even Ruben Barukh, the rabbi from whom
Frankl had learned about the story in the first place, mentioned that
IMAGINING THE SEPHARDIC COMMUNITY OF VIENNA 67
d’Aguilar had reached Vienna via England (Frankl 1856a: 632) and not
directly from Spain Papo22 and Zemlinsky’s version suggests.
Frankl’s original assumption that d’Aguilar had gone to England after
having left Vienna was ultimately confirmed by a letter from his friend
Josef von Wertheimer (1800–1887), an Austrian Jewish philanthropist,
whom Frankl had asked to investigate the traces d’Aguilar must have left in
London. In his letter von Wertheimer quotes a short extract from a book
about the biography of d’Aguilar’s son, Ephraim Lópes Pereira d’Aguilar
(1739–1802), also including some information about his father:
Baron Diego de Aguilar war in Lissabon geboren, das er ungefähr 1722 sei-
ner Religion wegen verließ. Er kam nach England und ging im Jahre 1736
nach Wien, wo er Pächter des Tabakmonopols wurde. Er war ein Liebling
der Kaiserin Maria Theresia. Im Jahre 1756 kehrte er nach England zurück
mit seiner Familie, die aus zwölf Kindern, Söhnen und Töchtern, bestand. Er
starb im Jahre 1759 unermeßlich reich (Frankl 1856b: 661).
In another letter that Ludwig August Frankl received from his friend, Josef
von Wertheimer almost revokes the information that he had communicated
before by stating:
22 Only in the Papo’s version is it mentioned in passing that d’Aguilar and his
mother left for Vienna on a ship departing for England (Inglityera) (Studemund-Halévy
and Collin 2013: 290-291).
23 Genealogical Record in: Colyer-Fergusson Collection, archived in the Society of
Genealogists Library, London, UK; see Appendix, Figure 1.
68! MARTIN STECHAUNER
d’Aguilar family in the same record gives evidence that ‘Moses Lopes
Pereira Baron Diego de Aguilar came to London from Vienna’ in the year
1756. It also informs us that his last will dates 5 August 1759, that he was
born in 1700 and that he finally passed away in the month of August in
1759 and was laid to rest on 17 Av 5519 (10 August 1759) at Mile End.24
Moreover, the above mentioned initials ‘S.A.G.D.E.G.’ on his tomb give
evidence of his Portuguese origin, since this is an acronym written on many
grave stones of Portuguese Jews, standing for Sua Alma Goza da Eterna
Gloria (‘his/her soul attains eternal glory’) (Arbell 2001: 304). At this point
it is also worth mentioning that the authors of Diego d’Aguilar's legendary
account also misrepresent the facts about the fate of his parents. While the
legend recounts that d’Aguilar arrived in Vienna without his family, Felici-
tas Heimann-Jelinek (1991: 28) informs us that both his mother (Sarah
Peryrea) and his father25 (Abraham Lopez di Pereyra) were buried in Vi-
enna at the Jewish cemetery in Roßau (Seegasse), together with two of his
children and his brother in law.26
Putting all the evidence together, Ludwig August Frankl was right in as-
suming that Diego d’Aguilar did not just mysteriously disappear after hav-
ing left Vienna but, in fact, moved back to London where he had come from
before settling down in Vienna. Through Josef von Wertheimer’s letter and
the genealogical data from London we also learn that d’Aguilar’s roots did
not lie in Spain, as the legendary accounts suggest, but in Portugal. Owing
to his committed investigations, Frankl could even provide more evidence,
proving d’Aguilar’s Portuguese provenance. By consulting the K. and K.
Ministry of Internal Affairs, as well as several other archives in Vienna,
Frankl (1856b: 657) not only found out that d’Aguilar was entrusted with
the creation of the tobacco monopoly by the order of Emperor Charles VI in
1725 (thus, not by Maria Theresa) but that d’Aguilar’s father had been a
successful businessman who was responsible for the establishment of the
tobacco trade business in Portugal. The precise motive for Diego
d’Aguilar’s departure from Portugal and his immigration to England re-
mains unclear. The fact that he already bore a Portuguese title of nobility
when leaving Lisbon and that he was conferred with the title of Baron (Don
27 According to Heimann-Jelinek (1991: 27), Diego d’Aguilar did not arrive in Vi-
enna via London but Amsterdam.
28 ‘Diego de Aguilar [machte] keinen Unterschied, ob die spanischer, deutscher oder
polnischer Abkunft waren; sie fanden bei ihm eine gleich gute Aufnahme’ (Frankl 1856b:
660; see also Studenmund-Halévy 2010a).
70! MARTIN STECHAUNER
[i]t may portray encounters between personalities who could never have met
inactuality or connect events and places without any basis or reality. Among
members of the group, the legend is more powerful than history, and histori-
cal facts cannot change the belief in the legend (Alexander-Frizer 2008:
223).
Lukács is very much aware of the fact that myths are an essential ingredient
for the consciousness of an entire community. Florian Krobb who analysed
29 (1) the legend, (2) the ethnic tale, (3) the fairy tale, (4) the novella and (5) the hu-
morous tale (Alexander-Frizer 2008).
IMAGINING THE SEPHARDIC COMMUNITY OF VIENNA 71
Again, we have to keep in mind that in this context attributions, such as true
or false, are absolutely irrelevant for the formation of an identity,32 so we
may not conclude that historical legends are per se mere inventions, which,
for example, is definitely not true for the legend of Diego d’Aguilar as has
been noted on various occasions. Hence, even though many aspects of a
historical hero are imagined rather than actual proven facts, Lord Reglan, an
independent scholar who developed an influential model of the evaluation
of mythological heroes, reminds us
[...] that imagination is not the faculty of making something out of nothing,
but that of using, in a more or less different form, material already present in
the mind. We must conclude, then, that those who composed the traditional
stories […] applied, in a more or less modified form, [other] stories which
they had heard in a different but not dissimilar connection. We fail to ex-
plain the origin of these stories unless we trace the materials from which
they were composed (Reglan 2003 [1956]: 208).
In fact, there is no doubt that the creators of Diego d’Aguilar’s legend were
heavily influenced by popular marrano33 novels which had been published
throughout the nineteenth and into the early twentieth century. Díaz-Mas
(1992: 174-175) names several Sephardic novels and theatre plays that
almost exclusively deal with themes such as the persecution of marranos or
the unscrupulous methods of the Inquisition. Popular novels representing
that ‘typical view’ of Sephardic Jews towards inquisitorial Spain hold titles
such as La judia salvada del convento (The Jewish Woman Saved From the
Convent), Don Miguel San Salvador (About a Convert), La Hermosa Rahel
(A Story about Marranos of Portuguese Origin); among theatre plays there
were Don Yosef de Castilla, Don Abravanel i Formosa o Desteramiento de
los djudios de Espanya (Don Abravenel and Formosa or Exile of the Jews
from Spain) and Los marranos: Senas de la vida djudia myentres la
inkizisiyon espaniola (The marranos: Scenes from Jewish Life during the
Spanish Inquisition). The latter short play was published by T. Yaliz, also
known as Alberto Barzilay, in Salonika in 1934 and is about a convert by
the name of Don Miguel who became an inquisitor, persecuting Elena, a
Jewish woman who turns out to be his own mother. Studemund-Halévy and
Collin (2013: 245) suggest that the author of this play might have been
inspired by the popular legend of Diego d’Aguilar since the two plots very
much resemble each other. At any rate, similar plots frequently reappear in
many Judeo-Spanish novels throughout the nineteenth century (Díaz-Mas
1992: 175). These stories typically feature basic themes like denunciation,
persecution, separation from one’s family, education in a Christian convent,
torture and Auto-da-fé tribunals34 and sometimes even a miraculous rescue
and an escape to safe havens in cities such as London or Amsterdam. Usu-
ally these stories were adaptations from French, Hebrew or German novels
translated into Judeo-Spanish (Studenmund-Halévy 2010b). However, we
must not forget that these novels are based upon true historical events on the
Iberian Peninsula. Even before the expulsion it was not uncommon that
confessional fractures ran through the same family: while some family
members converted to Christianity, others remained true to their old faith
(Bossong 2008: 48). We may conclude that such incidents somehow be-
came part of the collective cultural memory of Jews after the expulsion. The
same holds true for the conversos who—by virtue of being persecuted at the
hands of the Inquisition—gradually turned into mysterious and heroic fig-
ures that later became the protagonists of thrilling novels and even historical
legends, such as the one about Diego d’Aguilar (Krobb 2002: 25). So, al-
though most historical legends are, in fact, based on historical events, Alex-
ander-Frizer (2008: 223) outlines that historical legends themselves—or
rather their authors—choose the facts and the manner of their presentation
in accordance with a certain goal. This goal, following Hall (1992: 294-
295), is the formation of a ‘foundational myth’ which helps ‘disfranchised’
or uprooted peoples to ‘conceive and express their resentment and its con-
tents in intelligible terms’ (Hobsbawm 1983: 1) by providing an ‘alternative
history or counter-narrative’ (ibid.).
Returning to Krobb’s concept of collective and wishful autobiographies,
another factor concerning this model seems worth discussing in detail,
namely the projection of contemporary sentiments into the past. By taking a
closer look at the biographies of Adolf von Zemlinsky and Michael Papo
and also at their social and historical environment, we learn a lot about their
version of Diego d’Aguilar’s legend; for instance, why the two authors
decided to publish their version of the legend in this particular way and not
another.
34 An Auto-da-fé (act of faith) was a public inquisitorial show trial against heretics
(including Judaisers). The most severe punishment to be imposed was death by burning
(Pérez 2006: 154-169).
74! MARTIN STECHAUNER
35 For example, many of Semo’s texts were also published in Salonika (for example
Guerta de Estorya; Bunis 2013: 52-53) which was definitely the most important publish-
ing place for Judeo-Spanish newspapers.
IMAGINING THE SEPHARDIC COMMUNITY OF VIENNA 75
culture would continue to ‘flourish in both the Diaspora and Palestine’ even
after the establishment of a new Jewish homeland.
Taking these circumstances into account, it is hardly surprising that Mi-
chael Papo and Adolf von Zemlinsky began their chronicle with a broader
discourse about the Jewish past as they perceived it:
[...] der Bestand eines Volksstammes [ist] in den Blättern der Weltgeschich-
te verzeichnet, der Bestand eines mächtigen großen Volksstammes, dessen
Geschichte gar eng verflochten sind [sic], mit dem anderer Volksstämme
und alle diese Folianten widmen immer und immer wieder ein Blatt der Ge-
schichte dieses Volkes, das in Folge maßloser an ihm verübter Grausamkei-
ten und Unterdrückungen jeglicher Art, eine Zeit lang der Befürchtung
Raum gab, auch diese Nation würde vergehen, verderben. Diese Be-
fürchtung erfüllt sich jedoch nicht (Papo and Zemlinsky 1888: 1).
Here, Zemlinsky and Papo strongly emphasise the resolute national nature
of their own Volksstamm37 by simultaneously juxtaposing it in opposition to
other, more powerful tribes or nations that repeatedly used to oppress and
maltreat the Jewish people. This experience—of being an oppressed and
discriminated against ‘Other’ and, respectively, the discourse about such an
experience—definitely seems to be one of the main reasons that two authors
imagine themselves and their co-religionists not only as a community but, at
long last, as a national entity in opposition to their oppressors (see Hegel’s
above-mentioned Master-Slave Dialectic). Defining one’s own group
merely by a process of elimination, letting another party set up imaginary
boundaries which shall decide who belongs to one group and who to an-
other, is only one step, although a decisive one, in imagining a national/
ethnic/religious entity.
Nevertheless, when Papo served as rabbi in Vienna it was already clear
that the Sephardic identity, including one of its main carriers, Djudezmo,
had entered into a state of decomposition. For instance, by the end of the
nineteenth century it was German that had become the dominant vernacular
within the Sephardic community of Vienna. This circumstance might ex-
plain Papo’s strong engagement within the Esperanza association which
sought to strengthen Sephardic culture as well as the use of Judeo-Spanish
as a spoken language. However, the efforts made by Esperanza could not
suspend this ongoing process of decay. Papo did his best in order to coun-
teract these developments. In 1884 he published a German-Djudezmo dic-
tionary (Traductor de lenguas) under the title Trajoman. Although it was
37 It is important to note that Zemlinsky apparently does not use Volksstamm or Na-
tion—translated as tribu K#4)L and nasyon IK44@<G in Papo’s version—for referring to
Sephardic Jews alone but Jews in general.
IMAGINING THE SEPHARDIC COMMUNITY OF VIENNA 77
primarily intended for Sephardic merchants from the Ottoman Empire who
wanted to sell their goods in German-speaking lands (Studemund-Halévy
2010b: 78; Hernández Socas, Sinner and Tabares 2010), it can be valued as
an effort to strengthen the relations between the Sephardic Jews of Vienna
and their co-religionists in South Eastern Europe.
What is interesting to note in this context is that Benedict Anderson ap-
praises the production of word lists and simple lexicons as an important
precursor for the emergence of modern nationalism. Of course, Michael
Papo’s Trajoman was not the only Sephardic dictionary or textbook ever
published; however, it is interesting to note that out of 21 Sephardic gram-
mar books and dictionaries—also including books for teaching Hebrew to
children—that had been published between 1821 and 1930, seven—or one
out of three—were published in Vienna—including the first one ever pub-
lished, Hinuh leNaar: Maestro de kriatura en sortes de alef bet kon algunas
kuantas brahot menesterozas. Viyena 1821 (Studenmund-Halévy 2009: 13-
15). Anderson’s assumption that dictionaries and lexicons play a sort of
vanguard role when it comes to the advent of nationalism has another ori-
gin, which is also very compelling within the Viennese context. According
to Anderson, the invention of the dictionary stood at the beginning of a
broader development, namely the scientific comparative study of languages
and philology which, of course, was first of all an elitist endeavour (Ander-
son 2006: 70-71). So it is hardly surprising that at the turn of the twentieth
century Vienna had evolved into one of the first centres of academic re-
search into Judeo-Spanish.
The variety of different dialects promoted several Romance philologists
and even rabbis, who were interested in the language of Sephardic Jews, to
engage in research into Judeo-Spanish. Most of these intellectuals came
from Germany—Kurt Levy (1907–1935), Max Leopold Wagner (1880–
1962)—and Austria—Julius Subak (1872–1936), Kalmi Baruch (1896–
1945)—but also from North America—Leo Wiener (1862–1939), Max
Aaron Luria (1891–1966) (Quintana Rodríguez 2006: 3). In Austria the
Kaiserliche Akademie enlisted Julius Subak to collect recordings in the
Balkans in Judeo-Spanish for the newly inaugurated Phonogramarchiv in
Vienna (Studemund-Halévy 2010a: 70). Subak’s recordings from 1908,
together with the material collected by Max A. Luria in 1926, were recently
published by the Austrian Academy of Sciences (Österreichische Akademie
der Wissenschaften) (Leibl 2009). These records and transcripts count
among the oldest recorded testimonies of Sephardic Jews from the Balkans.
Furthermore, several dissertations and essays about linguistic aspects of
Judeo-Spanish (phonology, grammar) and the history of Sephardic Jews
were published, most of them in Vienna or by scholars who had studied or
78! MARTIN STECHAUNER
Sir, I can respond to you with deep sorrow that the Youth in Vienna as well
as in the Balkan states is alienating itself from the mother tongue; the
languages of their countries of residence, here German, there Serbian, are
ousting the Spanish language! while the Elderly still hold on to their mother
tongue.41
[…] Bis vor 30 oder 40 Jahren trugen die Mitglieder der türkischen Gemein-
de, Männer und Frauen, die malerische orientalische Tracht und sprachen
zumeist Spaniolisch, jetzt kleiden sie sich ausschließlich deutsch, respective
französisch, d. h. modern und sprechen deutsch. Sie haben eine Schule mit
deutscher Unterrichtssprache, und zahlreiche Kinder besuchen die allgemei-
nen Volks-, Bürger- und Mittelschulen. So viel jedoch bekannt ist, widmen
sich nur selten Knaben oder Jünglinge der Wissenschaft im Allgemeinen der
jüdischen insbesondere. Ihr Ritus in der Synagoge ist der spanische. Sie ha-
ben in letzter Zeit jedoch einen deutschen Kantor, Namens Bauer, und einen
Chor (Philippson 1887: 633; see also Seroussi 1992: 149-150).
This commentary vividly describes the drastic social changes within the
Sephardic community of Vienna which occurred only within a few decades;
apparently, a new—in Hall’s terms—hybrid style of culture had emerged,
less Turkish and more Viennese. Consequently, this process was associated
with the loss of the Judeo-Spanish language and an alienation from the
traditional Sephardic culture. This was also the time when the children of
some long-established Sephardic families in Vienna decided to withdraw
their subscription from the Turkish-Israelite Community of Vienna.42
This was precisely the environmental setting in which the legend of
Diego d’Aguilar had emerged. The cultural changes that had taken place
only within a few decades must have been perceived as a real crisis by
Sephardic intellectuals, such as Papo and von Zemlinsky. Obviously these
two authors adopted and modified this legend of Diego d’Aguilar in order
to create a coherent history and to remind the Viennese Sephardim of their
los Viejos detienen con amor la lengua maternel.’ (Letter by Rafael Mazliach in Pulido
Fernández 1993: 308). Translation is by the author.
42 As for example members of the wealthy Russo family (Kohlbauer-Fritz 2010:
108).
80! MARTIN STECHAUNER
own, first and foremost Spanish, roots. In this respect remembrance of the
Balkan and the Ottoman heritage, from which contact had not yet broken
off, was not enough. For Papo and von Zemlinsky it was much more impor-
tant to draw a direct link to the ancient homeland (Sephard I) in order to be
able to preserve the Sephardic character of the community; apart from these
Spanish/Sephardic elements they were also keen to emphasise the Vien-
nese/Austrian, as well as Turkish/Ottoman aspects which altogether become
manifest in the main character of the founding legend. Several facts of
Diego d’Aguilar’s biography—for example, his Iberian origin and his influ-
ence at the court of Habsburg—appeared perfectly suited to conversion into
suggestive narratives, with the aim of creating a direct link between the
ancient Sepharad and Vienna, which also became known as the new
‘Sepharad of the Danube’.43 However, the fact that the hero in question was
of Portuguese origin obviously did not make him ‘Spanish’, or in other
words, ‘Sephardic’ enough. As a consequence, his biography had to be
altered and dramatised in order to turn it into an ‘authentic’ Sephardic folk
story, including a setting in the Spanish capital Madrid, as well as the hero’s
involvement in the Spanish Inquisition. All these elements have obviously
been borrowed from popular Sephardic novels of the nineteenth century.
Apart from a direct link to Spain, a link to the new host society, in which
most Sephardic Jews living in Vienna had integrated so well, also had been
created: not only should the Sephardim of Vienna feel themselves to be
proud Jews of Spanish heritage but also Viennese Sephardim. The aim was,
in Hall’s sense (1990: 230-237), to connect, or one could say harmonise,
several cultural spaces or ‘presences’ which were so significantly important
for the authors of Diego d’Aguilar’s legend.
44 In Ludwig August Frankl’s and Michael Papo’s version of the legend even Prince
Eugene of Savoy (1663–1736) makes a short cameo appearance.
45 Neither Papo nor Zemlinsky mention the name of the ruling Ottoman Sultan who
supposedly intervened when Maria Theresa made plans for expelling the Jews from
Austria. Frankl, in turn, mentioned ‘Sultan Selim’; however, a Sultan by that name was
not in power in the lifetime of Diego d’Aguilar (AkSin Somel 2010: lxxv-lxxvi)
82! MARTIN STECHAUNER
d’Aguilar most perfectly served the author’s efforts in the course of creating
a figure that most closely resembles an outstanding and legendary hero.
This hero was able to incorporate—at least—three significant ‘presences’
constituting the Sephardic diaspora in Vienna: a Spanish/Sephardic pres-
ence (representing the strong retrospective dependence on the imagined
homeland, that is, Sepharad I), an Austrian/Viennese presence (for having
gradually integrated/assimilated into the Viennese society) and an Otto-
man/Turkish presence (representing the historical and political ties with the
Ottoman Empire); furthermore, we could also add the existence of a Balkan
presence, since many community members continued to maintain close
contacts with their regions of origin (for example represented in the legend
by d’Aguilar’s close relation with the Sephardic community of
Temeswar46). By applying Hall’s conceptual model of diaspora and cultural
identity, we immediately become aware of the hybrid nature of the Sephar-
dic community of Vienna. The manifolds ‘presences’ featured in the legend
do not constitute pure origins but should rather be understood as discourses
about historical and geographical origins. Only the knowledge of a coherent
history allows individuals to imagine themselves as groups of people be-
longing together and, hereinafter, as a community or even as a nation. Fol-
lowing Benedict Anderson, we may not forget that an original and meaning-
ful identity of a whole group—and maybe even of individuals—can only be
imagined because history and even personal biographies turn out to be
highly complex and full of elusive ruptures. Precisely for that reason,
Sephardic communities in particular always must be studied within their
particular cultural, social and historical contexts. This is why, for example,
the different notions and nuances of Viennese Sephardic identity cannot be
understood without keeping the different—Biblical, Spanish, Portuguese,
Balkan, Ottoman, Habsburgian, and nowadays even Central Asian, Cauca-
sian, Russian and Soviet— ‘presences’ in mind, which all have a share in
this imagined collective identity of Sephardic Jews in Vienna to a greater or
lesser extent. In order to give such an identity its shape and meaning, the
creation and the distribution of an identity-establishing foundational myth,
representing not only the origins in the past but also the present circum-
stances, seems to be inevitably necessary. Especially in a diasporic context,
such a narrative, for example about a legendary hero, is able to define the
boundaries of one’s own aspired identity. In order to maintain a national
character, single intellectuals and even entire intellectual associations
46 One could argue whether Temeswar really is a Balkan city since Romania is not
always counted as a Balkan country. However, as Maria Todorova (2009: 46-49) has
exposed, Romania also may be counted as a Balkan country since ‘the Balkans’ is, too,
an imaginary place without clearly defined borders.
IMAGINING THE SEPHARDIC COMMUNITY OF VIENNA 83
Appendix
Figure 2: Pedigree of the d’Aguilar Family (selected from the Genealogical Record
in the Colyer- Fergusson Collection, archived in the Society of Genealogists Li-
brary, London, UK
IMAGINING THE SEPHARDIC COMMUNITY OF VIENNA 85
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