Abstract (eng)
Antisemitism has a history of more than 2,000 years. As it concerns Austria, latest Karl Lueger established antisemitism in politics. The First Republic has been investigated in-depth, including the election for the Constituent National Assembly 1919 and the general election 1927. Surprisingly, little detailed research is in place about the role of antisemitism in the campaigning for those polls. This study intends to fill this gap and will analyse particularly which parties, through which media, used which antisemitic stereotypes, based on which specific topics. For the first time in historical research this paper will emphasize on quantitative aspects as well, as to figure out the amount of antisemitism employed. As such it will reveal the proportion of making use of antisemitism by the main political players. Another goal of this master thesis is to shine a light on the fraction of racial / racist antisemitism and to find out if in the scope of the 1919 and 1927 election campaigns new forms of antisemitic stereotypes came into existence. The elections of 1919 and 1927 were chosen as they mark two important reference points, first the transition from monarchy to republic after WWI, then the beginning of a development towards a non-democratic Austria. This paper will also look at qualitative and quantitative variances between antisemitic propaganda in those two campaigns. To investigate these questions on one hand existing literature was used, however, it turned out that little was in place, especially when it was about published papers. Consequently, primary sources like party / election programmes, daily papers, election posters and parliamentary debates played the key role in this research and were analysed not only qualitatively but quantitatively, too. In a first summary it can be said that antisemitism and the use of antisemitic stereotypes were a common, if not everyday agitation tool during the 1919 and 1927 campaigns. Most of the relevant parties made use of antisemitic defamation to blackguard their political opponents and/or Jews as an entire people.