Eisenstadt

The middle destination of our road-trip today is significant in a number of historical veins: Habsburg, music and Jewish. Eisenstadt is a small village (population 14,000) in the Burgenland country of Austria. It is home to the Esterhazy family. This is a very prominent family within the Habsburg Dynasty with the wealth of land consisting at one point of 500,000 acres in Hungary and 50,000 acres in Austria. They acquired their wealth through the success of Charles VI with the system of estate capitalism, profiting from peasants. They were also lucky enough to make a very advantageous marriage to a Hungarian princess. Today the Esterhazys are the private owners of the Esterhazy Palace in Eisenstadt. The victors chose the High Baroque to celebrate the wealth and success of the Habsburgs.

Eisenstadt is home to a spectacular example of a Baroque church. Baroque is a product of Counter Reformation with an “in-your-face” sort of jab to Protestantism. The altars and frescoes are grand and distinctive emphasizing what makes the Catholics differ from the Catholics: the saints, Mary and the passion and suffering of Jesus. The Church in Eisenstadt boasts a wonderfully Baroque example of the ‘Stations of the Cross’ that wind through the cave-catacomb-like walls of the church. It was dark and cool in these caves, causing the hair on the back of my neck to stand up. I found myself in awe as my footsteps followed the steps, which were worn from centuries of pilgrimages to this site.

Another awe-inspiring room we entered was Haydn’s Mausoleum. The Esterhazy family was Haydn’s patron. Haydn was musically trained in Vienna and a contemporary of Mozart. There’s a great story about Haydn’s skull. When he first died a doctor stole his skull from the grave. He wanted to dissect it to find the music genius center of the brain and measure bone size of geniuses. Haydn’s skull was not reunited with the rest of his remains in the Haydn tomb until 1954.

Besides the journey of Haydn’s skull one of his compositions also made its way around a block or two. Haydn’s Hymn was first written and dedicated to Emperor Josef as God Bless the Emperor. Next it became the theme song to nationalism during the 1848 revolutions. Third it was picked up and sang by the Nazis, “Deutschland, Deutschland über alles.” Finally it became Germany’s National anthem however, it is illegal to sing the first two stanzas verses because of the implications of Fascism and Nazism. Next time I watch the Germans win the gold at the Olympics I will think of Haydn and his Hymn. Then my mind will probably meander over to thoughts about his skull and whether or not it is in fact Haydn’s actual skull that Eisenstadt has reunited with his skeleton or one that seems to fit.

However fun and exciting pilgrimages and composers’ tombs are, the object of my affections is the Jewish history of the city. In the 1700s Prince Esterhazy created protected communities known as Sheva Kehillot, Seven Parishes, for the Jews inside the cities of Eisenstadt, Mattersdorf, Deutschkreutz. Lackenbach, Korbersdorf, Frauenkirchen, and Kittsee. Prince Esterhazy granted Jews in these communities “all rights and facilities required by their religion” in addition to the right to govern their own communities. The protected Jewish community of over 500 inhabitants of Eisenstadt, known as Unterberg-Eisenstadt, lasted the longest and dissolved in 1938 under Nazi Occupation. It was one of the first communities the Nazis deported in April of 1938 and the rest of Unterberg was destroyed in the November Pogroms known as Reichskristallnacht. Today there are only two Jewish families, a small Jewish Museum and two Jewish Cemeteries to remind visitors of its once thriving Jewish community in Eisenstadt. We can see the remains of the Jewish community and the synagogue in the Museum.

Within the Jewish Museum and Unterberg we can see the few remains of the community’s Jewish history. The books and a few Synagogue artifacts represent the life of the community that used to be. Then there are the Nazi banners, the ghetto sign and anti-Semitic propaganda that represent the annihilation of the Jews. The tombstones in the cemeteries represent the individual Jews. I find the remnants of other tombstones that were used as tank blockades to be quite appalling. The Nazis even used the memory of deceased Jews as military apparatus in order to. In the Centralfriedhof in Vienna, there was also a huge pile of tombstones destroyed by Nazi Occupation as well. I read at the Jewish Museum in Vienna that the largest Jewish cemetery in Thesoloniki was bulldozed under Nazi Occupation. Even the deceased Jews, dead and buried, were not safe from the Nazis and their desecration. I also find the wording interesting: “destroyed by Nazi Occupation.” The passivity of the statement is quite telling: it says the Nazis did not commit the crimes but it was the occupation that is to blame. What is to blame the occupation or the Nazis?