Siebengemeinden

Siebengemeinden, Schewa Kehillot: Jews who had been expelled from Styria at the end of 1496, from Ödenburg (now Sopron) in 1526 and from Vienna in 1670/71 settled in villages in western Hungary (now Burgenland) under the protection of the Esterházy family and other Hungarian nobles. From the 18^th century the chief municipalities of Deutschkreutz, Eisenstadt, Frauenkirchen, Kittsee, Kobersdorf, Lackenbach and Mattersdorf (now Mattersburg) formed the association of Siebengemeinden (= "seven communities") with a largely Jewish internal administration. Eisenstadt remained a large municipality with a Jewish mayor until 1938. The strictly orthodox municipalities produced numerous famous rabbis and celebrities such as Moses Sofer and Akiba Eger, the politician R. Blum, the violin virtuoso J. Joachim and the composer K. Goldmark.

Jewish cemeteries have largely been preserved; however, except for Kobersdorf the synagogues were demolished under the Nazis. The approximately 4,000 Jews of the area were moved to Vienna immediately after Austria´s Anschluss to the German Reich in 1938, approximately 65 % of them were able to flee the Nazi regime and save their lives. Today, only twelve Jewish families live in Siebengemeinden. The "Wertheimerhaus" in Eisenstadt houses the Austrian Jewish Museum (Jewish Museums). In memory of their hometown, Jews from Mattersdorf founded the settlement of Kiriat Mattersdorf in Jerusalem.

Literature: B. Wachstein, Urkunden und Akten zur Geschichte der Juden in Eisenstadt und den Siebengemeinden, 1926; F. Hodik, Beiträge zur Geschichte der Mattersdorfer Judengemeinde im 18. und in der 1. Hälfte des 19. Jahrhunderts, 1975; H. Gold (ed.), Gedenkbuch der untergegangenen Judengemeinden des Burgenland, 1970.