Vorstadt, Sport und jüdische Identitäten

Research on Jewish life in Vienna prior to the Holocaust understandably focuses on places, where it predominantly took place: the Leopoldstadt and the city centre. This view fails to consider the suburb, an area that reflects spatial aspects of Jewish life and does not evoke the connotations typically associated with being Jewish but is instructive as it regards questions of »Jewish difference«. Based on the biographies of two Jewish sports officials, the article shows that (Jewish) difference was defined primarily by parameters of space which manifest as »Bodenständigkeit« (being native): In actual fact, at least in the field of popular culture, ascriptions to a non-Jewish suburb were more powerful than the Jewishness of the officials: In self-perceptions as well as in external ascriptions the meanings of Jewishness were informed by suburban affiliations.