The Viennese Cuisine before Hitler – ‘One Cuisine in the Use of Two Nations’
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1558/ppc.28048Keywords:
vienna, food encounters, pre-war Austria, cultural identity, jewish cuisine, Alice Urbach, 18th century, cookbook history, catholicism, food and religion, Jacob Ebstein, ingredient substitution, Theresia Ballauf, restitution claims, female authorship, female solidrityAbstract
This article asks whether the famous historical Viennese Cuisine was perhaps a shared culinary product, practice, and legacy of Viennese Jews and non-Jews alike. Trying to search for answers led me along paths of archival and historical research as part of which I met many Viennese Holocaust survivors, formed close friendships with them, and learnt from their stories. The context within which I situate my culinary history is deeply influenced by my interdisciplinary background and my work as a former Holocaust restitution historian and archivist for the Jewish Community of Vienna, Austria (IKG), where I rebuilt the historical IKG archives the National Socialists had closed down. If this culinary research helps to unearth, acknowledge, and honour the contributions of Viennese Jews to our Viennese Cuisine; if it helps us see the complexities involved in everyday culture and its most simple of acts; if it helps us understand that a genocide kills and maims people and cultures; if it helps us to remember and honour the Viennese Jews I met along the way as well as the amazing grandparents on both sides of my family who held on to the humanity of their neighbours, friends, and their own in troubling and dangerous times, then this research served its purpose.
