Wolfgang von Weisl (1896-1974) and his family history

The project is dedicated on the one hand to the Viennese revisionist Zionist Wolfgang von Weisl, whose life, work and impact has to date not been the subject of closer study, and on the other hand to his family, close acquaintances of Theodor Herzl and other Zionists, whose members made names for themselves in various political and social, cultural and scholarly fields from the late 19th century to the end of the First Austrian Republic. An extensive family history written in 1932 by Wolfgang von Weisls mother Charlotte that goes back to the 17th century will be edited and published with a detailed contextualizing introduction, commentary, genealogical stemmata, chronologies and maps. This volume will accompany a biographical monograph on Wolfgang von Weisls career as a politician, officer, military historian, journalist, writer and orientalist, physician and religious psychologist. Finally, a selection of his writings will be published in a third, edited volume. These latter writings will be selected from among hundreds of newspaper articles, several non- fiction books and a number of narrative, dramatic and lyrical texts, as well as from an extensive, unpublished personal archive that includes monographic writings (on political, medical and religious themes), autobiographical sketches, diaries, letters, historical photographs and tape recordings. The project promises, on the basis of a single family history extending over several centuries, to provide genuine new insights on the changeable history of the emancipation and assimilation of the Jewish population of the Habsburg Monarchy, on the role and life of Jewish women in the family and in society, and on the ever-changing identity concepts of Austrian Jews and consequent political, social, cultural and religious developments, in the context of both the upheavals inherent to the shift from monarchic to republican state forms and of ever increasing anti-Semitism, which demanded ever more effective responses. The study of Wolfgang von Weisl life and career will permit new insights into (revisionist) Zionism, its various, often rival factions and activities from the early days of the "World Zionist Organization" to the founding of the State of Israel. The research project combines two dominant methodological discourses prominent in the last two decades: alterity, that is, the encounter with the other, the formation of images of the self and the other (to be found, in the case of Wolfgang von Weisl, in his travel writings in particular); and the post-colonial discourse inherent to the "Orientalism" debate. The project, which will be carried out in close cooperation with both Israeli and American research institutions, is not only of historical interest; it is also of importance to the reemerging contemporary political, cultural and scholarly relations between Austria and Israel as witnessed in the revival of bilateral organizations such as "Austrian-Israeli Society" or the "Austrian Society of the Friends of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem."

The project was successfully completed with three ample books published with the internationally renowned Boehlau Verlag (Vienna, Cologne, Weimar), who specialize in Jewish subjects. Each volume consists of commented editions with precise text comments, extensive monographic introductions, short biographies of the most important historical figures, timelines on the political, social and culture-historical context, bibliographies, Hebrew-Arabic-German glossaries and person and subject registers. The first volume, "excellently reviewed" by the FWF international, contains an autobiographic fragment by Wolfgang von Weisl written between 1971 and 1974, covering the time from his birth (1896) until the year 1928, as well as the diary of his 3-month detention in the British military camp Latrun from end of June to end of September 1946, written in 1947. The second volume, also reviewed as "excellent" by the FWF international, contains the family history written in 1931/32 by Weisl's mother Charlotte (born Popper-Michlup) about the migration of Bohemian Jews via Prague to Vienna, covering the history of seven generations up to the Thirty Years' War (1618-1648) closely entwined with that of the Habsburg Empire. The third volume, currently being reviewed by the FWF, contains two literary works by Wolfgang von Weisl: the messianic, expressionist play Erlöser - Ein ernstes Spiel von letzten Dingen (1919), depicting the subdued Jewish rebellion under Simon Bar-Kochba (132 bis 135 n. Chr.) against the Roman Empire, and the novel Der Anfang der Wandlung Israels (1932), which describes the Jewish-Arabic fights in British-occupied Palestine in 1920/21. The three volumes together form a realistic historical, autobiographic, familial genealogical and literary-fictional 'trilogy' vividly presenting authentic insights into centuries of Habsburg Jewish history of emancipation and assimilation. The abrupt Zionist turn following the encounter of Theodor Herzl and Max Nordau in Vienna leads to a discussion of the Israelite State perceived as inherited, "alt-neues" "Vaterland" (with explicit reference to Theodor Herzl's utopian state novel Altneuland 1902), which is literarily justified as a result of millennia of Jewish quest for freedom.