Sports officials and Jewish difference

Jews in Vienna were active in modern, urban sports in quantitatively significant proportions this is a central result of the research project Jewish sports officials in interwar Vienna. The project could trace the names of about 650 Jewish sports officials, which were active between 1918 and 1938 in Vienna in sports clubs and associations. Although most of these officials worked for Jewish clubs or clubs connoted as Jewish, Jewish officials were also present at clubs which were commonly described as non-Jewish. For example, with one exception, all main football clubs had Jewish officials. This does not mean, we are talking about an open social field. The activities of a sports official were obviously only open to a small segment of society: in the interwar period, they were largely linked to masculinity, middle age and middle class. Personal contacts established in this field were important for the formation of networks. In some cases, old personal, family and professional networks are transferred to sport. For the interwar period, sporting officials who were public figures featured in sports and daily papers. They represent figures in a new field, which became important for broad parts of the society. Therefore, their self-portraying and external attributions are of a cultural significance, which far exceeded the field of sport. This can be seen in another aspect: The strict regulations of sports in some respects challenged the categories of nation and citizenships, especially when it came to a Jewish nation an idea which was widely accepted in Viennese sports of the interwar period. The combination of different fields of research, primarily sports and cultural history, with Jewish studies led to specific new insights, particularly regarding the mechanisms of the construction of the Jew as the other. Especially the precise view of the construction of the other and the important role of popular culture in this context has provided insights which could be useful for the analysis of contemporary discourses for example on migration.