KLAGENFURT

KLAGENFURT, capital of Carinthia, S. Austria. A Judendorf now within the bounds of the city was mentioned in 1162, and in 1279 a Jewish quarter outside a city gate was recorded. In 1335, 36 Klagenfurt Jews were listed as taxpayers. When in 1496 the Carinthian estates reimbursed maximilian i for the loss of Jewish taxes after the expulsion of the Jews from the region, the city contributed its share. A street was called Judengasse until 1829. In 1783 an imperial decree permitted Jews to attend the fairs at Klagenfurt and they resettled in the city in the second half of the 19th century. A kultusverein was founded in 1886 and a ḥevra kaddisha in 1888. A Jewish cemetery was consecrated in 1895 (enlarged in 1930) and an existing building was converted into a synagogue in 1905. The congregation was under the jurisdiction of the graz community and a separate community was not constituted until 1922. In 1869, 16 Jews lived in the city, increasing to 90 in 1880, 126 in 1899 (0.6% of the total population), 180 in 1934, and after the Anschluss (1938) 116 families. Many then left for Vienna. On Kristallnacht (Nov. 10, 1938), the interior of the synagogue and several Jewish homes were destroyed. By this time the Jewish shops had already been "Aryanized." Forty Jews were arrested and sent to dachau concentration camp. The Jews remaining in the city were deported to the Nazi extermination camps. The few Jews living in Klagenfurt after World War II (ten in 1968) were affiliated to the Graz community. The synagogue was reopened in 1961. The oldest gravestone in the Danube region, that of Shabbetai ha-Parnas, was placed in the Klagenfurt museum. Joseph Babad, rabbi of the community until the Anschluss, published several historical essays, including one on the history of Carinthian Jewry (in HJ, 7 (1945), 13–28, 193–204). -BIBLIOGRAPHY: S.S. Stoessl, in: J. Fraenkel (ed.), The Jews of Austria (1967), 385–94; H.T. Schneider, in: Klagenfurt, 18 (Ger., 1968), 83–85, 153–6; W. Neumann, in: Carinthia, 152 (Ger., 1962), 92–104, passim; Germ Jud, 2 (1968), 403; PK Germaniyah. (Meir Lamed)