Benno or Beno (Binyamin) Straucher (Yiddish: בענאָ שטרױכער; Ukrainian: Бенно Штраухер; August 11, 1850/1854 – November 5, 1940) was a Bukovina-born Austro-Hungarian lawyer, politician and Jewish community representative, who spent the final part of his career in Romania. A Jewish nationalist influenced by classical liberalism and Zionism, he first held political offices in Czernowitz city. After 1897, he was one of the noted Jewish representatives in the Austrian Parliament's upper chamber (Abgeordnetenhaus). Straucher, who was instrumental in creating the reformist Progressive Peasants' Fellowship, maintained his Abgeordnetenhaus seat throughout the remainder of Austria-Hungary's existence. From 1906, he led the Jewish National People's Party locally and helped establish the pan-Austrian Jewish National Party. He vied for political direction over the Bukovina Jews with several other groups, most notably the Zionist People's Council Party of Mayer Ebner, who became his personal rival.
Straucher supported maintaining tight connections between Jews and Bukovina Germans while endorsing a personal version of Jewish autonomism and Yiddishism. He was a Habsburg loyalist up to the final stages of World War I, and then supported Bukovina's attachment to a "German Austria", then to the West Ukrainian People's Republic. Upon the region's incorporation into Greater Romania, he began cooperating with the larger Union of Romanian Jews. Forming successive alliances with the People's Party and the National Liberal Party, he also served two non-consecutive terms in the Romanian Chamber of Deputies. Despite such moves, and although he endorsed a version of Jewish assimilation, Straucher made himself known as a strong critic of Romanianization measures.
Biography
Early career and 1897 election victory Born in 1854 (according to other sources: 1850) in the village of Rohozna near Sadagóra (later incorporated into Czernowitz, now in Ukraine), the stepson of a merchant, Straucher graduated from the Czernowitz Gymnasium.Adunka, p.372 He studied law at Vienna University, took his doctorate from Czernowitz Law School in 1880, and became a practicing attorney (for a while, public prosecutor).Adunka, p.372. See also Hausleitner, p.75; Lichtblau & John, p.51; Stambrook, p.5 Straucher, who made himself known for supporting social policies, was elected leader of the local Kehilla in 1882 and, in 1884, deputy to the Czernowitz local council (Stadtrat or Gemeinderat).Hausleitner, p.75. See also Adunka, p.372 Although he became involved in Jewish nationalist circles, Straucher remained an independent populist, who could rally the "majority Orthodox proletariat" in political actions against the city's more assimilated Jewish elites.Stambrook, p.5, 9, 10
From early on, Straucher campaigned intensely for the Austrian authorities to recognize a separate Jewish community in the entire Duchy of Bukovina, as part of a process to grant all ethnic groups proportional representation.Adunka, p.373; Stambrook, p.10; Shanes, p.171-174 Their request was supported by Yulian Romanchuk, a representative of the Ruthenians (Ukrainians) in Galicia (the Kingdom of Galicia and Lodomeria), whose participation in the move followed a tradition of collaboration between Ukrainian and Jewish activists.Shanes, p.172sqq Straucher also tightened his contacts with the region's large ethnic Romanian community: as early as 1883, he spoke at a cultural meeting of Societatea Academică Junimea, a student club, offering his praise to the Romanian Orthodox clergy. Dionisiu O. Olinescu, "Scrisori din Bucovina", in Familia, Nr. 50/1883, p.606 (digitized by the Babeș-Bolyai University Transsylvanica Online Library)
On November 15, 1877, the Governor of Bukovina, Baron Girolamo de Alesani, ordered the arrest of the leaders of the Arboroasa student society (including Ciprian Porumbescu) on charges of Romanian irredentism; the arrest was carried out by investigating magistrate Benno Straucher. The jury, led by Baron Alexandru Wassilko de Serecki and influenced by assessor Leon de Goian, unanimously decided to acquit the defendants. However, the unsanitary conditions in prison caused Ciprian Porumbescu to contract tuberculosis, leading to the talented composer's death at only 29 years of age.
Presenting himself in the legislative election of 1897, Straucher became a member of the Abgeordnetenhaus, which represented the Duchy as part of Cisleithania.Adunka, p.372; Hausleitner, p.75, 76; Lichtblau & John, p.51; McCagg, p.173; Rozenblit, p.37; Stourzh, p.183; Weitzmann, p.144-145 Straucher, who was reelected with a large margin during the next race, kept this office for the following decades, throughout World War I and down the end of the Habsburg monarchy. In 1907, following the introduction of universal male suffrage, Straucher was one of four deputies for the early Jewish National Party to be elected that year, alongside Heinrich Gabel, Arthur Mahler and Adolf Stand (all of whom were elected in Galicia).Rozenblit, p.37; Shanes, p.174-178; Weitzmann, p.144-145 American historian Joshua Shanes, who researched the political climate at the time of the election, noted that the result was "not so grand", since the list had also endorsed 19 other candidates throughout Cisleithania.Shanes, p.174 As parliamentarian, he did not rally with organized factions, but was briefly member of a "Jewish Club", formed by representatives in Vienna.Adunka, p.372; Hausleitner, p.76; Lichtblau & John, p.51; McCagg, p.186; Weitzmann, p.144
In this context, Straucher represented the movement identifying itself with German-speaking Europe and Austro–German liberalism, favoring secularism and the preservation of rule from Vienna.Lichtblau & John, p.50sqq. See also Hausleitner, p.75-76; Stambrook, p.10 One of statements called Bukovina Jews "followers of the gigantic German culture".Lichtblau & John, p.41 According to historians Michael John and Albert Lichtblau: "Since [...] there was no traditionally established, non-German elite to speak of in Bukovina and the hegemonial powers of German-Austrian domination in the areas of education and administration still played a leading role, the Jews of Bukovina oriented themselves in this direction. The positions of power of the two large national groups, the Romanians and the Ruthenians, were still too weak to cause a shift in this orientation on the part of the Jews. In their situation as a people living in a Diaspora, the Jews were forced to rely on the protection of the hegemonial powers and this seemed, as before, to emanate from Vienna."Lichtblau & John, p.50
However, according to historian William O. McCagg, the "inimitable character" Straucher was elected on this anti-assimilationist platform: a critic of Zionism, he linked Jewish nationhood to a Central European homeland.McCagg, p.173-174 As McCagg notes, his public was still "the 'little man' who was overlooked by the elegant elders of the Jewish community"—an outlook he also attributes to the Galician supporters of Jewish autonomism, as well as to the Transleithanian Vilmos Vázsonyi.McCagg, p.193 He also believes that Straucher's role was similar to that of assimilationist Josef Samuel Bloch (editor of the Oesterreichische Wochenschrift), who insisted that Jews had to prove themselves to be modern Austrian citizens.McCagg, p.184, 193, 194
Anti-antisemitism
For all his electoral disputes with official Zionism, Straucher's ideas were largely compatible with those of his rivals: the shared focus was on fostering "identity, self-confidence and pride"; and, although Zionism campaigned for a Jewish return to the Land of Israel, very few Bukovinian Jews actually made the trip.Stambrook, p.10 According to Lichtblau and John, Straucher came to stand for "an unusual mixture of German Liberalism and Jewish Nationalism—a sort of half-hearted Zionism."Lichtblau & John, p.51
By the 1890s, the Jewish leader, whom Lichtblau and John designate "the most important political representative of the Jews of Bukovina", decided to end cooperation between local Jews and ethnic Germans, and concentrated on advancing the interests of his community—a gesture which broke with the tradition of Jewish politicians such as Josef Fechner representing a common German-Jewish vote. Another significant part of Benno Straucher's pre-1918 political activity was dedicated to combating antisemitism: himself exposed to antisemitic allegations voiced by his colleagues in parliament, Straucher was among those who dismissed blood libel claims made during the Hilsner Affair of 1899.Lichtblau & John, p.52. See also Adunka, p.372-373 He gave similar speeches about the growing threat of pogroms on the Austrian border, in the Russian Empire and the Kingdom of Romania.Stambrook, p.11
According to Lichtblau and John, the rise of antisemitism among Austrian German communities was a contributing factor to the rift between German and Jewish liberalism in Bukovina: "Naturally, those secular Jews—whose acculturation had been a modern one, for whom religion and tradition retained little significance and for whom German [culture] had assumed almost mythological stature as a substitute for the traditional culture they had given up—were shocked by the rise of German Nationalist anti-Semitism in the western provinces of the Monarchy, since it endangered their perspective of their own identity."Lichtblau & John, p.52 Antisemitism was more latent in other local communities,Stambrook, p.12-13 but exacerbated in Bukovina German quarters. German-Jewish tensions first surfaced in the early 1890s, when German students adopted religious antisemitism, setting up the Society of Christian Germans in Bukovina (also joined by parliamentarians Arthur Skedl and Michael Kipper).Lichtblau & John, p.53. See also Hausleitner, p.69-72
In reaction, young Jewish activists such as Mayer Ebner embraced Zionism.Lichtblau & John, p.53sqq; Stourzh, p.183. See also Hausleitner, p.75-76 Their clubs were thereafter divided between those who supported immediate emigration (Aliyah) or still invested energy into creating a Bukovina Zionist party.Lichtblau & John, p.53. See also Hausleitner, p.76 In this context, Ebner reluctantly endorsed Straucher, and, in 1904, founded with him a pan-nationalist group called Jüdischer Volksverein ("Jewish People's Union").Adunka, p.372; Hausleitner, p.75; Lichtblau & John, p.53 According to McCagg, Straucher's was by then "a vaguely Zionist platform".McCagg, p.174 Other academics agree: Jess Olson describes Straucher as "the Zionist Reichsabgeordneter [Member of Parliament]";Olson, p.34 Emanuel S. Goldmith calls him "the only nationally inclined Jewish representative" in the Viennese Parliament.Goldsmith, p.108
Lichtblau and John illustrate the split between the German and Jewish communities with a sample from one of Straucher's parliamentary speeches, which reads: "Why [...] are the Germans engaged in an economic and political war against the Jews? I as well have been raised and educated only as a German. Why am I inferior? [...] [In stating we are Jews and not Germans,] we are drawing the obvious conclusion! And nevertheless we remain friends of the German people because we are admirers of the prodigious German culture. We as a people want to be loyal friends of the German people and of other peoples, if and to the extent that they acknowledge our equal rights and equal worth!" Straucher also reacted against the claims of Viennese politicians that Bukovina was destitute and "semi-asiatic", deeming them "most unfair".Lichtblau & John, p.65 His other statements of the time are proof of Austrian patriotism, loyalism and reverence for Habsburg Emperor Franz Joseph I.Lichtblau & John, p.55
Freisinnige Verband and Progressive Peasants' Fellowship