37 Facts About Benno Straucher

Benno or Beno Straucher was a Bukovina-born Austro-Hungarian lawyer, politician and Jewish community representative, who spent the final part of his career in Romania.

Benno Straucher supported maintaining tight connections between Jews and Bukovina Germans while endorsing a personal version of Jewish autonomism and Yiddishism.

Benno Straucher was a Habsburg loyalist up to the final stages of World War I, and then supported Bukovina's attachment to a "German Austria".

Benno Straucher studied law at Vienna University, took his doctorate from Czernowitz Law School in 1880, and became a practicing attorney.

Benno 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.

From early on, Benno 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.

Benno Straucher tightened his contacts with the region's large ethnic Romanian community: as early as 1883, he spoke at a cultural meeting of Societatea Academica Junimea, a student club, offering his praise to the Romanian Orthodox clergy.

Benno 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, Benno 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.

However, according to historian William O McCagg, the "inimitable character" Benno Straucher was elected on this anti-assimilationist platform: a critic of Zionism, he linked Jewish nationhood to a Central European homeland.

Benno Straucher believes that Straucher's role was similar to that of assimilationist Josef Samuel Bloch, who insisted that Jews had to prove themselves to be modern Austrian citizens.

Benno Straucher gave similar speeches about the growing threat of pogroms on the Austrian border, in the Russian Empire and the Kingdom of Romania.

In 1900, Benno Straucher was elected to the Diet of Bukovina, and kept his seat to 1918.

Benno Straucher was trusted with directorial positions by the Bukovina savings bank, the Chamber of Commerce, Czernowitz Brewery, and, from 1905, the regional School Board.

Also in 1903, Benno Straucher built on his friendship with intellectuals from Bukovina's other main communities, the Romanian Aurel Onciul, of the Democratic Peasants' Party, and the Ukrainian Nikolai von Wassilko.

Reportedly, Benno Straucher was personally involved in the frame-up, speaking in the Diet against Flondor and his family, and accusing Flondor of having intrigued against his PPNR colleague Gheorghe Popovici.

Allegations about "Jewish" corruption in the Czernowitz local council, targeting Benno Straucher's leadership, resulted in ethnic tensions.

However, Benno Straucher did not support education in Yiddish, and favored German-language schools, for which he demanded special Jewish inspectors and teachers.

Notably, Benno Straucher received support from Yiddishist scholar Nathan Birnbaum, who spoke in his favor at Jewish National Party caucuses during the 1907 Austrian elections.

Together with Diamant and Birnbaum, Benno Straucher organized the first Conference for the Yiddish Language, held in Czernowitz between August 31 and September 3,1908.

The reason for this failure is disputed: some attribute it to opposition from the "Hebraist" adversaries, others suggest that Benno Straucher was in reality unconvinced about the Conference platform, sabotaging his own Yiddishist campaign.

The Conference marked an early confrontation between the liberal mainstream, into which Benno Straucher had been received, and the modern leftist side of Jewish nationalism: Bundistn groups.

Nevertheless, the failure to acknowledge Jews a separate group disappointed the Jewish National People's Party leadership, and caused Benno Straucher to express his protests in a series of open letters.

The liberal group, rallied from 1909 around Benno Straucher's newspaper Die Volkswehr, was drawn into a fierce competition with socialist Jews, including not just with the Bundistn, but sympathizers of Poale Zion.

Benno Straucher subsequently used the Abgeordnetenhaus tribune for condemning the antisemitic violence linked with the various political changes.

Benno Straucher was still at the Abgeordnetenhaus during late autumn 1918, as the Austrian monarchy began to crumble.

In later years, Benno Straucher stood for a platform advocating the preservation of Jewish rights in Bukovina and throughout the Jewish-Romanian community.

Benno Straucher was the only one elected to the Chamber, effectively on Averescu's ticket.

The entire UER eventually threw its support behind the National Liberal Party: in the 1922 election, alongside Nistor, former leader of the Democratic Union Party, Benno Straucher endorsed the National Liberal platform for Bukovina.

On both occasions, Benno Straucher insistently urged the governing majority to take special measures against the "shameful disturbances".

Benno Straucher ran against Ebner's colleagues, which marked his split with the Bukovina Zionists.

At the time, the authorities had restructured the secondary education institutions into five high schools, divided by ethnicity, and Benno Straucher's writings attest a significant reduction in attendance numbers for the Jewish Lycee No 3.

Benno Straucher did not present his candidature in 1926, but his activities were still monitored by antisemitic adversaries, especially after the minority-language students in Bukovina rebelled against the baccalaureate commission.

Cuza alleged that Ebner was bribing the opposition Peasants' Party, with the goal of reforming legislation, and that, together with Benno Straucher, he was "seizing all the land" in Bukovina.

Benno Straucher had extended his agreement with the National Liberals and, remarkably, ran against a bloc of minorities formed nationally around the Magyar Party, the German Party and Zionist organizations.

Benno Straucher was still publishing Die Volkswehr as an "organ of the Jewish National People's Party", and still pressuring officials into intervening to curb fascist violence.

Benno Straucher lies buried in the modern-style Straucher family crypt, at the Chernivtsi Israelite Cemetery.