Background

Vienna’s oldest preserved cemetery is located in the Seegasse.  Today it lies inside the courtyard of the Rossau retirement home. Graves in the Seegasse cemetery date from 1540 to 1783, and include famous rabbis and community leaders such as Rabbi Menachem Hendel (1611), Rabbi Simeon Auerbach (1631), merchant Jakob Koppel Fränkel (1670), banker Samuel Oppenheimer (1703), Diego de Aguilar (1759), and Samson Wertheimer (1724).

Following the expulsion of the Jews from Austria in 1670 by emperor Leopold I, the Jewish merchant Koppel Fränkel paid 4,000 gulden for the commitment of the city to "preserve the cemetery for all times". From 1696, the banker Samuel Oppenheimer was known as owner of the cemetery. He took care of its restoration and had a stone wall put up around it.  The Jewish population of Vienna grew slowly in the 1700s, as permission to live in Vienna was very restricted.  In 1784, a new Jewish cemetery was opened in Währing.

In the early 1900s, Bernhard Wachstein documented and catalogued the graves in Seegasse in two large volumes:

• Inscriptions of the Old Jewish Cemetery in Vienna: 1540 - 1670 (B. Wachstein; 1912)
  Die Inschriften des Alten Judenfriedhofes in Wien : 1540 - 1670

• Inscriptions of the Old Jewish Cemetery in Vienna:1696 - 1773 (B. Wachstein; 1917)
  Die Inschriften des Alten Judenfriedhofes in Wien : 1696 - 1783

The Wachstein books, which contain inscriptions and some photos, can be accessed from https://www.hugogold.com/.

During the Nazi era, the graves were buried or transported by the Jewish community to Vienna Central Cemetery (Zentralfriedhof Tor IV) for safekeeping. Since 1982, the graves have been slowly restored to their original location.  The work is ongoing.

For further information, please contact: E. Randol Schoenberg.

Searching the Database

This database can be searched via the JewishGen Austria-Czech Database or the JewishGen Unified Search