At the beginning of this century, Vienna was home to a Jewish population of about 200,000 including unusually large concentrations of Turkish, Galician, Balkan, and Hungarian Jews. Synagogues proliferated to accommodate regional groups, graduation of orthodoxy, and craftsmen in special industries who formend their own congregations. The stylistic range in Viennese synagogues encompassed neoclassicsm (Seitenstettengasse), Moorish (Tempelgasse), a free mixture of massive art nouveau with Romanesque and Gothic detail (Pazmanitengasse), and timid modernistic (Hitzing-Eintelbergergasse). Of all these synagogues, numbering about sixty during the mid- 1930s, only one survived the second World War. That was the oldest, the „Tempel“in the Seitenstettengasse in central Vienna. It took a long time for the Jews to increase sufficiently in number and status to commission this building. There had been Jews in Vienna since the late twelfth century; the first synagogue, in St. Stephen´s parish, was mentioned in a document of 1204. Later thirteenth-century documents refer to this or other synagogues, and documents of 1406 and 14220 refer to the burning of synagogues. The document of 1420 describes the synagogue on the Judenplatz as having a men´s prayer hall, a women´s section linked to the men´s by a window, movable seats, and an area where oil was stored. In 1421 came the expulsion or burning of the few Jews who had not died during the program of the previous year.

Als sie heranrückten, erzählt er mit gedämpfter Stimme wie ein Schauermärchen, nahm selbst der Himmel einen östlichen Farbton an. Ein fahles ockergelb lag in der Luft, der Schwarzenbergplatz schien sich zu dehnen und in die russischen Tiefebenen hinüberzureichen. Endlich waren, in ihrem hohen Stiefeln, in ihren weiten, taillierten Militärmänteln und ihren Schafsfellmützen, die Sieger einmarschiert und hatten die Stadt in eine unbekannte, furchterregende Landschaft verwandelt.