This chapter describes the many-sided aspects of Jewish life in Imperial Germany, in parallel to its general history up to 1914. Following an economic crisis 1873 and a decline of liberal faith, a wave of anti-Jewish sentiments spread – seemingly from Berlin – across the entire country. It brought about the establishment of new political parties with antisemitic programs, just when legal emancipation had been completed. This tension would become characteristic of Jewish life in the following era. It brought about extreme achievements in all spheres of life, but also daily confrontation with antisemitism. The latter deeply disappointed many Jews, but on the whole did not stop their integration and acculturation. Their fight against discrimination, moreover, strengthened their Jewish identity, despite further acculturation. The chapter describes Jewish cultural achievements as part of the period’s academic and artistic blooming, and the life of the Jewish bourgeoisie leading some of its members to disregard the dangers inherent in their situation.

The stylistic heterogeneity of Mahler’s compositions calls to mind the linguistic and ethnic diversity of the regions in Central and Eastern Europe where he worked most of his life. In particular, the ethnic and cultural diversity of Vienna resonated with his own sense that he embodied a multifarious identity, one that both allowed him to see the world from multiple perspectives and forced him to deal with a range of conflicts and prejudices. In this chapter, Mahler’s famous remark on his multifaceted sense of alienation – that he was “a Bohemian among the Austrians, an Austrian among the Germans, and a Jew in the entire world” – is teased apart into its components, with commentary on the implications of each element of his identity in Vienna ca. 1900. The third identity, the most difficult to grasp, is approached here through the ideas of the historian Theodor Mommsen, whose conception of the shared cultural heritage of the two realms had a wide impact.