On October 8, 1927, a commentary appeared in the popular Viennese sports magazine Illustriertes Sportblatt that dealt with the sporting developments in Viennese football. The article is exemplary for the construction of a specific cultural topography of the city, which in interwar Vienna was defined not least by the category of “Jewish difference [jüdischer Differenz]”. Before and after 1918, Vienna was an important place for the development of various Jewish self-perceptions and external images of “Jews”. The Jewish population of the city was just under ten percent. An important field of activity for Jewish men - and to a limited extent Jewish women - was football, which established itself as one of the most important mass cultures during this period and established Vienna as one of its European centers. Football stadiums became spaces for political discourse, combining sport and society. A cultural topography of Viennese football emerged in and around the stadiums that has remained powerful to this day. It revolved around the central antagonism between the suburbs with their proletarian connotations and the bourgeois city, of “down-to-earth [bodenständigen]” clubs such as the Rapid sports club or the Floridsdorfer Admira, which were juxtaposed with the “city clubs” Wiener Amateur-Sportverein (called Amateure, later FK Austria) and the national Jewish SC Hakoah. The cipher “Jewish” was associated with the city center and the coffee house - as a metaphor and place for club meetings.
The suburb leads! Why the “City” clubs are declining. Illustriertes Sportblatt 23 (1927), No. 41, October 8,1927, edited in: Jewish Textual Architectures, <https://jewish-textual-architectures.online/source/jta:source-4> [October 26, 2025].