Maria Theresa Expels the Jews

JAN 01 1744 · 12:00

The Jewish Town Hall (Židovská radnice) on Maiselova street in Josefov. Its rococo façade and Hebrew clock-face survived the 1744 expulsion that emptied the surrounding quarter; two-thirds of the community returned by 1748 under the Toleranzsteuer. Place: Josefov (Jewish Town), Prague Figures: Maria Theresa of Austria · Frederick II of Prussia (intervenes) · the merchant houses of London, Amsterdam, and Venice (intervene) · roughly ten thousand expelled Six months after the Habsburgs recover Prague from the French and Bavarians, Maria Theresa signs a decree of expulsion. All Jews are to leave Prague by the end of January 1745 and the Czech lands by the following summer. The stated grounds: collaboration with the French. The grounds are not credible; the Jewish community had been bled by all sides of the occupation. The queen's biographers describe her antisemitism as personal and immovable. Her father had tolerated; she will not. Ten thousand people leave the Jewish Town in the depth of a Central European winter. The Altneuschul, the Maisel and Pinkas synagogues, the Old Jewish Cemetery, are closed. Property is confiscated or sold below value to Christian neighbors. The community that traced itself in Prague to the tenth century empties almost overnight.