While during the first decades after the end of the National-Socialist regime, Judaism, Jewish history and culture were suppressed by Austrian society and almost totally ignored by historical research and the universities, 1 we can notice that particularly since the mid-1980s and the early 1990s research on Austrian Jewish history and culture as well as an interest on Judaism in the public sphere have been increasing. Since then, an ever-increasing number of articles and books has been published, numerous special exhibitions dealing with Judaism and Jewish history have been presented, initiatives commemorating the Jewish victims of the Holocaust have been established, several memorials have been erected, Jewish museums have been created in Vienna 2 (1990/1993) and Hohenems 3 (1991), and University-based or public research institutes for Jewish history and culture have been founded in St. Pölten 4 (1988), Graz 5 (2000) and Salzburg 6 (2004). 7 New historical research as well as increasing public interest has always been closely related to the transformation of the Austrian historical consciousness. This trend refers to the transformation process of the so-called 'Vergangenheitsbewältigung' , the struggle to come to terms with the Austrian national-socialist past. 8 Triggered first in 1978 by the 40th anniversary of the annexation of Austria to Nazi Germany in 1938, and a few years later, in 1986, by controversial political and public debates about the biography of the conservative candidate for the presidential elections, Kurt Waldheim, a new generation of social stakeholders as well as young researchers, students, and journalists questioned the so-called Austrian 'victims theory' . 9 For them, the narrative that the Austrian state and society were not in any way responsible for the Nazi past and the Nazi crimes, especially against Jews, gradually became unbelievable and inacceptable. They demanded a critical confrontation with Austrian responsibility and also called for a public recognition of the 'real' victims of National Socialism. 10 Consequently, they were on the one hand engaged in various new memory initiatives, especially in the year 1988, when the 50th anniversary of the annexation to Nazi-Germany was commemorated all over Austria. On the other hand, they pushed forward new research in Austrian Jewish history 11 and were in many cases responsible for the foundation of the above-mentioned institutes and museums. 12 The relationship between the institutionalization of Jewish Studies and the transformation process of Austrian historical consciousness also affected the self-understanding of these institutions and has had an impact on their work and theoretical approaches. This does not mean that these institutions have only been engaged in the history of anti-Semitism or the persecution of the Jews by the National Socialists. On the contrary, they do not consider
