April 13: The Hungarian Revolution

Hungary became a republic on this date in 1849, during a wave of revolutions in central Europe against the Austrian empire. The Jews of Hungary — who had been variously tolerated, expelled, heavily taxed, and massacred for centuries — mostly supported the revolution wholeheartedly. In July, they obtained full citizenship in the new republic, but their liberties were again lost when, days later, the Austrians, with Russian help, suppressed the revolution and began to punish the Jewish community with heavy taxation, imprisonment and persecution. A wave of German-speaking immigrants to the U.S. before and after the failed revolution brought some influential Jews to these shores. Among them were the founder of Reform Judaism, Isaac Mayer Wise, business pioneers Levi Strauss and Marcus Goldman (Goldman Sachs), and abolitionist August Bondi. “Among these Forty-eighters,” writes Jon Presco in the Bohemian Democratic Register, “were many Austrian Jews. Most of [them] became abolitionists in America, joining the new Republican party despite the fact that the Democratic party traditionally showed more openness to immigrants. It has been conjectured that their votes helped Abraham Lincoln win the 1860 presidential election.”

“I have remained faithful to the principles that I swore to uphold during the stormy days of the 1848 revolution.”
—August Bondi