Jewish Soldiers of the Habsburg Army (1788-1820)

With more than 1,500 individual entries, this is the inaugural instalment of my research database collated in the framework of the Project Forgotten Soldiers: Jewish Military Experience in the Habsburg Monarchy. This is an open access database, and everyone is welcome to use it according to their own scholarly and personal interests. In 1,189 cases we have official documented records confirming the soldiers were Jewish. In another 313 entries I was able to identify likely Jewish soldiers based on circumstantial evidence cross-referencing names and places of birth, with the presence of confirmed Jewish soldiers drafted into the same units as part of the same recruitment drive. This dataset further includes evidence for 156 spouses and 47 children. While military records do mentions these, their number suggests that the Habsburg army preferred to enlist unmarried men.

The database is structured in a similar way to an official individual entry in the Habsburg military records. These were arranged in tables, with soldiers listed by seniority. Name, place and land of birth are followed by age and religion. This latter rubric allows identifying the bulk of the Jewish soldiers. Also included in the record is marital status, profession (if any), number, names and ages of children (if any), followed by a short summary text of the soldier’s service itinerary. While not always consistent in detail, these texts mention enlistment dates, transfers between units, promotions, desertions, periods as prisoner of war and military awards (if any). I have taken the material from the personal records and added several additional parameters:

• The soldiers are entered into the database according to their date of enlistment. This is followed by a colour-coded table showing their years of service. To see the meaning of the different colours employed, scroll to the legend at the end of the dataset.
• Following the years of service, we see the date when the soldier left service (final year in service for incomplete service records).  When known, the reason the soldier left the army is given (discharge/ death/ desertion etc).
• Then come the three most important columns within the table: service record, primary sources and units. At first glance, these columns have only a few letters and numbers, but bring your mouse courser onto the relevant field marked with red triangles. An additional window will then open:

a. Service Record: Shows the entire service record of the soldier arranged by date. I use original German as it appears in the archival records. If you see spelling differences with modern German – they are there for a reason.

b. Primary Sources: Provides the information on all the archival records consulted to reconstruct the service itinerary. The number in the field denotes the number of the archival cartons consulted.

c. Units: Number of units in which a soldier serves. Bringing the cursor on to the field will open their list. Most Jewish soldiers served in the line infantry (IR) and the Military Transport Corps (MFWK or MFK). However, there were also Jewish sharpshooters, cavalrymen, gunners and even a few members of the nascent Austrian Navy.

• The next two columns provide entries of the soldier’s conduct and medical condition, which in Habsburg military jargon was referred to rather callously as Defekten. I note the original medical diagnoses verbatim. When possible to identify, I note the modern medical term.
• General database-wide parameters are then noted in the next part of the table. Among others, it provides information on enlistment type (conscript/ volunteer?), main branches of service (such as Infantry/ Cavalry/ Artillery), and roles within the military (such as non-commissioned officers/ drummers/ medics).
• Concluding this part of the table are columns covering desertions, periods as prisoner of war and awards of the army cannon cross (for veterans of 1813-14) and other military awards.
• The last column provides the original German outtake rubric as to how the soldier left service. In special cases, additional service notes are provides on the right.

How to use this dataset

This depends on what you are looking for. Firstly, download the dataset on to your computer via the link provided below. It is a simple Excel file which is easy to work with. If you wish to find out whether one of your ancestors served in the Habsburg army, use a simple keyword search. Please note that in our period there was no single accepted orthography meaning that some letters were used interchangeably (for instance B/P; D/T). There were also various patronymic suffices used in different parts of the monarchy (-witz in German/ -wicz in Polish/ -vits in Hungarian). Habsburg military clerks were mostly German speakers who often recorded the name phonetically. For instance, Jankel/ Jankl/ Jacob/ Jacobus all denote the same name. A Jewish teenager who identified himself as Moische when first reporting to duty, may have stayed so in the military records for decades, even if he was already a non-commissioned officer whose subordinates referred to as Herr Corporal. 

If you study the history of concrete Jewish communities, use the keyword search and the filter option to find entries in the database where this locality is mentioned. Some places like Prague and Lublin could be identified effortlessly. In other cases (and see the above point on German-speaking clerks), place names were recorded phonetically. The military authority usually stuck to official Polish names in Galicia, and Hungarian in the Lands of the Crown of St. Stephan. In reality, a Jewish recruit from Transcarpathian Ruthenia could have his place of birth recorded in Hungarian, Romanian or Rusin. When I could not identify the place in question, I marked it with italics. Do you think you identified something I could not? Excellent! Then please write me, and I will correct the entry in the next instalment of this database.

I should stress that, currently, the database is not statistically representative. I have worked chronologically, meaning that there are disproportionally more entries for Jewish soldiers from the Turkish War, the first two Coalition Wars, and the Wars of 1805 and 1809. If you look at some of my other databases (for instance, that of the 1st Line Infantry Regiment 'Kaiser'), you will find least as many Jews who served in the wars of 1813-15. I will cover these in due course. This said, using the filter option of the Excel sheet, you can already make some individual queries. For instance, did Jewish grenadiers meet the minimal height requirement to be eligible for transfer into the elite infantry? (Hint: they did not!) If you are interested in the historical study of nutritional standards, compare the height of the soldiers with their year and place of birth. In my other project, I made calculations of the average height of Habsburg soldiers and I can already reveal that Jewish conscripts were, on average, several centimetres smaller than their non-Jewish comrades drafted in the same annual intake. Whatever stereotypes said, most Jews in the Habsburg Monarchy around 1800 were very poor and the sad fact of malnutrition as a child is reflected in their height as adults.

I should stress that this is a cumulative database. ZENODO has an excellent feature allowing updated versions to supersede earlier files while retaining the same DOI (Digital Object Identifier) and metadata. As my research progresses, I plan to upload new versions of this database bi-annually. This includes not only adding new entries, but also expanding and correcting existing ones. It might well be that the service record of a soldier covered up to 1806 will be brought to a later date, possibly even to his discharge from the army. If you have not found whom you are looking for, or if you want to work with larger samples for your research, visit this page again in a few months’ time. And if you do use this database for scholarly research (by all means, please do), do not forget to cite it as you would cite any other item in your bibliography! If you are a museum professional and you want to employ material from your database to illustrate your exhibitions, you are welcome, but please cite this resource for others to learn. Links to this database will also be appreciated.