Abstract

Apart from SC Hakoah and the Amateure (later Austria) no other Viennese football club of the first division had more Jewish members (sportsmen/sportswomen and officials) than the »First Vienna Football Club 1894«. In the period between the foundation of the club in 1894 and the National Socialist assumption of power in Austria in 1938, one third of the officials and many of the football players of the First Vienna Football Club – who were the pioneers of Austrian football – were Jews or Jewish converts. Jews especially dominated in the Club’s leading positions and important functions. The First Vienna Football Club has not yet been researched in detail, which means that most academics remain unaware of the high level of Jewish participation in it. My paper aims at closing this knowledge gap and looks at the reasons for the substantial participation of Jews in the football club.