SC Hakoah Vienna (german: Sport Club Hakoah Wien; ' means "the strength" in

Hebrew Hebrew (; ; ) is a Northwest Semitic language of the Afroasiatic language family. Historically, it is one of the spoken languages of the Israelites and their longest-surviving descendants, the Jews and Samaritans. It was largely preserved ...

) is a

Jewish Jews ( he, יְהוּדִים, , ) or Jewish people are an ethnoreligious group and nation originating from the Israelites Israelite origins and kingdom: "The first act in the long drama of Jewish history is the age of the Israelites""The ...

sports club in

Vienna en, Viennese , iso_code = AT-9 , registration_plate = W , postal_code_type = Postal code , postal_code = , timezone = CET , utc_offset = +1 , timezone_DST ...

Austria Austria, , bar, Östareich officially the Republic of Austria, is a country in the southern part of Central Europe, lying in the Eastern Alps. It is a federation of nine states, one of which is the capital, Vienna, the most populous ...

. Prior to World War II, it produced several Olympic athletes and was notable for fielding an entirely Jewish

association football Association football, more commonly known as football or soccer, is a team sport played between two teams of 11 players who primarily use their feet to propel the ball around a rectangular field called a pitch. The objective of the game is ...

team with players drawn from across Europe. Closed by the

Nazis Nazism ( ; german: Nazismus), the common name in English for National Socialism (german: Nationalsozialismus, ), is the far-right totalitarian political ideology and practices associated with Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party (NSDAP) in Na ...

in 1938 following the ', it re-formed in 1945, though its football team was disbanded in 1949.

History

1909–1919

A pair of

Zionists Zionism ( he, צִיּוֹנוּת ''Tsiyyonut'' after ''Zion'') is a nationalist movement that espouses the establishment of, and support for a homeland for the Jewish people centered in the area roughly corresponding to what is known in Je ...

cabaret Cabaret is a form of theatrical entertainment featuring music, song, dance, recitation, or drama. The performance venue might be a pub, a casino, a hotel, a restaurant, or a nightclub with a stage for performances. The audience, often dining or d ...

librettist (') Fritz "Beda" Löhner and dentist Ignaz Herman Körner as well as some others founded the club in 1909. Influenced by

Max Nordau Max Simon Nordau (born ''Simon Maximilian Südfeld''; 29 July 1849 – 23 January 1923) was a Zionist leader, physician, author, and social critic. He was a co-founder of the Zionist Organization together with Theodor Herzl, and president or vice ...

's doctrine of "

Muscular Judaism Muscular Judaism (german: Muskeljudentum) is a term coined by Max Nordau in his speech at the Second Zionist Congress held in Basel on August 28, 1898. In his speech, he spoke about the need to design the " new Jew" and reject the " old Jew", wit ...

" (german: Muskeljudentum), they named the club "Hakoah" ( he, הכח), meaning "the strength" or "the power" in

. In its first year, the club's athletes competed in

fencing Fencing is a group of three related combat sports. The three disciplines in modern fencing are the foil, the épée, and the sabre (also ''saber''); winning points are made through the weapon's contact with an opponent. A fourth discipline, s ...

, football,

field hockey Field hockey is a team sport structured in standard hockey format, in which each team plays with ten outfield players and a goalkeeper. Teams must drive a round hockey ball by hitting it with a hockey stick towards the rival team's shooting ci ...

track & field Track and field is a sport that includes athletic contests based on running, jumping, and throwing skills. The name is derived from where the sport takes place, a running track and a grass field for the throwing and some of the jumping events ...

wrestling Wrestling is a series of combat sports involving grappling-type techniques such as clinch fighting, throws and takedowns, joint locks, pins and other grappling holds. Wrestling techniques have been incorporated into martial arts, combat ...

and swimming. Hakoah Vienna was one of the first football teams to market themselves globally by travelling frequently where they would attract thousands of Jewish fans to their matches against local teams in cities such as London and New York. Support for Hakoah spread around Europe rapidly as Jews as far as Russia and the United States avidly supported Hakoah Vienna who took advantage of such support by setting up very successful tours and friendlies. As the first "Jewish" team, Hakoah attracted the attention of prominent Jewish figures including author

Franz Kafka Franz Kafka (3 July 1883 – 3 June 1924) was a German-speaking Bohemian novelist and short-story writer, widely regarded as one of the major figures of 20th-century literature. His work fuses elements of realism and the fantastic. It ...

. In the offseason, Hakoah traveled around the world marketing their success. However, instead of selling jerseys and other merchandise, Hakoah sold

Zionism Zionism ( he, צִיּוֹנוּת ''Tsiyyonut'' after ''Zion'') is a Nationalism, nationalist movement that espouses the establishment of, and support for a homeland for the Jewish people centered in the area roughly corresponding to what is ...

. In preparation for their visits, they sent promoters ahead of the team in order to generate buzz and attract Jewish fans. Hakoah was not new to the notion of global tours; the organization's other teams, like swimming and wrestling had already traveled around the world and won a collection of medals. However, the team did often face anti-Semitism during its world travels. The club created an unconventional form of security, having the Hakoah wrestling team accompany them and act as their personal bodyguards.

1920s

From 1922 Hakoah leased a sports ground in the Vienna

Prater The Prater () is a large public park in Leopoldstadt, Vienna, Austria. The Wurstelprater, an amusement park that is often simply called "Prater", lies in one corner of the Wiener Prater and includes the Wiener Riesenrad Ferris wheel. Name The n ...

park. The facilities included an athletics track, a sports stadium, football and handball pitches with seating for 25,000 spectators, tennis courts, a jumping pit, hockey field, cloakrooms and showers, a dining area, and groundkeeper's accommodation. Hakoah finished second in the Austrian League in 1922. Béla Guttmann played for the team as their

centre back In the sport of association football, a defender is an outfield position whose primary role is to stop attacks during the game and prevent the opposition from scoring. Centre-backs are usually positioned in pairs, with one full-back on either s ...

from 1922 to 1926 and in 1933.Joseph Siegman (2020)
''Jewish Sports Legends; The International Jewish Sports Hall of Fame''
/ref> Following a tour of the United States, Guttmann, who was Hakoah's most prominent player, and several of his teammates decided to stay on in the US.Gabriel Kuhn (2011)
''Soccer Vs. the State; Tackling Football and Radical Politics''
/ref> In the 1920s footballer

Max Scheuer Max Scheuer (9 September 1895 – post August 1941) was an Austrian international footballer who played the defender position. He played for the Austria national football team in the 1923 season. In the 1920s he played for and captained Hakoah Vi ...

played for and captained Hakoah Vienna. David Bolchover (2017)
''The Greatest Comeback: From Genocide To Football Glory; The Story of Béla Guttman''
/ref> With the team he won the Austrian championship in the 1924–25 Austrian First League season, the first professional Austrian football title. In 1927 he and the team came to the United States to play the Bethlehem Steel Football Club, defending U.S. champion and 1926-27 champion of the American Soccer League. During

the Holocaust The Holocaust, also known as the Shoah, was the genocide of European Jews during World War II. Between 1941 and 1945, Nazi Germany and its collaborators systematically murdered some six million Jews across German-occupied Europe; a ...

, Scheuer was sent to

Auschwitz concentration camp Auschwitz concentration camp ( (); also or ) was a complex of over 40 concentration and extermination camps operated by Nazi Germany in occupied Poland (in a portion annexed into Germany in 1939) during World War II and the Holocaust. It con ...

in Poland, where he was killed in the early 1940s. Scheuer was one of at least seven Hakoah footballers killed in the Holocaust.Kevin E. Simpson (2016)
''Soccer Under the Swastika; Stories of Survival and Resistance During the Holocaust''
/ref> Others were Josef Kolisch, Ali Schönfeld, Oskar Grasgrün, Ernst Horowitz, and the brothers Erwin Pollak and Oskar Pollak. On the team's trip to London in 1923, they defeated

West Ham United West Ham United Football Club is an English professional football club that plays its home matches in Stratford, East London. The club competes in the Premier League, the top tier of English football. The club plays at the London Stadium, hav ...

by a score of 5–1, admittedly against a largely reserve team. Nevertheless, Hakoah became the first continental club to defeat an English team in England. Hakoah Vienna 1925

In a dramatic game of the 1924–25 season, Hakoah's Hungarian-born goalkeeper Alexander Fabian broke his arm. The rules at the time did not allow substitutions so Fabian put his arm in a sling and switched positions with a forward. Seven minutes later Fabian scored the winning goal, clinching Hakoah's league championship. In 1926, the team conducted a highly successful tour of the United States. Their game at New York City's

Polo Grounds The Polo Grounds was the name of three stadiums in Upper Manhattan, New York City, used mainly for professional baseball and American football from 1880 through 1963. The original Polo Grounds, opened in 1876 and demolished in 1889, was built fo ...

attracted 46,000 spectators, a record at the time. Many of the team's players, impressed by the relative lack of

anti-Semitism Antisemitism (also spelled anti-semitism or anti-Semitism) is hostility to, prejudice towards, or discrimination against Jews. A person who holds such positions is called an antisemite. Antisemitism is considered to be a form of racism. Antis ...

they found, decided to stay in the United States, accepting offers to play for American clubs. Several of these players formed a club called

New York Hakoah New York Hakoah is an American soccer club based in New York City, which takes its name from two earlier, defunct clubs. ''Hakoah'' (roughly translated as "strength" from Hebrew) is a frequent name for sport and social Jewish clubs around the wor ...

which won the

National Challenge Cup The Lamar Hunt U.S. Open Cup, commonly known as the U.S. Open Cup (USOC), is a knockout cup competition in men's soccer in the United States of America. It is the oldest ongoing national soccer competition in that country. The 2023 U.S. O ...

in 1929.

1930s

A few players emigrated to Mandate Palestine and founded Hakoah Tel Aviv football club there. The loss of so many talented players effectively put an end to the Austrian football team's competitiveness. The athletic club's success extended beyond the football pitch. Hakoah had highly successful sections in

water polo Water polo is a competitive team sport played in water between two teams of seven players each. The game consists of four quarters in which the teams attempt to score goals by throwing the ball into the opposing team's goal. The team with the ...

, athletics and swimming with the club producing several Olympic athletes, especially in women's swimming. As the top Jewish team, Hakoah attracted the attention of prominent Jews including

. The club had its own orchestra and organised balls and other social events. At its pre-war peak, the club had over 8000 members. ''

Watermarks A watermark is an identifying image or pattern in paper that appears as various shades of lightness/darkness when viewed by transmitted light (or when viewed by reflected light, atop a dark background), caused by thickness or density variations ...

'', a 2004 documentary film, tells the story of the Hakoah women's swim team with historical footage from the 1930s and contemporary interviews with surviving team members. President of the club from 1928 to 1938 was David (known as Dezsö) Herbst, who was the husband of Austria's tennis champion Liesl Herbst. He wrote in the celebratory Festschrift (brochure) on the 25th anniversary of the club in 1934: "In the days of our forefathers, we Jews have completely forgotten the old and true words in the education of our children: Mens sana in corpore sano! We only thought that the new generation should be educated, we neglected what today the whole world recognises as the only proper educational principle: to make our bodies strong." By the 1930s Hakoah Vienna was on the receiving end of hatred stirred up by Hitler, and had to travel to matches with their wrestlers as bodyguards. Three days after the

Anschluss The (, or , ), also known as the (, en, Annexation of Austria), was the annexation of the Federal State of Austria into the German Reich on 13 March 1938. The idea of an (a united Austria and Germany that would form a " Greater Germany ...

, the shared club base of Hakoah Sports Club, Hakoah Tourism and Ski Club and the Hakoah Swimming Club at the Viennese Cafe Atlashof, was shut down, with the club assets and stadium seized. The official dissolution of the sports club was administered in the political department IV Ac by the Liquidation Commissioner of the Nazi party. Dezsö Herbst did most of the official work with the Liquidation Commissioner. On 31 March 1938 the liquidator ordered the club to declare and transfer its assets. After the transfer, the final phase of the 'development' of Hakoah began. On 16 November 1938, the Liquidation Commissioner sent an application to the Board of the Vienna Police Directorate for a raid on Hakoah Sports Club. After the ' of 1938, the

German Football Association The German Football Association (german: Deutscher Fußball-Bund ; DFB ) is the governing body of football in Germany. A founding member of both FIFA and UEFA, the DFB has jurisdiction for the German football league system and is in charge of t ...

banned the club and nullified their games. Their stadium was appropriated and given to the

Nazi party The Nazi Party, officially the National Socialist German Workers' Party (german: Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei or NSDAP), was a far-right politics, far-right political party in Germany active between 1920 and 1945 that crea ...

Since 1945

In 1945 the club was founded again and exists today. The football team, which played in the second division of the Austrian championship after World War II, became defunct in 1949. In 2000, the Jewish community of Vienna purchased the club's old fields within

park for

€ The euro sign () is the currency sign used for the euro, the official currency of the eurozone and unilaterally adopted by Kosovo and Montenegro. The design was presented to the public by the European Commission on 12 December 1996. It consists ...

10 million with the intention of building a new community center. As of 2006, the club had about 400 members and its football team plays in Austria's minor leagues under the name SC Maccabi Wien. The club opened its new home on 11 March 2008.Jewish club reopens in Vienna 70 years after Nazis seized it
Haaretz, 11 March 2008

Former players

:''Source'' * Walter Beer *

Karl Duldig Karl (Karol) Duldig (29 December 1902 – 11 August 1986) was a Jewish modernist sculptor.

(1902–1986) *

József Eisenhoffer József Eisenhoffer (8 November 1900 – 13 February 1945), also known as József Aczél, was a Hungarian footballer. He could play equally well as an inside or outside left as well as left half. Eisenhoffer played professionally in Hungary, ...

(1900-1945) * Sandor Fabian * Otto Fischer (1901-1941) * Richard Fried * Max Gold (1900-1961) * Jozsef Grunfeld *

Max Grünwald Max Grünwald (born in Austria) was an early twentieth century Austrian football (soccer) inside forward who played professionally in Austria and the United States. Club career Grünwald joined Hakoah Vienna in 1920. In 1926, Hakoah toured the U ...

* Béla Guttmann (1899-1981) *

Moritz Häusler Moses “Moritz” or “Moschkatz” Häusler (July 20, 1901 in Solotvyn – December 24, 1952 in Vienna) was an early twentieth century Austrian football inside forward who played professionally in Austria and the United States. He also earned ...

(1901-1951) * "Fuss" Heinrich * Alois Hess (1903-1956) * Norbert Katz (1900-1979) * Alexander Nemes-Neufeld (1899-1977) *

Egon Pollak Gustav "Egon" or "Erwin" Pollak ( he, אגון פולק, 12 November 1898 – 21 January 1981) was an Austrian-born footballer who played for the famed SC Hakoah Wien (a.k.a. Hakoah Vienna). He was also the first ever manager of the Israel nati ...

(1898-1981) * Samuel Posaner * Benno Posaner *

(1895-1941) * Yochanan Schey * Alfred Schönfeld *

Heinrich Schönfeld Heinrich Schönfeld (3 August 1900 – 3 September 1976) was an Austrian footballer who played as a forward, and football manager. Club career Nicknamed "Beppo", Schönfeld was born in Kolozsvár, Austria-Hungary, and was Jewish. He made his p ...

(1900-1976) *

Ernő Schwarz Ernő Schwarz or Schwarcz (7 March 1902 – 19 June 1977) was a Hungarian American soccer player, coach and promoter who served as head coach of the United States men's national soccer team. He played professionally in Hungary, Czechoslovakia, ...

(1902-1977) * Joseph Stross * Jacob Wagner * Max Wortmann * Siegfried Wortmann (1907-1951)

Selected former managers

* Béla Guttmann:1932–33

Honours

* Austrian Championship titles: 1 ** 1924–25 * 2. Klasse A/II. Liga titles: 2 **1919–20, 1928–29

References

*
"Hakoah-Vienna"
in the

International Jewish Sports Hall of Fame The International Jewish Sports Hall of Fame ( he, יד לאיש הספורט היהודי, translit=Yad Le'ish HaSport HaYehudi) was opened July 7, 1981 in Netanya, Israel. It honors Jewish athletes and their accomplishments from anywhere around ...

* ''

Encyclopaedia Judaica The ''Encyclopaedia Judaica'' is a 22-volume English-language encyclopedia of the Jewish people, Judaism, and Israel. It covers diverse areas of the Jewish world and civilization, including Jewish history of all eras, culture, holidays, langua ...

External links

Official
in German and English. * {{Authority control Sports clubs established in 1909 Association football clubs established in 1909 Jewish football clubs Defunct football clubs in Austria Sports clubs disestablished in 1938 Association football clubs disestablished in 1938 Hakoah sport clubs Football clubs in Vienna Leopoldstadt Sports clubs banned by the Nazis Jews and Judaism in Vienna 1909 establishments in Austria 1938 disestablishments in Austria