Portrait of Ludwig August Frankl

Ludwig August Frankl was one of the most prominent personalities in the nineteenth century Viennese Jewish community. He was born in Chrást, Bohemia, in 1810 and came to Vienna to study medicine. He soon made a name for himself as a writer and became the archivist of Vienna’s Jewish community. He was a polymath devoted to the spirit of the Enlightenment. During the 1848 revolution he fought with the Academic Legion, and his poem "Die Universität" became the anthem of the revolution. Thousands of copies of this “first uncensored sheet” were distributed. The portrait shows Frankl as a revolutionary in the uniform of the Academic Legion with his saber. He poses confidently in front of the black-red-gold flag: Jews still saw the German nationalist movement as a key to freedom.