The 1873 financial crash in Vienna was called the Panic of 1873. It began with a stock-market collapse on the Vienna Stock Exchange and helped usher in a prolonged international economic downturn.
The Vienna crash followed years of railroad construction, property speculation, and easy credit. On 9 May 1873, known as Black Friday in Vienna, confidence broke and prices plunged. The shock spread to other European markets and then to the United States, where the failure of the investment bank Jay Cooke & Company helped intensify the crisis.
The resulting downturn is often called the Long Depression, although historians debate its exact length and severity. It affected industrial production, employment, banks, and commodity prices. The 1873 panic is separate from the German Gründerkrach, though both refer to connected consequences of the same broad speculative boom.