The 1873 financial crisis that followed a Vienna stock-exchange crash was called the Panic of 1873.
On May 9, 1873, the Vienna Stock Exchange crashed after a period of speculative investment and rapid railway expansion. Financial stress soon spread to other markets, including Germany and the United States. In the United States, the failure of the banking firm Jay Cooke & Company helped trigger a major panic in September.
The crisis was connected to excessive speculation, overbuilding, falling profits, and financial links created by industrial expansion. It contributed to a prolonged period of weak prices and economic difficulty often called the Long Depression, although historians debate how uniformly severe that depression was across countries.
The Panic of 1873 is not the same event as the Long Depression. The panic refers to the acute financial crisis, while the Long Depression describes the extended economic downturn that followed in many regions. The crash also helped end a speculative boom known in Germany and Austria as the Gründerzeit.