The stock-exchange crash that helped launch the Panic of 1873 began in Vienna.
On May 9, 1873, the Vienna Stock Exchange collapsed in an event often called the Gründerkrach, or founders’ crash. A boom in railway and property speculation had encouraged companies and investors to expect continuing gains. When confidence broke, share prices plunged and many speculative ventures failed.
The shock spread through Europe and reached the United States, where the failure of the investment bank Jay Cooke & Company in September 1873 helped trigger a banking panic. The resulting depression lasted for years and is sometimes called the Long Depression, although historians differ over its precise duration and geographic scope.
The crash is not the same as the later Wall Street Panic of 1873 in the United States; Vienna was the earlier flashpoint. Its international effects illustrate how closely nineteenth-century capital markets had become connected.