Vienna hosted the 1873 stock-market crash known as the Gründerkrach.
The Gründerkrach, or “founders' crash,” began in Vienna on May 9, 1873, when speculative share prices collapsed on the Vienna Stock Exchange. The boom had been fueled by rapid company formation, credit expansion, and optimism connected with economic growth in the Austro-Hungarian Empire. When confidence broke, many newly created companies failed.
The panic spread internationally, including to Germany and the United States. In the United States, the failure of the banking firm Jay Cooke & Company in September 1873 helped trigger a major financial panic and the temporary closure of the New York Stock Exchange. The broader downturn became associated with the Long Depression.
The Vienna crash is sometimes overlooked because later accounts focus on the U.S. panic. Gründerkrach specifically refers to the Austrian episode, while “Panic of 1873” commonly describes the wider transatlantic financial crisis.