Vienna’s stock exchange crash began the 1873 financial panic commonly linked to the start of the Long Depression.
The Vienna Stock Exchange collapsed in May 1873 after a period of intense speculation in property and securities. The crash, known as the Gründerkrach, undermined confidence in Austria-Hungary and helped transmit financial stress across Europe. The panic later reached the United States, where the failure of Jay Cooke & Company contributed to the suspension of trading on the New York Stock Exchange.
The Long Depression was a prolonged period of weak prices, banking problems, and industrial hardship, although historians debate its precise boundaries and severity. It was not one uniform worldwide recession in the modern statistical sense.
Vienna is sometimes overlooked because the U.S. phase became especially prominent in American histories. Yet the initial stock-market shock of 1873 occurred in Vienna, making the city the specific answer.