Vienna’s stock exchange was at the center of the 1873 crash that triggered a long international depression.
The Vienna Stock Exchange crashed on May 9, 1873, in an event known as Black Friday in Vienna. The collapse followed a speculative boom in Austrian and German shares, especially after the 1871 founding of the German Empire and rapid investment in railways and construction. When confidence broke, prices fell and banks failed.
Financial stress spread from Central Europe to other economies, including the United States. In America, the failure of Jay Cooke & Company in September 1873 helped trigger the Panic of 1873, followed by a prolonged downturn often called the Long Depression. The crisis affected industrial production, employment, and international trade.
The episode is easy to confuse with the later U.S. Black Friday of 1869 or with the 1929 Wall Street Crash. In 1873, Vienna was the initial focal point, while the United States experienced its own major panic later that year.