Vienna’s stock exchange crash in 1873 gave the Panic of 1873 its initial spark.
On May 9, 1873, the Vienna Stock Exchange suffered a major collapse after years of rapid speculation in shares and property. The event became known as the Gründerkrach, or founders’ crash, and is generally treated as the starting point of the wider Panic of 1873.
The crisis spread through financial connections to Germany and then to the United States. In New York, the failure of the banking firm Jay Cooke & Company in September 1873 helped trigger a market panic and a temporary closure of the New York Stock Exchange. Economic weakness then persisted for years in several countries.
The Panic of 1873 is associated with the Long Depression, although historians debate the exact boundaries and causes of that period. Vienna is sometimes overlooked because later accounts focus heavily on New York, but the first major exchange collapse in this chain occurred in Austria.