Vienna was the European financial center at the heart of the 1873 stock-market crash known as the Gründerkrach.
The Gründerkrach began with the Vienna Stock Exchange crash on May 9, 1873. The German term means roughly “founders’ crash,” referring to the speculative boom in company formation and share prices that preceded the collapse. Many investors had expected continuing prosperity after rapid industrial expansion.
The Vienna panic spread through financial connections to other European markets and was followed by serious economic weakness in Germany and elsewhere. In the United States, the failure of the banking firm Jay Cooke & Company in September 1873 helped trigger a separate but related panic.
The broader period is often called the Long Depression. Its timing and severity varied by country, and historians debate whether it should be compared directly with the Great Depression of the 1930s. The Gründerkrach specifically names the 1873 Vienna-centered crash.