Which financial exchange suffered the first major crash of the Long Depression in 1873?

The Vienna Stock Exchange suffered the first major crash of the Long Depression in 1873. The collapse became known as the Gründerkrach, or founders’ crash, and began in Vienna in May of that year.

After the Austro-Hungarian Compromise of 1867, economic optimism encouraged company formation, railway speculation and rapid expansion of share trading. Credit was readily available, and many investors bought securities in newly established enterprises. When confidence weakened, speculative positions became difficult to sell.

The Vienna crash spread financial stress through Central Europe and contributed to a wider international downturn. The United States experienced its own Panic of 1873 later that year, followed by a prolonged period of weak prices, business failures and unemployment. Historians use the term Long Depression for this extended era, although its severity and timing differed by country.

The 1873 event is not the same as the 1929 Wall Street Crash. It occurred in a different financial system and was closely connected to railway and company-formation speculation in the years after major political and economic changes in Europe.