Which stock exchange suffered a crash on May 9, 1873, helping start the Long Depression?

The Vienna Stock Exchange suffered the crash of May 9, 1873, helping start the Long Depression.

The day became known as Gründerkrach, or the Founders’ Crash, after a speculative boom in Austria-Hungary. Investors had poured money into railways, construction, and newly established companies, often expecting prices to keep rising. When confidence broke, share prices collapsed and financial failures spread.

The shock moved beyond Vienna. Banking stress affected Germany and the United States, where the failure of the investment bank Jay Cooke & Company in September 1873 helped trigger a severe American panic. The resulting downturn included falling prices, bankruptcies, unemployment, and prolonged weakness in industrial economies.

The Long Depression is sometimes dated from the American panic alone, but the Vienna crash was an important earlier turning point. Historians also debate the exact length and geographic boundaries of the depression. Its causes included speculative excess, monetary pressures, and the financial consequences of rapid railway expansion.