Benno or Beno Straucher (Yiddish: בענאָ שטרױכער; August 11, 1854 – November 5, 1940) was a Bukovina-born Austro-Hungarian lawyer, politician and Jewish community representative, who spent the final part of his career in Romania.

He vied for political direction over the Bukovina Jews with several other groups, most notably the Zionist People's Council Party of Mayer Ebner, who became his personal rival.

Straucher supported maintaining tight connections between Jews and Bukovina Germans while endorsing a personal version of Jewish autonomism and Yiddishism.

[4] From early on, Straucher campaigned intensely for the Austrian authorities to recognize a separate Jewish community in the entire Duchy of Bukovina, as part of a process to grant all ethnic groups proportional representation.

[10] American historian Joshua Shanes, who researched the political climate at the time of the election, noted that the result was "not so grand", since the list had also endorsed 19 other candidates throughout Cisleithania.

"[14] However, according to historian William O. McCagg, the "inimitable character" Straucher was elected on this anti-assimilationist platform: a critic of Zionism, he linked Jewish nationhood to a Central European homeland.

[16] He also believes that Straucher's role was similar to that of assimilationist Josef Samuel Bloch (editor of the Oesterreichische Wochenschrift), who insisted that Jews had to prove themselves to be modern Austrian citizens.

[1] After years of playing the populist leader, he began courting the political and economic regional elite: the Jewish community was much represented among investors in the city's industry and, according to Straucher's own estimate, provided some 75% of the tax income in Czernowitz and almost 50% in all of Bukovina.

[21] Also in 1903, Straucher built on his friendship with intellectuals from Bukovina's other main communities, the Romanian Aurel Onciul, of the Democratic Peasants' Party, and the Ukrainian Nikolai von Wassilko.

[35][36] The unifying idea of this Verband was electoral reform, that is the attempt to reduce the number of seats allocated to boyars and reassign them according to Straucher's own system; all nationalities involved in the project agreed to follow their respective agenda to a greater emancipation.

[36][40] The matter was investigated by a special Diet commission, who found in favor of Flondor, and who reported that the Bukowinaer Journal editor Max Reiner had been paid 1,000 Kronen to incriminate the PPNR leader.

[53] Notably, Straucher received support from Yiddishist scholar Nathan Birnbaum, who spoke in his favor at Jewish National Party caucuses during the 1907 Austrian elections.

The reason for this failure is disputed: some attribute it to opposition from the "Hebraist" adversaries,[56] others suggest that Straucher was in reality unconvinced about the Conference platform, sabotaging his own Yiddishist campaign.

[57] The Conference also marked an early confrontation between the liberal mainstream, into which Straucher had been received, and the modern leftist side of Jewish nationalism: Bundistn groups.

This followed an agreement between the three ethnic groups: the Romanians (represented by Onciul and Alexandru Hurmuzaki), the Ukrainians (Georg Wassilko) and the Jews (Straucher himself), who subsequently negotiated the matter with Oktavian Freiherr Regner von Bleyleben, Bukovina's Governor.

"[59] The agreement provided for a highly complex electoral reform which provided proportional representation to Bukovinian ethnic groups within the local Diet, but, in accordance with the wishes of mainstream Jews and in an effort to combat antisemitic agitation, did not generally award separate recognition to Jews (apart from a few separate electoral districts, they were included in the same group as Germans).

[62] Nevertheless, the failure to acknowledge Jews a separate group disappointed the Jewish National People's Party leadership, and caused Straucher to express his protests in a series of open letters.

[61] The liberal group, rallied from 1909 around Straucher's newspaper Die Volkswehr ("People's Defense"),[1] was soon drawn into a fierce competition with socialist Jews, including not just with the Bundistn, but also sympathizers of Poale Zion.

[69] Speaking in 1916, he offered his full support to the initiative, and argued in favor of replacing the various other representative bodies, but the move was opposed by the non-Zionist lobby (who preferred a Kehilla-based structure of shtadlanim).

[71] Straucher, like fellow Jewish nationalists Hermann Kadisch and Robert Stricker, continued to express his support for Habsburg ruler Charles I throughout those years.

In 1917, he claimed Jews were "an upholding element [standing] unconditionally and without reservations for Austria";[72] a year later, he pleaded with the Austrians to stop censoring the Yiddishist press of Galicia.

[73] According to social historian Marsha L. Rozenblit, Straucher's loyalism should be contrasted with those of his Jewish political partners in the Czech lands (the Selbstwehr journal group, which was more mindful of the local independence movement).

[75] On November 15, days after German Austria emerged as a rump state, Straucher proposed a bill comprising the demands of Jewish Austrians.

These tensions flared into riots, quelled when the Romanian Army entered the region and brought it into Romania (a union internationally sanctioned by the 1919 Treaty of Saint-Germain-en-Laye).

[79] In this context, Straucher joined Ebner and the socialist Iacob Pistiner in founding another, regional, National Jewish Council, which stood for the defense of community rights.

[80] The new group's program was generally suspicious of union with Romania, where Jewish emancipation had not yet been enacted, and looked into other political alternatives—for this reason, it was placed under close supervision by the new authorities.

[81] Major points of contention were the Council's demand for complete educational autonomy and its request that the wartime Jewish refugees in Bohemia, whom the Romanians regarded as aliens, be readmitted into Bukovina.

[96] Taking precautions against the Ebner's goal of propagating Zionism through Jewish day schools, Straucher gave his approval to the teaching of Romanian-language classes, and therefore to a measure of assimilation, while preventing Zionists from reforming the curriculum.

[99] At the time, the authorities had restructured the secondary education institutions into five high schools, divided by ethnicity, and Straucher's writings attest a significant reduction in attendance numbers for the Jewish Lycée No.

In December 1926, his name was brought up in parliamentary controversy: the antisemitic deputy A. C. Cuza alleged that Ebner was bribing the opposition Peasants' Party, with the goal of reforming legislation, and that, together with Straucher, he was "seizing all the land" in Bukovina.