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Authors: Bruce F. Pauley

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From Prejudice to Persecution: A History of Austrian Anti-Semitism (28 page)

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Page 97

Kunschak, while conceding that nothing was possible without law and order, was loudly applauded when he said that the "demonstrations" by Christian students were an expression of legitimate grievances and long-held resentments. The students believed that they had been abandoned by the government. Christian students were especially upset by civil service offices allegedly hiring Jews when they were not supposed to hire anyone. Kunschak went on to say that since the beginning of the republic many people thought they had to curtsy to Jews three times so they wouldn't be accused of snubbing them. Kunschak begged the students not to repeat the violence, but added that it was up to the government to remove the causes of the students' grievances. A member of the Greater German People's Party, Dr. Josef Ursin, told the Parliament that the demonstrations at the university were simply intended to protest the predominance of Jews at Austrian Hochschulen. Jews could count on Christian support if they wished to emigrate to Palestine.

33

Anti-Semitic violence at Vienna's colleges quieted down in 1921 and 1922, but revived again in 1923. However, the introduction of enrollment restrictions at the Technical College in early March 1923 inspired members of the Deutsche Studentenschaft to demonstrate the "German character" of the University of Vienna, the Technical College, and the College of Veterinary Medicine by using sticks and hard rubber clubs to prevent Jews from entering the main buildings of these institutions and by spreading false rumors about Jews forcibly driving Aryan students out of the University of Vienna.
34
These events were but a prelude, however, to a pitched battle which took place at the University of Vienna in the fall of 1923. On 19 November, Nazi students from the Technical College, reacting to an order by academic authorities forbidding the wearing of student colors and other insignia and requiring them to carry student identification, invaded the lecture hall of Professor Tandler's Anatomy Institute, and shouting "Juden hinaus," gave Jews just three minutes to vacate the room. The next day, fifty Nazis from the College of Agriculture carried out a similar action at the College for International Trade. After storming into the lecture hall of Professor Siegmund Grünberg, they demanded, "in the name of the Deutsche Studentenschaft," the removal of all Jewish students from the classroom and the implementation of a numerus clausus. Those who did not leave within three minutes and who, in the words of the
Reichspost
"acted provocatively toward the Aryans," were beaten with rubber clubs and sticks, dragged to the top of the ramp in front of the main building of the University of Vienna, and thrown off. The police, standing only a few feet away, did nothing because of "academic freedom." The rector's response was to close the university.
35

 

Page 98

After the violence subsided, the University of Vienna chapter of the Deutsche Studentenschaft issued a statement rejecting all responsibility for the recent events and blaming them on the academic authorities who had allegedly failed to keep their promise to maintain the German character of the university. For example, a Jew, Professor Fischl, had been appointed dean of the Medical College. The demand of the Deutsche Studentenschaft for the reduction of students from Eastern Europe had also not been fulfilled. Moreover, no chair of racial-oriented "Germanic Studies" had been created and Aryan students were forced to hear lectures about German economics from an alien (Jewish) professor. These circumstances led to the enormous agitation of the German students and made it possible to understand the reasons behind the recent events. Therefore, the Deutsche Studentenschaft could not guarantee the restoration of peace and order.

36

The violence at the several Viennese Hochschulen was so extreme that for once it drew criticism from people who normally would have excused or at least ignored it. One professor by the name of Othenio Abel, who was well known for his German nationalist views, told Professor Grünberg, in the presence of a group of students, that the disruption of his lecture by Nazi students was "loutishness."
37
Even the
Reichspost
had to admit that every thinking person had to condemn the acts of violence. The student riot "was not only a great wrong, but also a great stupidity" because it gave the enemies of Christian German culture a strong argument for ending the autonomy of the university and weakened the forces of those people who wanted to support Christian and German culture. The University of Vienna was supposed to be a place of intellectual competition, not violence. Students who defied academic authorities courted disaster when they made demands that could not possibly be fulfilled. Jewry would cease to be dangerous only through the spread of German education. Positive work was more powerful and lasting than destruction.
38
The
Arbeiter-Zeitung
was even less equivocal in its condemnation of the riot calling it a "scandal." The Nazi terror had to be stopped at any cost. The violence had gone beyond anything that had taken place in any other country, including Germany, because it had disrupted research and teaching. If workers had committed the same acts, the police would have attacked them with sabers.
39
Die Wahrheit
, speaking for assimilated Jews, called the violence "purely criminal in the legal sense." Nazi students who acted like criminals ought to be treated like criminals.
40
Vienna was not the only site of student academic antiSemitism. The violence at Vienna's colleges and institutes in November 1923 was repeated at the same time at the University of Graz. AntiSemitism was also very strong

 

Page 99

in the Tyrol even though only a few hundred Jews lived there. A particularly notorious event at the University of Innsbruck occurred in February 1920 when Karl Kraus was supposed to give two recitals from his recent play,
The Last Days of Mankind
. The second recital never took place, however, because of a student-led protest when Kraus read passages ridiculing Kaiser Wilhelm and the German generals. Students at the University of Innsbruck went so far as to condemn one Professor Alfred Kastil merely for applauding Kraus's readings. Shortly after the aborted recital, students at the University of Innsbruck demanded that the school's Academic Senate restrict the appointment of administrators to people of German descent and mother tongue and that a numerus clausus of 5 percent be applied to professorial appointments and the admission of Jewish studentsdemands that the Senate of course could not implement because of their unconstitutionality. It did, however, recommend to the rector that foreign Jewish students, especially Ostjuden, not be allowed to matriculate.

41

The Influence of Austrian Academic AntiSemitism on Germany
The impact of increased academic antiSemitism in Austria during the early postwar years was not confined to Austrian Jews. Student antiSemites worked hard and enjoyed considerable success at persuading their fellow students in Germany to accept their more radical and racial views.
As noted in Chapter 3, the development had already begun in the late 1870s when fraternities in Austrian universities began excluding Jews, including those who had been baptized, at a time when even nationalistic German fraternities accepted new members without regard to their ancestry, political affiliation, or faith.
42
The situation began to change after the First World War as German universities became increasingly infected with radical forms of antiSemitism. Nevertheless, at a general assembly in 1919 Austrian representatives found it almost unbelievable that fraternity chapters in northern Germany, for example at Frankonia-Bonn, still insisted that new members ought to be accepted on the basis of their ability and character traits and not on the basis of the beliefs of their ancestors. The assembly finally decided merely to
recommend
to its individual chapters that Jewish members not be accepted.
Not satisfied, the Burschenschaft Franconia-Graz persuaded a working committee of the all-German Deutsche Burschenschaft to approve a change in the organization's principles to state that it "supports the racial standpoint; only

 

Page 100

German students of Aryan descent who openly acknowledge Germandom, will be accepted into the German Burschenschaft."

43
However, it was still left to individual chapters to determine who had Jewish blood. Moreover, the organization rejected an Austrian motion that the fraternities expel all past and current members who were Jewish or of Jewish origins.
44

Austrian students were also only partially successful at spreading the Waidhofner Principle to Germany after the war. In 1920 the Austrian Burschenschaften tried to persuade the international organization to forbid all members from giving satisfaction to any Jew or person of Jewish origins. Instead, the Deutsche Burschenschaft merely agreed to the almost meaningless statement that local chapters could forbid such duels if their members unanimously approved.
45
This pattern of Austrian antiSemitism playing an influential role within private all-German organizations can also be seen in the Deutsche Studentenschaft. Its members from the former Habsburg territories in Austria and Czechoslovakia soon pushed for the exclusion of Jews from the entire international organization. However, because the German constitution forbade such blatant discrimination, only in Austria and the Sudetenland was membership in the Studentenschaft limited to members of "German descent and mother tongue."
46
The Decline of AntiSemitism in 1924
The student
Krawalle
(brawls) in November 1923 could be considered the climax of the early postwar period in Austria so far as antiSemitism was concerned. Although there were Christian-Jewish confrontations in 192425, only occasionally were they accompanied by acts of violence. A major cause of the diminution was almost certainly the declining overall enrollment at Austrian Hochschulen, and particularly the decline in Jewish enrollment. For example, total enrollment at the University of Vienna declined from roughly 10,800 in 192021, of which over 42 percent was Jewish, to 8,088 in 192526, less than 25 percent of which was Jewish. At the Technical College, always a hotbed of antiSemitism, enrollment declined even more sharply, from 3,460 in 192021 to just 2,279 only three years later, although the percentage of Jewish enrollment remained high at around 41 percent in 192324. Perhaps even more important than these raw numbers was the graduation of most of the militant veterans of the world war by 1924.
47
At the very time when far fewer graduates were coming out of Austrian

 

Page 101

universities, there were considerably more jobs waiting for them, thus substantially reducing economic competition between Jews and gentiles. The year 1924 saw a marked improvement in the economy of Austria as well as of Germany thanks in part to the United States. As noted previously, the United States had already played a role in lessening antiSemitism in the early postwar years through its diplomatic protests. On the more positive side, its food shipments and medicine supplied by the American Relief Administration headed by the future president, Herbert Hoover, went a long way to reducing the physical suffering that to a large extent was the root cause of antiSemitism between about 1918 and 1923. Domestically, the chancellorship of the relatively moderate Ignaz Seipel from 1922 to 1924 and 1926 to 1929 along with the $126 million loan from the League of Nations, and the introduction in 1924 of a new and far more stable currency, the Austrian schilling, were all important in reviving the Austrian economy. And just as antiSemitism in Germany tended to decline with an improving economy so too did it in Austria. The main office of the World Zionist movement may also have had something to do with the lessening of antiSemitism at Austrian universities. We know that in December 1922 the Zionist State Committee for Austria appealed to the executive office of the organization in London to use its political connections to put pressure on the Austrian government to stop the anti-Semitic excesses at Austrian universities by threatening to stop efforts to restore the Austrian economy. However, we do not know what concrete measures, if any, resulted from this appeal.

48

With brief interruptions Austrian antiSemitism in general remained dormant, but certainly not dead, until a new economic crisis struck the Alpine republic in 1929. By the end of 1926,
Der eiserne Besen
, undoubtedly Austria's most viciously anti-Semitic newspaper at the time, admitted that it had not been easy to be an antiSemite that year. Many had dropped out of the struggle and the German people of Austria were divided into several antagonistic camps.
49
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