From Prejudice to Persecution: A History of Austrian Anti-Semitism (32 page)

Read From Prejudice to Persecution: A History of Austrian Anti-Semitism Online

Authors: Bruce F. Pauley

Tags: #History, #Jewish, #Europe, #Austria & Hungary, #Social Science, #Anthropology, #Cultural, #Discrimination & Race Relations, #test

 

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9
Segregation and Renewed Violence
During the democratic years of the First Austrian Republic it was the large and well-organized anti-Semitic demonstrations against Ostjuden in the early postwar years, the XIVth Zionist Congress in 1925, and anti-Semitic brawls at Austrian universities that attracted national and even international attention. These public and noisy displays of anti-Jewish hostility became less frequent in the second half of the 1920s only to return again after the onslaught of the Great Depression. Even during those times when Austrian antiSemitism was the least overt and public, however, it continued to flourish in a wide variety of private and professional organizations, especially those catering to the academically trained middle class. Not surprisingly therefore, these organizationswith the exception of those that were avowedly Roman Catholic-excluded Jews from membership primarily for "racial" reasons.
Private Clubs
Private organizations, unlike, for example, tourist and health resorts, were legally free to discriminate as far as their membership was concerned. Even though these organizations were technically nonpolitical, they were very much influenced by contemporary political ideologies when it came to antiSemitism. And like the antiSemitism of bourgeois parties, that of the various
Vereine
of Austria became increasingly racist and radical after the First World War until many of them were disbanded by the Austrian government after 1933 for their close connections to Nazism.
One of the largest and most anti-Semitic of these organizations was the Deutschösterreichischer Alpenverein (German-Austrian Alpine Club), a mountaineering organization that provided members with hundreds of protective shelters during their hikes. Founded in 1874, the 250,000-member Alpen-

 

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verein resembled student organizations such as the Deutsche Studentenschaft in being "all-German," having 84 chapters in Austria and 220 in Germany. In May 1921 the "Austria" chapter of the Alpenverein, the oldest, and with 7,000 members, the largest of the organization's chapters, introduced a bill to the Alpenverein's general assembly that would have excluded Jews from the entire organization. Although two-thirds of the chapters approved the motion, it fell short of the three-fourths majority needed for acceptance.

1

Nevertheless, many individual chapters of the Alpenverein did expel their Jewish members. The "Austria" chapter itself did so in October 1921 by a vote of 2,420 to 46 after its leader, Otto Wagner, gave a speech advancing the extreme racist argument that a large number of Jews had criminal, not human instincts, and he blamed the Jews for dividing the German people into classes. Some of the Jews who had been expelled from various chapters of the Alpenverein subsequently formed their own "Donauland" chapter in Vienna in late 1921, which was admitted into the Alpenverein by a 14-to-12 vote of the executive committee. Even this apartheid solution was unacceptable to the Klagenfurt section of the Alpenverein, which in 1924 demanded the expulsion of Donauland. Ninety-nine chapters, nearly all of them Austrian, sponsored the bill, which was accompanied by a threat from the Klagenfurters that they and the other Austrians would withdraw from the organization altogether if their demand was not met. The motion was approved by the main assembly by a vote of 1,660 to 70. This expulsion did not entirely end the matter, however, because the "Austria" section of the Alpenverein continued its enmity toward Donauland. It blamed Jews for the Treaty of St. Germain and for the growing influx of tourists into Austria, many of whom, according to the chapter, were obtrusive Jews who wore offensive clothing and destroyed the landscape.
2
Another organization having pronounced anti-Semitic proclivities was the Osterreichischer Touristenklub or Austrian Tourist Club. In theory the club was merely supposed to protect the Austrian Alps from "undesirable elements." The club began excluding Jews informally in 1920 and then made it official a year later.
3
Gymnastic organizations in Austria were even more nationalistic and anti-Semitic, tracing their ideological heritage back to the early nineteenth-century teachings of "Turnvater" Friedrich Jahn. Like the Alpenverein, they were often more anti-Semitic than their counterparts in Germany. The Turnerbund ridiculed the parent Deutsche Turnerschaft in Germany for accepting Jews as members and considering them Germans if they had German citizenship and had converted to Christianity. Already in 1897 the Erster Wiener Turnverein (First Viennese Gymnasts' Club) introduced the so-called Aryan

 

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paragraph, which excluded Jews from membership. Its successor was the Deutscher Turnerbund 1919 (German Gymnasts' League 1919). Founded in September 1919, it fought against the "enemies of the German people": Marxism, Bolshevism, and Judaism and all other "un-German" influences. No Jews or foreigners could join the organization, and members could not be married to Jews. Any contact with a Jew was thought to make one dirty. By 1932 the Turnerbund had 70,000 adult members and another 45,000 who were children.

4

A Catholic gymnastic association called the Christlich-deutschen Turnerschaft incorporated the German-völkisch ideology of the Deutscher Turnerbund in opposing Jewish influence in social life and in the press. It wanted to restore the privileged position that Christians enjoyed before the emancipation of Jews. It differed from the nationalistic groups in rejecting rowdiness in favor of boycotting Jews in order to ruin their businesses. The association also differed from other gymnastic organizations in adding elements of Roman Catholic beliefs in, for example, regarding the Jews as the murderers of Jesus. Typical of Catholic antiSemitism was also the injunction that members should fight the "disintegrating" influence of Jews through not buying Jewish newspapers or magazines and by not showing any enthusiasm for works created by the "Jewish spirit." Unfortunately, however, "idealistic" Christians were at a disadvantage when fighting "materialistic" Jews. None of this contradicted Nazi ideology, and indeed the Christlich-deutschen Turnerschaft admired the Nazis' outspoken German nationalism. However, like most other Catholics, the gymnasts considered the Nazi stand on racial questions too extreme.
5
The Osterreichischer Schiverband (Austrian Skiing Association) was still another, though much smaller, private anti-Semitic organization, which in 1927 had 2,435 members in forty-six chapters. It had introduced the Aryan paragraph in 1922 causing several of its chapters to withdraw and leading to the founding of a second organization known as the Allgemeiner österreichischer Schivervand (General Austrian Skiing Association), which did not insist on racial purity. The statutes of the Osterreichischer Schiverband during the 1920S and early 1930s moved in an ever more racial direction. In 1932 the statutes mentioned "cultivating and encouraging German racial consciousness." By this time and later there was some Nazi activity going on within the association, although it cannot simply be called a cover for the Nazi Party.
6
Professional organizations for physicians and lawyers were also far from being above antiSemitism in the First Austrian Republic. In their practices, physicians and apothecaries were obliged by law to serve anyone who sought their services. Lawyers, however, were under no such obligation. The only

 

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Jewish clients that the early Nazi leader, Dr. Walter Riehlhimself a lawyerwould accept were those who wished to prosecute other Jews. Professional organizations, being private, were also not legally bound to accept Jews. For example, the Vereinigung christlichdeutscher Ärzte Österreichs (Union of Christian-German Physicians of Austria) stipulated in its "Cultural and Political Principles" of September 1935 that it would accept Jews only if they unquestionably belonged to the German cultural community. The union did not, however, adopt an extreme racial philosophy because it was willing to accept Jews who had "honorably" converted to Christianity. However, such Jews would be entrusted with active collaboration only after special precautions had been taken. The principles also stated that race was part of the natural order and was to be respected and cultivated. Indiscriminate mixing between very different races was to be taken more seriously than in the past. The disintegrating influence of Jews was to be decisively fought.

7

Viennese lawyers were, if anything, generally even more anti-Semitic than physicians, at least by the early 1930s. However, in the 1920s they all belonged to a Chamber of Lawyers, which in 1922 departed from tradition by electing a Jew as its president. He was succeeded by a gentile, but then in 1932 another Jew, Dr. Siegfried Kantor, was elected. At a time when Nazism was rapidly growing in Austria and Germany, Kantor's election proved to be intolerable for many of the non-Jewish members of the chamber, who formed their own League of German-Aryan Lawyers of Austria. In 1934 the German-Aryan Lawyers complained that Austria was "overrun" with foreigners, especially Jews, and noted that there were only 320 Aryan lawyers in Vienna, compared to 1,834 Jewish lawyers. The league also refused, as a matter of principle, to collaborate with Jewish colleagues or Jewish judges in professional matters. Its newsletter, the
Mitteilungen des Verbandes deutscharischer Rechtsanwälte
, supported radical racial antiSemitism and demanded a strict numerus clausus; it was also responsible for publishing a "Guide to Aryan Businesses" for its readers.
8
However much professional organization in Austria may have practiced antiSemitism in admitting members and in regulating their conduct with Jews, their journals usually avoided the "Jewish question" and confined themselves to issues pertinent to their profession.
9

 

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The Continuation of Academic AntiSemitism, 19251932
Meanwhile, Austrian university students, who often did or who soon would belong to these private interest groups and professional organizations, were keeping antiSemitism alive and well in the academy. For Austria as a whole there was a substantial diminution of overt antiSemitism beginning in 1924 and continuing with some interruptions until the end of the decade. However, this decline was only barely noticeable in Austria's Hochschulen. There, anti-Semitic demonstrations continued with almost monotonous regularity, especially at the University of Vienna and the Technical College, despite the steady and rapid decline of Jewish enrollment at these and other institutions of higher learning. One should point out, however, that although Austria's economy in general had nearly reached prewar levels by the late 1920s, the prospects for young university graduates continued to be poor if not as bleak as the early postwar years, thus encouraging gentile students to cling to the belief that their career opportunities could be improved only through eliminating Jewish predominance in the professions.

Although the number of Jewish students at Vienna's colleges and institutes had undoubtedly been high before and especially during and immediately after the First World War, their enrollment was far lower by the late 1920s and even lower during the 1930s. Jewish enrollment in all of Vienna's Hochschulen still stood at 42 percent in 192021; by 192526, however, it was already below 25 percent. By 1927 only 17. 5 percent of the students at the University of Vienna were Jewish, and only 9. 1 percent were Jews at the Technical College. The 2,204 Jewish students who attended the university in 1928 dropped to only 1,553 in 1936 out of a total of 9,675. In 1933 the 1,213 Jewish students in the Medical College made up about a third of the 3,774 total students; however in the arts and sciences division there were only 554 Jews among the 4,450 students, or just 12 percent.

10

Statistics alone do not begin to describe the declining status of Jews in Austrian universities during the First Republic. Even the most outstanding Jews among the faculty were unable to obtain appointments as full professors. Some (but not all) Jews were convinced that their gentile professors used any excuse to fail them. By the same token, outside university halls Jews were never appointed to be directors of primary or secondary schools.
11
AntiSemitism in Vienna's Hochschulen was expressed by far more than complaints about Jewish overrepresentation and demands for the implementation of a numerus clausus. The
Neue Freie Presse
reported in March 1925

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