From Prejudice to Persecution: A History of Austrian Anti-Semitism (39 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

 

Page 153

morality. The Jewish spirit was one of naked profit and heartless egotism. Jews believed that their natural enemy was the Roman Catholic church, which they wanted to undermine through spreading disbelief, by organizing strife between different Christian denominations, and through the use of slander and ridicule. Jews had invented anticlericalism and were responsible for the hatred of Christianity within the Social Democratic Party. Jews and revolution were inseparable; in Russia Kerensky, Lenin, and Trotsky were all Jews, as were Karl Liebknecht, Rosa Luxemburg, and Kurt Eisner in Germany. In defending themselves against this menace, Christians did not want to fight the Jewish religion or use force against Jews, some of whom were upright. Rather, Jews ought to be treated as a separate nation, just as the Zionists demanded. The Jewish press, which was the main source of Jewish influence, also had to be fought. The latter was the task of the recently organized ''Piusverein." The best method of immunization against Jewish influence, however, was through a religious revival.

10

Catholic antiSemitism was also very much in evidence at a conference of Catholic academicians in Innsbruck in 1925. Bishop Sigismund Waitz called the Jews an "alien people" who had corrupted England, France, Italy, and especially America. Americanism, he said, was nothing more than the Jewish "spirit." Thanks to Jewish control over banks and newspapers, their power in the last few years had grown in an uncanny way. If people did not cultivate Christianity, Jews would become even more powerful. On the other hand, the more Christian life flourished, the more protected the Christian people would be against the corrupting influence of unbelieving Jewry.
11
Other similar publications included
Kikiriki
, a satirical magazine that specialized in attacks on "stock-market Jews" and carried inflammatory caricatures of Orthodox Ostjuden with the sidelocks. It has even been described as a forerunner of Julius Streicher's infamous
Stürmer
in Nuremberg.
12
Anti-Semitic articles and editorials were also commonplace in such newspapers as the
Grazer Volksblatt
, the
Salzburger Volksblatt, Der Bauernbündler
, the
Klerus Zeitschrift für soziale Arbeit
, the
Kleines Kirchenblatt
(a newspaper written for Roman Catholic youth), and countless other Catholic or Christian Social newspapers and journals.
13
By far the most important of these periodicals was the
Reichspost
. However, its circulation of 50,000 made it only the fourth largest newspaper in Austria after 1925; the
Arbeiter-Zeitung
, with 112,000 readers, the
Neue Freie Presse
with 75,000, and the
Neues Wiener Tagblatt
with 55,000, were all larger. In fact, the
Reichspost's
inferior circulation, which caused financial difficulties, and the absence of journalists comparable with those of the great

 

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Jewish-dominated newspapers, were doubtless behind some of the
Reichspost's
antiSemitism.

14

Although it was the official organ of the entire Christian Social Party, its readers came mostly from the conservative right wing of the party, which supported Ignaz Seipel. Since the first year of its publication in 1894, the paper dealt with all aspects of the Jewish question in a way designed to evoke an emotional response. The attacks were always aimed against Jews in general, rather than particular Jews. The paper's editor, Friedrich Funder, like Karl Lueger, determined who was a Jew and did not hesitate to socialize with individual Jews as long as they were baptized.
15
Anti-Jewish articles were endemic in the
Reichspost
, especially in the early postwar years. Shortly after the armistice, the
Reichspost
complained that Jewish soldiers were stealing valuable items from the Habsburg palaces of Schönbrunn and the Hofburg. In 1919 it claimed that six million Germans in Austria were being ruled by a tiny percentage of Jews who belonged not only to a different nation but also to a different race. Other articles dealt with the overrepresentation of Jews in Austrian schools and universities, the supposed prominence of Jews in the Austrian government, and the need for expelling the Ostjuden. The
Reichspost
was also fond of attacking its rival, the
Neue Freie Presse
, and its predominantly Jewish editorial staff. Almost all of the anti-Semitic articles were linked to the Social Democratic Party, which was blamed for allowing Jewish refugees to remain in the country.
16
A favorite topic for the
Reichspost
was the alleged effort by "the Jews" to take over the world, a thesis that the paper tried to prove with contradictory evidence and illogical arguments. Jewish mastery of the world was portrayed not as a question, a possibility, or even an eventuality, but as an established fact. Not surprisingly, therefore, the
Reichspost
ended an article about the
Protocols of Zion
by speaking of their "shocking nature" even though the beginning of the same article expressed doubt about the very authenticity of the
Protocols
.
17
Not all of the articles in the
Reichspost
that dealt with Jews were negative. The paper consistently supported Zionism; it praised the founding of the Jewish National Council in the fall of 1918. We have already noted its generally positive stand toward Zionism at the time of the Zionist Congress.
18
The
Reichspost
favored the same policy of dissimilation advocated by the Zionists, but went even further by wanting to revoke the Jews' equal rights. It favored special laws for Jews that would have limited their freedom of choice in business and the professions as well as where they lived; it also wanted to prevent Jews from holding public office or even from voting.
19
The antiSemitism of Friedrich Funder and the
Reichspost
paralleled almost

 

Page 155
Friedrich Funder, anti-Semitic editor of the
Reichspost
.
Austrian National Library Picture Archive.

 

Page 156

exactly Austrian antiSemitism in general. It was very strong between the founding of the newspaper in 1894 and Lueger's appointment as mayor in 1897, declined during Lueger's administration only to rise again after the Christian Social Party was defeated in the national elections of 1911. Its antiSemitism subsided once again during the First World War, no doubt in part due to press censorship, but rose again after Austria's defeat, which the paper blamed on the influence of international Jewry. It remained strong in the early postwar years, but almost disappeared between 1926 and 1930, possibly due in some measure to Seipel's influence, only to reappear once more with the economic crisis and the meteoric rise of the Nazis.

20

Most criticisms of Jews in
Schönere Zukunft
, the
Reichspost
, and other Catholic and Christian Social publications were extremely general. There were, however, also some specific points of conflict with Jews. Catholics strenuously objected to attempts made by Socialist politicians of Jewish origins, Lucian Brunner and Julius Ofner, to eliminate the use of public revenues for building Catholic churches in Vienna and efforts to make divorces easier to obtain. In the latter case, Ofner's effort to abolish the old marriage law, which differed according to the religious beliefs of the marriage partners, created an enormous reaction not only from Catholics but also from Zionists. The latter saw Ofner's proposed reform as an unwarranted intervention in internal Catholic affairs, which would inevitably provoke Christian hostility. The church and the Christian Social Party also differed sharply with secularized Jews in the Social Democratic Party about the role of religion in public schools. Socialists continued the Liberal tradition of treating religion as just one subject in the schools. The Socialist school reformer, Otto Glöckel, even wanted the teaching of religion in public schools replaced by instruction in morality. Roman Catholics, on the other hand, led by the
Reichspost
, wanted religion to permeate all subjects.
21
The Postwar Christian Social Party
The Roman Catholic church and its defenders such as
Schönere Zukunft
could only denounce Jews; they could not legislate against them. The organization that had that power was the Christian Social Party. We have already observed in Chapter 3 how antiSemitism was central to the propaganda of the first great leader of the CSP, Karl Lueger. Lueger and his supporters, however, did not enact any anti-Semitic legislation in Vienna or elsewhere in Austrianor, for that matter, did Christian Social politicians in the First Republic. But anti-

 

Page 157

Semitism remained an important part of Christian Social propaganda and was a major integrating factor in holding the socially heterogeneous party together. The antiSemitism of the Christian Socials also remained opportunistic and like Lueger, they could never even agree on how to define a Jew. The CSP used antiSemitism when it saw some political advantage to be gained, or at least to prevent some other political party from gaining an undue advantage. The party was consistent only in almost never allowing Jews, even baptized Jews, to serve in the cabinets of Christian Social chancellors. On the other hand, the party was not above accepting money from Jewish capitalists to fight Social Democrats, just as the
Arbeiter-Zeitung
charged.

22

An enormous new impetus to Christian Social antiSemitism was the party's massive defeat in the Vienna municipal elections of May 1919. Having controlled the city's government without interruption since Karl Lueger's appointment as mayor in 1897 the CSP now found itself outnumbered by the Social Democratswith their many Jewish leadersone hundred deputies to fifty in the city council. The
Wiener Stimmen
blamed the electoral annihilation on the Ostjuden, a ridiculous charge since few of them were citizens with the right to vote. This fact did not prevent the Christian Socials from continuing to charge that the Socialist majority in the municipal government was produced by the votes of Eastern European Jews, even though between 1920 and 1925 only a little over 20,000 Jews were ever granted the
Heimatrecht
(right of residency) needed to vote and only about half of them were Ostjuden.
23
Although the Christian Socials never actually enacted any anti-Semitic legislation, unlike the Social Democrats they did include antiSemitism in the official programs of individual federal states in 1918 and 1919. The program of the CSP in Vienna in December 1918 promised to fight a defensive struggle against Jewish "corruption and thirst for power." The Jews ought to be "recognized as a nation with self-determination, but they ought not be allowed to become the masters of the German people." The CSP's Vienna program in November 1919 was a little more specific. In order "to protect the German character of Vienna," it demanded that the naturalization of
Volksfremde
(foreigners) be made difficult and that a numerus clausus for Jewish university students and instructors be enacted. Jewish pupils were also to be segregated into their own schools or else into their own classes. It declared that Jews were a separate nation and ought to be recognized and counted as such.
24
Individual Christian Social politicians also made other anti-Semitic proposals in 1919. In July several party members sent a bill to the Parliament, aimed primarily against Jews, that would have prevented name changes. In October a group of ten Christian Social parliamentary deputies proposed that Jews not be

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