From Prejudice to Persecution: A History of Austrian Anti-Semitism (40 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 158

allowed to serve in the Austrian army, a right they had enjoyed since the time of Joseph II. On the same day an equal number of Christian Social deputies asked Parliament to count Jews as a separate race in the next census.

25

Provincial branches of the Christian Social Party were also busy formulating anti-Semitic programs in the early postwar years. The Salzburg branch demanded the expulsion of Jews from all public offices. The Salzburgers as well as the party in Carinthia insisted that Jewish participation in public life (apparently meaning the free professions) be limited to their percentage of the population. The party as a whole, however, never demanded a general numerus clausus for Jews in all aspects of Austrian life.
26
A more unified approach for the Christian Social Party was taken in 1926 when the party drew up its first national program at a congress in Linz. Reflecting the overall decline in Austrian antiSemitism during the previous three years, the new document no longer talked about the Christian Social Party fighting Jews or their influence in intellectual and economic affairs, but instead condemned "the predominance of the disintegrating Jewish influence." This vague wording could be interpreted in two quite different ways: it could mean that all the Jewish influence was a disintegrating element or it could mean that the party would fight Jewish influence only when it was a disintegrating element. The second interpretation was preferred both by Chancellor Ignaz Seipel and by Jews, who saw the program as a major revision of the party's anti-Semitic policy. The program also observed that Jews had been prominent among the leaders and propagandists of the Russian Bolsheviks, the Communists of Central Europe, and the Socialists of Austria. But Seipel also softened the impact of this statement by commenting that these facts did not result from the national character of Jews or from the essence of their religion, but from their being oppressed for hundreds of years.
27
Leopold Kunschak and the Extreme Catholic AntiSemites
Without any doubt, a major driving force in the antiSemitism in the Christian Social Party of the early postwar years, and to a lesser extent in later years as well, was a former saddlemaker's apprentice named Leopold Kunschak. Possibly the most versatile and talented organizer in the party after Lueger, Kunschak's power base was his leadership of the party's Arbeiterverein (Workers' Association), which he founded in 1892, when he was twenty-one. Kunschak had at first strongly sympathized with both the antiSemitism and the antiliberalism found in the
Deutsches Volksblatt
. Ultimately, however, he

 

Page 159

split with the paper and with Georg von Schönerer over the question of German nationalism. Like his close friend Lueger, Kunschak remained loyal to the Habsburgs and to the monarchy. Kunschak's antiSemitism was also even more irrational and mythical than Schönerer's; Kunschak glorified the Middle Ages and wanted to return Jews to their medieval ghettos.

28

Kunschak's workers' movement almost inevitably had to be as anticapitalist as it was antimodern. Not surprisingly it was especially opposed to "Jewish capitalism," another similarity it had with Karl Lueger's antiSemitism. For Kunschak, capitalism and Marxism were both the creations of Jews. By merely attacking "Jewish" capitalism, Kunschak could avoid any direct confrontations with the capitalist system in Austria and the capitalist supporters of the Christian Social Party; likewise, latent class conflicts could be covered up.
29
To distinguish themselves from the attacks made on Jewish capitalism by Marxists, Kunschak and his followers gave to their antiSemitism a religious and racial element. Kunschak was far from being the first Catholic to introduce a biological element into Judeophobia. In the late Middle Ages it had been common to identify proselytes as former Jews. During the Spanish Inquisition certificates of "purity" were given to people with purely Christian ancestry. In the early twentieth century Karl Lueger had publicly warned that Christians ought to beware of Jewish converts.
30
Kunschak's racism could be seen in his use of such terms as
Abstammung
(descent),
bodenständig
(native), and
Kulturgemeinschaft des deutschen Volkes
(cultural community of the German people) as well as in his criticisms of Negroes and Slavs. Jews were immoral, dishonest middlemen, profiteers, and smugglers. They were not capable of creating anything positive. Even the reputations of Freud and Einstein rested on Jewish propaganda. Jews could not eradicate their characteristics merely by not practicing Judaism. Consequently, even baptized Jews could not be assimilated for at least two generations.
31
With the easing of wartime censorship in 1918, Kunschak began to make public speeches denouncing the Jews. He accused them of stabbing the country in the back by corrupting civil and military authorities and making huge profits in the process. The military defeat therefore was also the fault of the Jews, as was the postwar economic misery, for which the Ostjuden in particular were responsible. Kunschak was one of the primary agitators for the expulsion of all Jewish refugees; if that proved to be impossible, he wanted them interned in concentration camps.
32
In 1919 Kunschak drew up a detailed proposal for the solution to the "Jewish problem," which he submitted to the Christian Social parliamentary club (delegation) in November. It was designed to limit Jewish influence in public

 

Page 160
Ignaz Seipel (fourth from left), chancellor of Austria, 192224 and 192629,
being greeted in Hütteldorf by Leopold Kunschak (holding hat), leader of the
Christian Social Workers' Association. Austrian National Library Picture Archive.
"Either one solves [the Jewish question] in a timely way, inspired by reason and
humaneness," Kunschak declared in a 1936 speech, "or it will be solved in the
way an unreasoning animal attacks his prey, with enraged, wild instincts"
(
Deutsches Volksblatt
, 21 March 1936).

life by declaring them a separate nationality with limited rights and segregating them from the "German" majority. Resignations from the Israelitische Kultusgemeinde would not be recognized even for people who converted to Christianity. Jews would have been required to attend separate primary and secondary schools, and a numerus clausus would have been implemented for Jews in Austrian universities. Likewise, Jews would not have been able to serve in the army, police, judiciary or parliamentary body at any level. They would have been able to practice various professions only if they did not exceed their percentage of the total population in each Austrian state.

33

Ignaz Seipel made moderating comments on each one of Kunschak's proposals. But Seipel also remarked that the proposed law, if implemented, would have required a similar one for the Czech minority. He concluded that

 

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although the plan might ultimately be realistic, for the moment it could not be enacted because of foreign and domestic political considerations. In all likelihood Seipel feared that Kunschak's bill would violate the Treaty of St. Germain and result in sanctions being imposed on Austria. He also realized that such a plan had no chance of being approved by the Social Democrats or even by some Christian Social deputies.

34

Even though Kunschak's legislative proposal for Jewish dissimilation was never approved, he continued to advocate his brand of racial antiSemitism within his own Christian Social workers' movement. A congress of the Arbeiterverein in Linz in 1923 demanded that "the leaders of [Austrian] workers belong to the native Christian population both in their descent and in their way of thinking and that the disintegrating influence of Jewry must be driven out of the intellectual and economic life of the German people." An official commentary on the program stated that the Austrian people had the right to protect themselves against Jews in the same way that Americans defended themselves against the Chinese.
35
Leopold Kunschak's brand of extreme and racist-tinged antiSemitism remained a minority element within the Christian Social Party, particularly after his resignation as chairman in 1922. Nevertheless, he continued to be an important factor within the party. As chairman of the Christian Social Club in Vienna's city council until 1932, he was able to strengthen the antiSemitism of other Christian Social politicians and prelates. The rise of the Nazis seems only to have increased his fanaticism. After proudly describing himself as a "lifelong antiSemite" in a public speech to a group called the Freiheitsbund in March 1936, he declared that there were only two possible solutions to the Jewish problem: "Either one solves [it] in a timely way, inspired by reason, and humaneness, or it will be solved in the way an unreasoning animal attacks his prey, with enraged, wild instincts." The Nazis, who quoted this speech at length, could hardly have described the alleged alternatives more forcefully.
36
Leopold Kunschak was by no means the only de facto racist within the Catholic camp. Father Georg Bichlmair, the Jesuit leader of a missionary group for the conversion of Jews called the "Paulus-Missionswerke," declared in a public speech in March 1936 that Jews belonged to a different race than the German people. Sympathy for the Jews should not blind Christians to the dangerous, contagious effects of the Jewish national character and to the spiritual homelessness of the Jews. Because of their race, Bichlmair believed, Jews remained different from Christians even if they were baptized. He therefore opposed baptized Jews holding any high office in the church hierarchy or the civil service up to the third generation. In this respect, Bichlmair's policy was

 

Page 162
P. Georg Bichlmair, leader of the Paulus-Missionswerk to convert Jews.
Austrian National Library Picture Archive. "The Christian culture and
tradition of the German-[Austrian] people has fallen too much under the
influence of the Jewish people in the last decades," he claimed in a
speech entitled "The Christian and the Jew" delivered in March 1936
(
Reichspost
, 19 March 1936).

 

Page 163

in accord with that of the Jesuits, who would not accept as novices anyone whose grandfather had not already converted to Catholicism. Bichlmair also believed that the ''Aryan paragraph" was necessary for certain organizations in order to defend Christian ethics.

37

The Moderate Anti-Semite: Ignaz Seipel
Much more influential within the Christian Social Party than either Leopold Kunschak or Georg Bichlmair was Dr. Ignaz Seipel, professor of theology at the University of Vienna and chancellor of Austria from 1922 to 1924 and again from 1926 to 1929. As chancellor he protected the rights of all citizens regardless of their religion and refused to allow a numerus clausus in Austrian universities even though in 1922 he had declared that "German" students needed to be protected from the competition of Jewish students by such a cap on Jewish enrollment. He denounced racial antiSemitism in his book
Staat und Nation
, published in 1916, and on numerous other occasions, including a statement he made to the leadership of the Union of German-Austrian Jews in 1923. He spoke out against the forced expulsion of Jews in 1919 and never indulged in vulgar, public anti-Semitic outbursts. In 1927, in order to win over liberals and democrats for a "Unity List" for the parliamentary election of that year, he declared that for him there was no Jewish question. Seipel also toned down the already fairly moderate official party program of the previous year. These opinions caused the radically anti-Semitic
Deutsches Volksblatt
to call Seipel's Jewish policy "treason toward Christian-German culture."
Der eiserne Besen
doubted in 1927 whether Seipel's party could still be called anti-Semitic.
38
If Seipel's views toward Jews can be characterized by restraint, they were also at times ambiguous and even tinged with racial overtones. He thought Jews had their own characteristics and had not become Europeans even after having lived in Europe for many centuries. He considered the Jews to be a national minority of a special kind, partly because they had no compact territory of their own and partly because they also were a class representing mobile capital. Consequently the struggle of non-Jews against Jews was to some extent a class struggle. Christians felt economically threatened by Jewish big capital and because they could not compete with Jewish business practices. They also felt a special need to defend themselves when the allegedly unscrupulous Jewish business spirit was carried over into politics, the press, scholarship, literature, and art. The danger to Christians of being dominated by Jews was especially

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