From Prejudice to Persecution: A History of Austrian Anti-Semitism (47 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 199

railing against the "Jewish press," the Nazis privately fumed about the willingness of the Viennese to read the hated Jewish newspapers and were worried about their own financial woes, which in the 1920s made the purchase of a single typewriter a major expense and the payment of phone bills a constant headache. Even in the (for them) more affluent 1930s, their newspapers were poorly written and confined largely to party affairs. The rapid growth of dues-paying members meant better times for the party's press in the early 1930s. The NSDAP's social heterogeneity, which was far greater than that of any other party in either Austria or Germany, continued to be a serious problem, however, making it difficult for any paper to satisfy the literary and intellectual tastes of peasants, industrial workers, and professional people at the same time.

31

The Nazis attempted to solve this dilemma by borrowing the Antisemitenbund's tactic of reporting crimes and scandals, especially those involving Jews.
32
For example, in Graz
Der Kampf
, the official organ of the NSDAP in Styria, accused a Jewish-owned clothing firm by the name of Rendi of failing to pay income taxes and investing money in Switzerland. Stories about the scandal dominated the paper's headlines for several weeks.
33
Such articles could sometimes boomerang, however. When
Der Kampfruf
, the party's official mouthpiece in Vienna, warned its readers against patronizing the Phönix Insurance Company because it had Jewish directors, the newspaper was flooded with angry letters from the company's non-Jewish employees who complained that a boycott would threaten their jobs. The Austrian Nazi press chief soon advised the editors of the
Kampfrufto
publish an apology. The Phönix Insurance Company was the focus of a genuine scandal a few years later, however. In 1936 the business collapsed because of faulty speculations, in part by Jewish managers; antiSemites were thereby presented with a propaganda bonanza.
34
The
Deutschösterreichische Tages-Zeitung
in Vienna was still another Nazi newspaper that enjoyed relating horror stories about Jews. One article claimed that an "Aryan" country girl had been lured into the house of a Jew and threatened with bodily harm. She was seriously injured after trying to escape by jumping from a second-story window. A whole Jewish band of abductors was at work, but the authorities were silent about it, the headlines screamed. Another piece told about the conviction of a Jewish child-molester. "Jewry is conducting a systematic, tenacious fight against the morally upright German people. Everywhere sexual revolutionaries preach Jewish morality and succeed, at least among a portion of the subhumans who have been benumbed by Marxism."
35
The ultimate Jewish scandal and proof of Jewish destructiveness, so far as the Nazis were concerned, were revealed in the
Protocols of the Elders of Zion
.

 

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Despite the growing evidence that the
Protocols
was a crude forgery, Nazi newspapers, including the
Deutsche ArbeiterPresse, Der Kampf
, and especially
Der Stürmer
, continued to maintain its authenticity, claiming that its prophecies had come true.

36

Ironically the Nazis themselves were not free of "Jewish scandals." The Gauleiter of Vienna between 1930 and 1933, Alfred E. Frauenfeld, was frequently charged with having Jewish ancestors and associating with Jews. In early 1931
Die Volksstimme
, edited by Frauenfeld's rival in Upper Austria, Alfred Proksch, called Frauenfeld a "Jewish shyster" and said that the Gauleiter had written for a pornographic magazine and dedicated a book to a Jewish bank president. Frauenfeld was also accused of having patronized a Jewish dentist. However, the controversy was at least temporarily stilled when Frauenfeld was acquitted of the charges by a special party court.
37
A somewhat similar scandal occurred in 1937 when the leader of the Austrian Nazi Party, Josef Leopold, appointed Franz Schattenfroh to be his deputy. A great controversy ensued when it was discovered that Schattenfroh had been married to a Jew for two years. After trying unsuccessfully to gain permission from Hitler to keep his Jewish wife Schattenfroh was forced to give up his position. The whole episode was used by Leopold's rivals to undermine his authority.
38
Nazi Solutions to the "Jewish Problem"
When it came to actual solutions to the alleged Jewish problem, the Nazis had nothing new to offer. Indeed, neither the Austrian nor the German Nazis themselves had any preconceived and officially approved party plans about how to deal with the Jews once they came to power. The Nazis' anti-Semitic policy in Germany after Hitler's
Machtergreifung
(takeover of power) "developed largely through internal ideological and political processes [and] continually caught the German Jews by surprise because it was not developed with any relevance to them save that they were hurt by it and ultimately killed by it."
39
Austrian Nazi leaders, like those in Germany, issued statements at different times and in different places that ranged from bloodcurdling to fairly moderate. As early as June 1925 the
Deutsche ArbeiterPresse
demanded that Vienna's second district, Leopoldstadt, be made a ghetto for all Viennese Jews as a prelude to their being expelled from the country.
40
In 1931 Walter Riehl demanded the legal emasculation of any Jew who had sex with an "Aryan" girl.
41
When he entered Vienna's city council in 1932, Riehl demanded the expul-

 

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sion of the Jews from the municipality.

42
On the other hand, the normally fire-breathing
Stürmer
, perhaps with an eye to the government's censors, stated in October 1933 that it rejected a violent solution to the Jewish problem.
43
One Nazi author, Dr. Erich Führer, writing in 1935, insisted that "no seriously thinking antiSemite who is familiar with the latest research wants the return of the ghettos or the yellow star. A new time demands new viewpoints. From this [assumption] the Jewish problem of Austria can and will be solved in a satisfactory way."
44
The Nazis also loved to citewithout necessarily endorsingZionists who advocated proportional representation for Jews in various fields of endeavor. At other times they recommended "modest jobs" for Jews in accordance with their numbers.
45

Until a permanent solution was found, the Nazis liked to organize boycotts of Jewish businesses. Here again, there was nothing new in this tactic. AntiSemites had been trying to boycott Jewish establishments since at least the time of Mayor Karl Lueger. Such attempts were particularly common during the Christmas season, when Jewish-owned shops enjoyed brisk sales. But boycotts had little success, at least before the end of 1932.
46
Already in the early 1920s
Der eiserne Besen
began publishing the names of Jewish shops together with the names of "Aryans" who patronized them. In 1930 Nazis put up posters all over Vienna calling for a boycott of Jewish stores and saying that Jews were sorry that the Virgin Mary did not have a second son during the summer so that there could be two Christmas shopping seasons.
47
In 1931 they posted placards listing Aryan shops and pasted stickers on Jewish shop windows saying "Don't buy from Jews."
48
The legally published
Deutsches Volksblatt
also printed a list of Aryan shops in 1935,
49
a practice that was resumed by the illegal
Osterreichischer Beobachter
in 1937. In December 1932 the Nazis even tried posting party members in front of Jewish shops, four months before the famous Nazi boycott of Jewish stores in Germany on 1 April 1933.
50
None of these actions, however, made much of an impression on Christian shoppers, who still preferred Jewish stores because of their generally lower prices or because they were unwilling to break long-established shopping habits.
51
Moreover, even partially successful boycotts damaged the Austrian economy and cost Christian sales clerks their jobs. Not until Nazis began throwing small bombs into Jews' shops in late 1932 and early 1933 did non-Jewish shoppers become frightened.
52

 

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AntiSemitism As a Unifying Element

AntiSemitism was undoubtedly an important cause of the success enjoyed by the Austrian Nazi Party after 1930. Walter Riehl, in commenting on the Nazi breakthrough in the local elections of April 1932 said that most bourgeois voters "did not understand the true nature of our movement. They valued only our anti-Semitic and above all our anti-Marxist positions. . . . The whole Aryan intelligentsia and a large part of the academic and higher civil servants have voted for us as well as many businessmen and architects."

53
These social groups all faced direct economic competition from Jews and were highly anti-Semitic.

Politically, the Nazis also enjoyed their greatest success with winning votes from precisely those parties that were the most ardently anti-Semitic although this fact does not prove that antiSemitism was the Nazis' only attractive feature. In the same local elections of April 1932 to which Walter Riehl referred, the Greater German People's Party, which at the very least equaled the Nazis in the intensity of its antiSemitism, saw its vote in Vienna decline from 124,400 in 1930 to 8,800. In Lower Austria the combined vote of the GDVP and the Agricultural League (Landbund) dropped from 70,100 in 1930 to 28,000 in 1932.
54
The other Nazi votes came mostly at the expense of the Heimwehr and the right wing of the CSP. Consequently, between 1930 and 1934 the Nazis absorbed virtually all of the panGerman and ultra-anti-Semitic right in Austria just as they did in Germany.
55
The conservative bourgeois camp had many differences with the Nazis, especially the CSP on church-state relations. AntiSemitism, on the other hand, was one of the few things that brought the very heterogeneous elements of the bourgeoisie together, even though there were some differences in how they approached the "Jewish question." It was the main ingredient fostering cooperation between Catholic and nationalistic students in Austrian universities and was important in helping the Nazis to win over huge segments of the bourgeois political parties and movements. AntiSemitism served a similarly unifying function in Poland between the wars. With the very important exception of the Anschluss question, it is doubtful whether any other single issue in Austria, even the hated Treaty of St. Germain, appealed to so large a cross-section of the Austrian population as antiSemitism.
56
In competing with other anti-Semitic organizations, the most important advantage the Nazis enjoyed after January 1933 was that their comrades in Germany were actually doing something about the "Jewish problem," whereas Austrian antiSemites had seldom done anything except talk. In the Reich,

 

Page 203
Jewish influence was being eliminated from the civil service and cultural life of the country; German Jews had been deprived of their full citizenship rights and were being stripped of their wealth.

Of course, antiSemitism should not be used as an all-encompassing explanation for Nazi electoral successes. AntiSemitism had been part of Austrian Nazi ideology since 1913 and a very important part since 1918; yet it was not until the Great Depression hit Austria, and the NSDAP began to enjoy an astonishing series of electoral successes in Germany, that the Austrian NSDAP began its rapid growth. Moreover, as Walter Riehl suggested, the party's antiMarxism was also an important key to its success in a country with the largest (per capita) and most powerful Marxist party outside the Soviet Union.

57

Equally important for Nazi successes was the impact of Hitler's Machtergreifung in Germany on the Anschluss movement in Austria. The dissolution of the Catholic Center Party and the German Social Democrats along with their subsidiary organizations caused their brother parties in Austria to drop the Anschluss from their political platforms. By default then, the Austrian Nazi Party became the only political force in the Alpine republic with a realistic chance of implementing the union with Germany. All those political elements in Austria, which still regarded the Anschluss as being crucial to Austria's economic survival at a time when the Great Depression was reviving the whole question of the country's viability, were now drawn to the Nazi camp. For some of these people antiSemitism was a kind of bonus for joining the party. Others undoubtedly joined the party
despite
its antiSemitism. For only a minority, however, was it the most important reason for siding with the Nazi cause. Nevertheless, the Nazis' antiSemitism found widespread support in interwar Austria simply because it was very much in accord with a long-standing tradition dating back to the Middle Ages.
58

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