Hugo Bettauer (1872–1925)

The City Without Jews is a wondrously, and ominously prescient novel. Written in 1923, it details what happens when the government of Austria passes a law forcing the exile of all Jews. This is necessary, so argue the proponents because the Jews compete unfairly with the pure Austian Aryans in all walks of life and so prevent the latter from enjoying the true fruits of what society and the economy have to offer. Led by a demagogic leader of the Christian Socialists (love the emphasis on Christian), the law is passed unanimously and all Jews are given various times, depending on classes of occupation, to leave the country. The speech in parliament is pure National Socialist with references to the "Jewish problem", "Either we or the Jew", "Our existence, our very lives and the lives of future generations are at stake". There are references to "removing the foreign element from our organism", not unlike the metaphors employed by the Nazis. Jews are allowed to take personal wealth and belongings with them, but enterprises not sold before a Jewish owner has to depart will be sold to an Aryan for 5% of the total value. The penalty for any Jew found in Austria after the prescribed times is death. Another unsettling point: the bulk of the Jews are taken out of the country by trains, with special ones ordered up to ensure everything is done.

There is euphoria in the country. Apartments and houses of Jews are bought for a song and suddenly there is a glut on the real estate market. All kinds of Aryans find themselves now proprietors of large department stores and banks and financial institutions. But, the economy does not improve, the value of the krone continues to plummet, businesses go into bankruptcy, social and cultural life dries up. Expected support from international Christian groups does not materialize. There are cries (the last ditch slur) of the effects of "international Jewry". People find that ridding themselves of the Jews did not remove swindlers and opportunists and profiteers and exploiters: it simply changed them for good Christians. But what it did remove was imagination and colour and ideas.

A ground swell of public support builds to repeal the law, which is managed thanks to the clever chicanery of one character, and Jews are welcomed back into the country.

This is not a novel of characters, but of ideas. The basic idea being the stupidity and obtuseness of anti-Semitism. The premise must have startled some people, but even Bettauer could not have envisaged, could probably not have had published, a novel in which the final destination is death in a gas chamber rather than exile to the other great cities of Europe. There is an irony in the fact that many of the Austrian Jews find refuge in Germany (recall that in 1923, when this book was written, the National Socialists and Hitler were no more than a bothersome pimple on the ass of German politics).

The final irony: in 1925, Bettauer was murdered by an "Aryan" because he believed that Bettauer was a threat to German Kultur and therefore had to be eliminated. Bettauer himself was not Jewish but a scion of a good Protestant Viennese merchant family. But he was also a brave writer who apparently enjoyed skewering cant and sacred cows across the board.
(May/06)… (plus d'informations)