The city without Jews : $b A novel of our timeBettauer, Hugo
General
The city without Jews : $b A novel of our time
Bettauer, Hugo
Antisemitism -- Austria -- Fiction; Jews -- Austria -- Fiction
For Vienna the last day of this year was a holiday unparalleled in
the history of that gay and carefree city. By mobilizing all means of
transportation, by borrowing locomotives from neighboring countries,
and by interrupting all other traffic the authorities had succeeded
on that day in sending out the last Jews, in thirty enormous trains.
In the forenoon the directors and high officials of the great banks
went away, at noon the Jewish journalists and their families. They
had stayed to the last second, had composed and edited the evening
papers, and had let the new masters take possession of the editorial
rooms only after the damp sheets had begun to fly out from the whirling
presses. Most of the Viennese journalists had found positions on
papers in Germany proper, or on German papers in Czechoslovakia;
many were emigrating to America; and a few had decided to turn to
other professions.--However, the publisher of the great _Weltpresse_,
together with a small staff of collaborators, was moving to London,
where he intended to publish a German weekly, to be called _Im Exil_,
which would concern itself primarily with Austria.
At one o’clock in the afternoon whistles proclaimed that the last
trainload of Jews had left Vienna, and at six o’clock in the evening
all the church bells rang to announce that there were no more Jews in
all Austria.
Then Vienna began to celebrate its great festival of emancipation. Red
and white striped flags fluttered over a hundred thousand roofs, all
the shops were decorated with these colors, Japanese lanterns burned
before every window. On this frosty starlit night a million people
walked over the creaking snow to form processions. Men, women, and
children carried lanterns, the various district parades were headed
by bands, loud rejoicing filled the air, and again and again there
resounded the cry: “Long Live Christian Vienna!”
All the parades met at the City Hall. Fairy-like in its splendor,
Meister Schmidt’s beautiful Gothic building shone as one enormous
flame, fed by millions of electric lamps. On a platform the peerless
Viennese Philharmonic Orchestra,--purged of Jews, and therefore
somewhat diminished in numbers,--played popular airs, while the Male
Choir of Vienna sang its best songs. The People’s Hall, the large space
before the City Hall, and the Ring from the Schottentor to the Bellaria
formed a solid human wall. And at eight o’clock it was no longer a cry,
but a howl that rose again and again from a million throats and shook
the air.
At last the great moment came. On the balcony appeared Mayor Karl
Maria Laberl with Chancellor Schwertfeger. With his powerful voice,
audible even at the opposite end of the square, the Chancellor began to
speak--briefly, coolly, but all the more effectively:
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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