Free 1938 by Giles MacDonogh Page B

Corporate State was not officially antipathetic to Jews, its policies exhibited a cold persecution, squeezing Jewish citizens out of public life. There were now very few Jewish members of the National Council, as the legislative body was called. Contracts in Viennese hospitals were not renewed with Jewish doctors, publishing houses refused to print books by Jews, and newspapers were increasingly reluctant to employ Jewish journalists. The Neue Freie Presse was purged of Jewish staff by 1937. Film production companies did not employ Jewish actors and actresses, as they needed to be able to sell their films across the border in Germany, and Jewish sportsmen could not compete in events if there were Germans about. It was believed that Schuschnigg intended to reduce the percentage of Jews in the professions to reflect their share of the population.
    Many of Vienna’s assimilated Jews were virtually indistinguishable from the German elite: They read their Goethe, Schiller, and Nestroy and went to concerts to listen to Beethoven, Schubert, Brahms, and Franz Schmidt. Believing themselves to be good “Germans” (people spoke little of being Austrian at that time), they had no desire to leave, only to assimilate. The Ostjuden, lately come from the shtetls, were more likely to be attracted to the idea of Zionism and the establishment of a Jewish state, preferably in Palestine.
    Baptism was a way around the various numerus clausus that limited Jewish entry into branches of public life. With the Taufschein or baptismal certificate, the Jewish Taufjude could become a judge, a professor, or a high-ranking civil servant with far greater ease. A measure of how many members of the Jewish elite were Christians is evident in the fact that a third of the Jews in Dachau were baptized, and not only for political reasons—many of them had a Christian grandparent or two. The British chaplain Grimes reported on the success of the Swedish pastor Tarrel at the beginning of 1937, who carried out thirty to forty conversions every year: “He [Tarrel] thinks there would be many more if it were not for the pressure exercised by the Jews themselves who will not employ Christian Jews.” Tarrel had converted a hundred Jews in 1934, possibly because of the creation of the rigidly Catholic Corporate State.
    After the Anschluss, it was calculated that 20 percent of potential refugees were non-Aryan Christians—ethnic Jews who had been baptized. The Quaker Emma Cadbury, who was based in Vienna, estimated their numbers at 60,000 Catholics and 10,000 Protestants, although the official figure was a comparatively lowly 24,000. The philosopher Karl Popper, for example, had been baptized a Protestant in infancy. Conversion was gaining popularity among Jews. The arrival of Hitler in power across the border in Germany seems to have provided a further spur: There were 42 baptisms in 1932 and 102 in 1933. In the first half of 1934 there were 152.

    The birth pangs and infancy of the First Austrian Republic had been aggravated by chronic unemployment. Where Germany had been able to create jobs after the Nazis came to power, up to 300,000 chiefly young Viennese were out of work at the time of the Anschluss. They gravitated toward extremist organizations that purported to be able to solve the problem. One of the promises delivered by the Nazis was the 100 percent elimination of unemployment (it was one of the messages in Göring’s speech at the Northwest Station on March 26). As one contemporary put it, “Hunger drove millions into the arms of the Nazis.” The Jews were, as ever, considered to be the principal enemy; they were seen as idle and rich, feeding off human misery.
    On March 11 the Hitlerites were already out and about in the largely Jewish Second District, shouting slogans and flailing fists hours before the German army had reached Vienna. Hitler Youth members between the ages of ten and sixteen were chanting against Schuschnigg, the Jews, and priests.