CHAPTER TWO The experiences of my life in Vienna
After my mother died, I went to Vienna for the third time and stayed there for a few years.
I wanted to be an architect, and since difficulties are not meant to be surrendered to, but to be overcome, my goal was to overcome them, keeping in mind the example of my father, who, from a humble village boy, one day managed to become a civil servant. Circumstances were certainly more favorable to me, and what I then considered a harshness of fate, I now consider the wisdom of Providence. In the arms of the “goddess of misery,” and threatened more than once with being forced to surrender, my will to resist grew until it triumphed. I owe my fierce resistance and all my strength to those times. But more than all of that, I value even more the fact that those years lifted me from the emptiness of a comfortable life to plunge me into the world of misery and poverty, where I met those for whom I would later fight.
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At that time I opened my eyes to two dangers that I had barely known by name before, and which I could never have imagined would have such terrifying significance for the life of the German people: Marxism and Judaism.
Vienna, the city that for many symbolizes joy and the environment of contented people, holds, for me alone, the stamp of the living memory of the most bitter time of my life.
Vienna evokes sad thoughts in me today. Five years of misery and calamity is what that city holds for me, five long years during which I worked first as a laborer and then as a small painter to earn a miserable daily living, so truly miserable that
It never managed to alleviate my hunger; hunger, my most faithful companion, almost never abandoning me, sharing with me, inexorably, all of life’s circumstances. If I bought a book, it demanded its tribute; buying a ticket to the Opera also meant days of deprivation.
How constant was the struggle with such a ruthless companion! And yet, during that time, I learned more than ever before. My books delighted me. I read widely and conscientiously during all my leisure hours. Thus, in just a few years, I was able to lay the foundations of an intellectual preparation that I still use today.
But there’s more to it than all this: At that time, I formed a concept of the world, a concept that formed the granite foundation of my conduct at that time. I had little to add to the experiences and knowledge I acquired then; nothing needed to be changed.
On the contrary, I am firmly convinced today that all constructive ideas generally manifest themselves, in principle, already in youth, if they really exist.
I differentiate between the wisdom of old age and the genius of youth. The former can only be appreciated for its more thorough and far-sighted nature, the result of the experiences of a long life, while the latter is characterized by an inexhaustible wealth of thoughts and ideas, which, due to their tumultuous accumulation, are not susceptible to immediate elaboration. These ideas and thoughts allow for the conception of future projects and provide the building materials, from which wise old age takes the elements and forges them to carry out the work, provided that the so-called wisdom of old age has not stifled the genius of youth.
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My life in my parents’ home differed little or not at all from that of others. Without worries, I could look forward to every new dawn, and social problems didn’t exist for me. The environment that surrounded my youth was that of the petite bourgeoisie, that is, a world that had very little connection with the purely working class, because, although at first glance it may seem paradoxical, the abyss that separated these two categories
social, who are by no means economically well off, is often deeper than one might imagine.
The origin of this—let’s call it bellicosity—lies in the fact that the social group that not long ago emerged from the working class fears descending to its former level of unappreciated people, or of being considered as still belonging to it. Added to this is the bitter memory for many of the cultural misery of the proletarian class and the rude treatment these people have of one another, which, no matter how insignificant their new social position, makes any contact with people of a cultural level already surpassed by them unbearable.
Thus it happens that the “parvenu” hardly considers possible that which is common among people of high status who, descending from their rank, approach the lowest fellow man.
Don’t forget that a “parvenu” is anyone who, through their own efforts, rises above their current social class to a higher level. This struggle, often very harsh, ultimately destroys the feeling of compassion. The painful struggle for existence itself nullifies all understanding of the misery of those on the downtrodden.
In this regard, fate wished to be magnanimous with me, forcing me to return to that world of poverty and uncertainty that my father had abandoned in the course of his life. Fate removed from my sight the ghost of a limited education typical of the petite bourgeoisie.
I was beginning to get to know men and was learning to distinguish their apparent values or brutal external characteristics from what constituted their true mentality.
By the end of the 19th century, Vienna was already considered one of the cities with the most unfavorable social conditions. Lavish wealth and disgusting poverty characterized life in Vienna.
In the central districts, the pulse of a people of 52 million inhabitants was clearly felt, with all the dubious fascination of a state of diverse nationalities. Court life, with its dazzling pomp, acted like a magnet on the wealth and class of the rest of the Empire. Added to this state of affairs was the strong centralization of the Habsburg monarchy, and this was the only way to maintain this promiscuity of peoples, resulting in an extraordinary concentration of authorities and public offices in the capital and seat of government. However, Vienna was not only the political and economic center of the city, but also the capital and seat of government.
The intellectual center of the old Danube Monarchy not only existed, but also constituted its economic center. Compared to the vast array of high-ranking officials, civil servants, artists, and scientists, there was a much larger army of proletarians, and compared to the wealth of the aristocracy and commerce, there reigned a bloody misery. Thousands of unemployed swarmed in front of the palaces of the Ringstrasse, and in the shadows of that triumphal road of old Austria, vagabonds vegetated in the gloom and mud of the canals. In no German city could the social problem be better studied than in Vienna. But we must not be confused. This “study” cannot be carried out “from above,” because anyone who has not been within reach of the terrible serpent of misery will never know its poisonous jaws. Any other path leads only to banal chatter or false sentimentality. Both are equally harmful, one because it never penetrates the problem in its essence, and the other because it never even touches it. I don’t know what is more fatal: the attitude of ignoring misery, as most of those favored by fortune or raised to the top through their own efforts do, or that of those no less arrogant and often tactless, but always ready to deign to pretend they understand the people’s misery. These people always do more harm than their understanding, rooted in human instinct, can conceive; hence, they themselves are surprised by the null result of their “socially conscious” actions and even suffer the disappointment of an angry rejection, which they end up considering as proof of the people’s ingratitude.
IT IS NOT IN THE JUDGMENT OF SUCH PEOPLE TO UNDERSTAND THAT AN ACTION
SOCIAL CANNOT DEMAND THE TRIBUTE OF GRATITUDE BECAUSE SHE DOES NOT
IT DOES NOT PROVIDE MERCY, BUT IS DESTINED TO RESTORE RIGHTS.
Forced by circumstances into the real world, I must not have encountered the social problem in that way. Far from lending itself to my “understanding,” it seemed to want to experience its trials myself, and if I emerged unscathed, it was certainly not due to the test itself.
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The intention of reproducing here the accumulation of my impressions from that time will never be able to give, even approximately, a complete picture; along with the experiences acquired during that time, I must limit myself to presenting in this book only my most culminating impressions, that is, those that more than once moved my soul.
In Vienna, I realized that there was always the possibility of finding a job, but that it was lost as easily as it was found. The uncertainty of earning a living seemed to me one of the most serious difficulties of my new life. It is true that a skilled worker is not dismissed from his job as easily as one who is not, but he is not immune from the same fate.
I, too, must have experienced the flaws of that fate firsthand in the great metropolis and tasted them morally. Something else I was able to observe still: the sharp alternation between employment and unemployment, and the resulting eternal fluctuation between income and expenses, which, in the long run, destroys for many people the sense of economy, as well as the notion of a reasonable way of life. It seems as if the human organism gradually becomes accustomed to living in abundance in good times and suffering hunger in bad. This explains why someone who has barely managed to find work forgets all foresight and lives so disorderly that even the small weekly budget for household expenses is disrupted; at first, instead of seven, their wages last only five days, then only three, and finally barely one day, squandering everything on the first night.
Often, the wife and children are contaminated by this life, especially if the father of the family is fundamentally good to them and loves them in his own way. It then turns out that in two or three days, the household consumes the entire week’s wages together. They eat and drink while money lasts, only to then endure hunger together for the last few days. The wife then turns to her neighbors and incurs small debts to tide over the bad days of the rest of the week. At dinner time, everyone gathers around a meager table, impatiently awaiting the payment of their new wages, and already dreaming of future happiness, while hunger continues to rage… Thus, children become accustomed to this picture of misery from childhood.
But the case ends sinisterly when the father of the family from the beginning goes his way alone, giving rise to the mother, precisely
for the love of his children, he stands against it.
Arguments and scandals arise to such an extent that the more the husband strays from home, the more he turns to the vice of alcohol. He gets drunk almost every Saturday, and then the wife, out of a spirit of self-preservation and that of her children, has to wrest a few cents from him, often on the way from the factory to the tavern. And if the husband finally comes home on Sunday or Monday, drunk and brutal, having spent his last cent, scenes frequently break out…
God save us from them!
In hundreds of cases, I observed this life up close, viewing it at first with disgust and protest, only to later fully understand the tragedy of such misery and its root causes. Unfortunate victims of poor living conditions!
How grateful I am today to Providence for having allowed me to live in that school; there I was no longer able to do without anything that didn’t please me. That school educated me early and rigorously.
In order not to despair of the kind of people who surrounded me at that time, it was necessary for me to learn to differentiate between their way of being and their life and the causes of the process of their development.
Only in this way could one endure this state of affairs and understand that the result of so much misery, filth, and degeneration was no longer human beings, but the sad product of even sadder laws. In this environment, my own harsh fate kept me from capitulating in whining sentimentality in the face of the results of such a social process.
Even back then I came to the conclusion that only a twofold procedure could lead to changing the existing situation: ESTABLISHING BETTER CONDITIONS FOR OUR DEVELOPMENT BASED ON A DEEP SENSE OF SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY COUPLED WITH THE IRON-CLAD DECISION TO ANNUL INCORRECTIBLE DEPRAVEDS.
Just as Nature does not concentrate its greatest energy on maintaining what exists, but rather on selecting offspring as a preserver of the species, so in human life there can be no attempt to artificially improve what is bad that persists – something that is impossible in 99% of cases, given the nature of man.
but rather, efforts must be made to ensure healthier foundations for a future cycle of development.
During my struggle for existence in Vienna, I realized that the work of social action can never consist of a ridiculous and useless lyricism of benevolence, but rather in the elimination of those deficiencies that are fundamental to the economic and cultural structure of our life and that constitute the origin of the degeneration of the individual, or at least of his evil inclinations.
The Austrian state was virtually unaware of human social legislation, hence its obvious inability to repress even the most blatant transgressions.
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I couldn’t say what horrified me most at that time: the economic misery of my classmates, their moral rudeness, or their low cultural level.
How often is the indignation of our bourgeoisie aroused when they hear some vagrant say that being German is the same as not being German, and that man feels equally at home everywhere as long as he has enough to live on! This lack of “national pride” is then deeply lamented, and such thinking is bitterly condemned.
Do our bourgeois strata even reflect on how minimal the elements inherent in national pride are being given to the “people”? They calmly observe how, in theater and film, and through obscene literature and the filthy press, poison is poured into the people day after day in torrents. And yet these bourgeois circles are shocked by the “lack of morals” and “national indifference” of the great mass of the people, as if from this filthy press, these absurd films, and other similar factors, the concept of national greatness arose for the citizen. All this without considering the education already received by the individual in his early youth.
THE PROBLEM OF THE “NATIONALIZATION” OF A PEOPLE CONSISTS IN
FIRST OF ALL, IN CREATING HEALTHY SOCIAL CONDITIONS AS THE BASIS OF INDIVIDUAL EDUCATION. BECAUSE ONLY THOSE WHO HAVE LEARNED AT HOME AND IN SCHOOL TO APPRECIATE THE CULTURAL AND ECONOMIC GREATNESS, AND ABOVE ALL, THE POLITICAL GREATNESS, OF THEIR OWN COUNTRY, CAN FEEL AND WILL FEEL THE INTIMATE PRIDE OF BEING A SUBJECT OF THAT NATION. ONE CAN ONLY FIGHT FOR WHAT ONE WANTS – ONE WANTS WHAT ONE RESPECTS, AND ONE CAN ONLY RESPECT WHAT ONE AT LEAST KNOWS.
As soon as my interest in social issues was awakened, I devoted myself to studying the problem in depth. A whole new world opened up for me!
In the years 1909 and 1910, a small change had also taken place in my life: I no longer needed to earn my daily bread as a laborer. By then, I was already working independently as a modest draftsman and watercolorist. I painted to earn a living and at the same time learned with satisfaction. In this way, I was also able to acquire the theoretical foundation necessary for my intimate appreciation of the social problem. I diligently studied almost everything I could find in books on this complex subject, and then immersed myself in my own meditations.
What I knew about Social Democracy in my youth was little and very erroneous. I was enthusiastic about its proclamation of the right to universal secret suffrage; moreover, my naive conception at the time led me to believe that it was its merit to strive to improve the living conditions of the worker. But what repulsed me was its hostile attitude in the struggle for the preservation of Germanism.
Until I was 17, the word “Marxism” was unfamiliar to me, and the terms “social democracy” and “socialism” seemed identical. It was only then that fate would work on this concept here, too, opening my eyes to a deception so unprecedented for humanity.
If I had previously known the Social Democratic Party only as a spectator at some of its rallies, without however penetrating the mentality of its followers or the essence of its doctrines, I now suddenly had to come into contact with the products of that “ideology.” And what perhaps would have happened decades later, happened in the course of a few months, allowing me to understand that under the
The appearance of social virtue and love for one’s neighbor concealed a rottenness from which humanity would like to free the earth as soon as possible, because otherwise humanity itself would possibly disappear from the earth.
It was during my daily work on the site that I had my first brush with Social Democratic elements. From the very beginning, I found it unpleasant. My dress was still decent, my language was not vulgar, and my demeanor reserved. My own fortune had a lot to do with my attention to my surroundings. I was only looking for work so as not to perish of hunger and thus be able, at the same time, to provide myself with the necessary means for the slow pursuit of my personal education. I probably wouldn’t have worried about my new surroundings if not for the fact that, on the third or fourth day after starting work, an incident occurred that induced me to take a certain stance. I had been proposed to join a syndicalist organization. At that time, I still knew nothing about workers’ organizations, and it would have been impossible for me to determine the usefulness or inconvenience of their rationale. When I was told that I should become a member, I flatly rejected the proposal, stating that I had no idea what it was all about and that, as a matter of principle, I would not be dictated to.
Over the course of the next two weeks, I became more familiar with the atmosphere, so much so that no power in the world would have compelled me to join a trade union group, about whose leaders I had meanwhile come to form the most unfavorable opinion.
At midday, some of the workers went to the neighborhood inns, while the rest remained in the same lot, consuming their meager snacks. I, located in an isolated corner, drank from my milk jug and ate my ration of bread, but without ceasing to carefully observe the surroundings or reflect on the misery of my lot. Meanwhile, my ears listened more than necessary, and at times it seemed to me that these people were intentionally approaching me as if to induce me to adopt a specific attitude. In any case, what I could hear was enough to irritate me to the extreme. There, everything was denied: the nation was nothing more than an invention of the “capitalists”; the fatherland, an instrument of the bourgeoisie destined to exploit the working class; the authority of the law, a means of subjugating the proletariat; the school, an institution to educate slaves as well as masters; religion, a resource
to idiotize the masses, predestined for exploitation; morality, a sign of stupid resignation, etc. There was nothing, therefore, that was not thrown into the filthiest mud.
At first, I tried to remain silent, but eventually I found it impossible. I began to express my opinion, I began to object; but I had to recognize that all would be useless as long as I didn’t possess at least a relative understanding of the points in question. And so I began to investigate the very sources from which the alleged wisdom of my adversaries came. I read carefully, book by book, pamphlet by pamphlet, and day after day I was able to reply to my opponents, better informed as I was about their own doctrine than they, until at one point I had to resort to that resource that certainly prevails most easily over reason: terror, violence. Some of my opponents urged me to abandon the work immediately, threatening to throw me off the scaffolding. Since I was alone, I considered all resistance useless and opted to withdraw.
What a painful impression dominated my spirit when I contemplated one day the endless columns of a proletarian demonstration in Vienna! I stood for almost two hours, staring in amazement at that enormous human dragon dragging itself along ponderously. Filled with discouragement, I returned home. On the way, I saw the Arbeiterzeitung, the central organ of the old Austrian democracy, in a tobacco shop. In a popular, cheap café I frequented to read newspapers, I also found that miserable sheet of paper, but I could never bring myself to devote more than two minutes to it, for its contents acted on my mind like vitriol. That day, under the depression caused by the demonstration I had just witnessed, an inner impulse induced me to buy the newspaper, this time to read it thoroughly. That evening, I applied myself to it, overcoming the impulses of anger provoked in me by that concentrated solution of lies.
Through the daily Social Democratic press, I was thus able to study the true character of these ideas better than in theoretical literature. What a contrast! On the one hand, the bombastic phrases of liberty, beauty, and dignity, expounded in that loquacious literature of hypocritical human morality, laboriously reflecting a profound wisdom—all this written with prophetic certainty—and on the other hand, the daily press, brutal, capable of all villainy and uniquely skilled in the art of lying for the sake of the
saving doctrine of the new humanity! The first is intended for the fools of the middle and upper “intellectual spheres,” and the second—the press—for the masses.
Penetrating the meaning of that literature and that press had the significance for me of inclining more fervently to my people. Knowing the effect of such a work of debasement, only a madman would be capable of condemning the victim. I finally understood the significance of the brutal imposition of subscribing only to the red press, attending exclusively red-affiliated rallies, and also of reading only red books. The psyche of the masses is not sensitive to the weak or the mediocre; it is similar to women, whose emotionality responds less to reasons of an abstract order than to an instinctive and indefinable longing for a force that integrates them, and hence they prefer to submit to the strong than to dominate the weak. In the same way, the masses incline more easily to the one who dominates than to the one who supplicates, and they feel more intimately satisfied with an uncompromising doctrine that admits no parallel than with the touch of a freedom that generally serves them little.
IF A DOCTRINE WERE TO EMERGE IN THE FACE OF SOCIAL DEMOCRACY
SUPERIOR IN TRUTHFULNESS, BUT AS BRUTAL AS THAT IN ITS METHODS, THE SECOND WOULD PREVAIL, ALTHOUGH CERTAINLY, AFTER A TENACIOUS FIGHT.
Since Social Democracy knows from its own experience the importance of strength, it falls with fury on those in whom it supposes the existence of this almost rare element, and conversely, it flatters the weak spirits of the opposing side, cautiously or openly, according to the moral quality they possess or that is attributed to them. Social Democracy fears less a man of genius, impotent and lacking in character, than one endowed with natural strength, although lacking in intellectual flair. This is a tactic that responds to the precise calculation of all human weaknesses and that must lead almost mathematically to success, unless the opposing party knows that asphyxiating gas is counteracted only by asphyxiating gas. It must be emphasized to faint-hearted spirits that this is a matter of being or not being.
THE METHOD OF TERROR IN THE WORKSHOPS, IN THE FACTORIES, IN THE
ASSEMBLY LOCATIONS AND IN MASS DEMONSTRATIONS, IT WILL BE
ALWAYS CROWNED WITH SUCCESS AS LONG AS NO ONE ELSE CHASES HIM
TERROR OF ANALOGUE EFFECTS.
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AS A CONSEQUENCE OF THE FACT THAT THE BOURGEOISIE IN INFINITY
OF CASES, PROCEEDING IN THE MOST FOOLSOME AND IMMORAL WAY, HE OPPOSED
RESISTANCE TO EVEN THE MOST HUMANLY JUSTIFIED DEMANDS, EVEN WITHOUT ACHIEVING OR EXPECTING EVEN ANY BENEFIT FROM IT
ATTITUDE, THE MOST HONEST WORKER WAS DRIVEN BY THE
UNION ORGANIZATION FOR POLITICAL STRUGGLE.
The outright rejection of any attempt to improve working conditions for workers, such as the installation of safety devices on machines, the prohibition of child labor, and the protection of women—at least in those months when they carry the future citizen within them—contributed to the social democracy, which welcomed all such instances of ruthless behavior, ensnaring the masses in its net. Our “political bourgeoisie” will never be able to undo these errors, for by refusing to entertain any attempt to eliminate social anomalies, it sowed hatred and apparently justified the assertions of the mortal enemies of all nations that the Social Democratic Party was the sole defender of the interests of the working people.
In my years of experience in Vienna, I was forced, whether I wanted to or not, to define my position regarding workers’ unions.
The fact that Social Democracy appreciated the enormous importance of the trade union movement secured its instrument of action and thus its success. Failure to understand this cost the bourgeoisie its political position. It had believed that with an impertinent “refusal” it could nullify an inevitable logical development.
It is absurd and false to claim that the trade union movement is inherently contrary to the national interest. If trade union action aims at and achieves the improvement of the living conditions of that social class that constitutes one of the fundamental pillars of the nation, it acts not only as an enemy of the country or the state, but also as a “nationalist” in the purest sense of the word.
As long as there are individuals among the employers with little social understanding or who even lack a sense of justice and equity, it is not only a right, but a duty that their dependents, representing a part of the nationality, look after the interests of the whole against the greed or whim of just one. AS LONG AS THE ASOCIAL OR UNWORTHY TREATMENT GIVEN TO MAN CAUSES RESISTANCE, AND AS LONG AS JUDICIAL AUTHORITIES IN CHARGE OF REPAIRING DAMAGES HAVE NOT BEEN INSTITUTED, THE STRONGEST WILL ALWAYS WIN THE FIGHT, THEREFORE IT IS NATURAL THAT THE PERSON WHO CONCENTRATES IN HIMSELF ALL THE STRENGTH OF THE COMPANY, HAS AT THE TOP A SINGLE INDIVIDUAL REPRESENTING THE GENERAL WORKERS.
In this way, the trade union organization will be able to strengthen the social ideal in its practical application in daily life, thereby eliminating the permanent causes of discontent and complaints.
Jazz social democracy intended to maintain the initial program of the corporatist movement it had embraced. And indeed it did. Under its expert guidance, in just a few decades it was able to transform an auxiliary tool created for the defense of social rights into an instrument for the destruction of the national economy. The interests of the working class should not hinder the aims of social democracy in the slightest.
By the beginning of the present century, the syndicalist movement had outlived its original purpose; year after year, it fell further and further within the sphere of action of social democratic politics, and ultimately became nothing more than a battering ram in the class struggle. It had to demolish the foundations of the laboriously constructed national economy by constant attacks and thus prepare the same fate for the state edifice. The defense of the true interests of the people became increasingly secondary, until finally, political skill finally determined the inadvisability of improving the social conditions and cultural level of the people.
masses, under penalty of running the risk that once their desires were satisfied, these crowds could no longer be used indefinitely as an automatic fighting force.
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As I gradually formed an opinion about the external character of Social Democracy, my desire to penetrate the essence of its doctrine increased. The party’s own literature could be of little use to me in this regard, because when it deals with economic questions, it is erroneous in its assertions and demonstrations, and fallacious in its political aims.
ONLY KNOWLEDGE OF JUDAISM GIVES THE KEY TO THE
UNDERSTANDING THE TRUE PURPOSES OF SOCIAL DEMOCRACY.
It would be difficult, if not impossible, for me to pinpoint the period in my life when the word “Jew” first became a source of reflection for me. In my paternal home, when my father was still alive, I don’t recall ever having heard it. I believe the old man would have seen a sign of cultural regression in the mere accentuated pronunciation of that word. During the course of his life, my father had developed more or less universalist views, still maintaining them amidst a convinced nationalism, so that they must have had an influence even on me.
Nor did any reason arise at school that could have led to a change in the opinion I had formed within my family.
It was at the age of fourteen or fifteen that I must have heard the word “Jew” often, especially in political conversations, and I felt a certain repulsion when I witnessed disputes of a religious nature. The issue, then, had no other characteristics for me.
In the city of Linz, there were very few Jews who had become outwardly Europeanized over the centuries, and I even took them for Germans. The absurdity of this assumption was unclear to me, since at that time I saw the only distinctive difference in their religious aspect. The fact that Jews were persecuted for this reason, as I believed, often increased my disgust at exclamations that depress them.
I had no idea at all about the existence of systematic hatred against Jews.
Afterwards I was in Vienna.
Overwhelmed by the accumulation of my impressions of the architectural works of that capital and by the hardships of my own fate, I was unable, during the initial period of my stay there, to grasp the inner makeup of the people in the great city; and so it was that, despite the existence of around 200,000 Jews in Vienna among its two million inhabitants, I had not noticed them.
I can hardly say that I would have found the way I came to know them particularly pleasant. I still saw in the Jew only the confessional question, and so, basing myself on reasons of human tolerance, I maintained my antipathy toward religious strife even then. Hence, I considered the tone of the anti-Semitic press in Vienna unworthy of the cultural tradition of a great people. I was struck by the memory of certain events from the Middle Ages, which I would not have liked to see repeated.
Since these newspapers lacked prestige—I couldn’t explain why—I saw their campaign more as a product of heightened envy than a result of principle, even if it was flawed. This way of thinking was corroborated by the fact that the major press outlets responded to these attacks in an infinitely more dignified manner, or chose not to mention them at all, which seemed even more praiseworthy to me.
I assiduously read the so-called world press (“Neue freie Presse,” “Wiener Tageblatt,” etc.) and was always amazed by its wealth of information, as well as its objectivity in dealing with issues; but what frequently shocked me was the servile way in which they flattered the Court. There was hardly an event in court life that wasn’t presented to the public with phrases of overflowing enthusiasm or plaintive distress, as the case may be. Another thing that got on my nerves was the repugnant worship that press paid to France.
From time to time I also read the “Volksblatt,” a much smaller newspaper, but one that seemed more sincere in these matters. I didn’t agree with its recalcitrant anti-Semitism, although I sometimes found arguments that made me reflect. In any case, it was through these incidents that I gradually came to know the
man and the political movement that at that time influenced the destiny of Vienna: Dr. Karl Lueger and the Christian Social Party.
When I arrived in Vienna I was against both of them because I considered them “reactionary.”
However, a basic notion of fairness changed my opinion as I got to know the man and his work. Little by little, a just appreciation took hold, and later, it turned into a feeling of frank admiration. Today, more than then, I see Dr. Lueger as the greatest German mayor of all time.
How many preconceived ideas had to be modified within me when I changed my way of thinking about the Christian Social movement! And if my views on anti-Semitism also changed, this was undoubtedly the most momentous of the transformations I experienced at that time; it cost me an intense inner struggle between reason and sentiment, and only after many months did reason begin to win. Two years later, sentiment had finally yielded to reason, and from then on, it would remain its most loyal guardian and advisor.
The day must have come, then, when I would no longer wander through the great city blind, as in the early days, but with my eyes open, contemplating the architectural works and the people. Once, while walking through the downtown neighborhoods, I suddenly found myself facing a man wearing a long caftan and black curls. Could he be a Jew? was my first thought. The Jews in Linz certainly didn’t have that appearance. I observed the man furtively, and as I focused on his strange features, studying them feature by feature, the first question transformed in my mind into another immediate one: Could he also be a German?
As always in similar cases, I tried to dispel my doubts by consulting books. With a few cents, for the first time in my life, I acquired some anti-Semitic pamphlets. All of them, unfortunately, assumed that the reader already had some knowledge of the matter or at least understood it; moreover, their tone, due to superficial reasoning and extraordinarily lacking in scientific basis, was such that it made me fall back into new doubts. The issue seemed so momentous to me, and the accusations of such magnitude that I—tortured by the fear of being unjust—felt hesitant and insecure.
Naturally, there was no longer any doubt that these were not German elements of a special religious belief, but a people
different in itself; for from the moment I began to worry about the Jewish question, my first impression of Vienna changed. I saw Jews everywhere, and the more I observed them, the more they differed in my eyes from other people. And if I had still hesitated, my hesitation would have had to come to an end, due to the attitude of some of the Jews themselves.
It was a major movement that sought to clearly establish the racial character of Judaism; Zionism.
Apparently, only a small group of Jews supported this attitude, while the majority condemned it. However, upon closer inspection, this appearance faded, revealing a world of subterfuges of pure convenience, not to say lies. Because the so-called liberal Jews rejected the Zionists not because they weren’t Jewish, but solely because they made a public confession of their Jewishness that the former considered inappropriate and even dangerous. Deep down, the solidarity of all remained unchanged.
That fictitious struggle between Zionists and liberal Jews must have soon caused me disgust because it was completely false and because it did not correspond to the refined cultural level of the Jewish people.
And what a special chapter this was, concerning the material and moral purity of that people! Nothing had made me reflect so much in such a short time as the gradually growing criteria I had regarding the way Jews acted in certain kinds of activities. Was there, by virtue, a single case of scandal or infamy, especially in relation to cultural life, in which at least one Jew was not involved?
A further grave charge fell upon Judaism in my eyes when I became aware of its manipulations in the press, in art, literature, and theater. I began by carefully studying the names of all the authors of filthy productions in the field of artistic activity in general. The result was a growing animosity on my part toward Jews. It was undeniable that nine-tenths of sordid literature, triviality in art, and nonsense in the theater weighed on the debt of a race that barely constituted one-hundredth of the country’s total population.
With the same criteria I also began to appreciate what my favorite “world press” really was, and the more I probed into this
The more I’d admired the terrain, the lessened my previous admiration. The style became unbearable, the content increasingly vulgar, and finally the objectivity of their presentations seemed more false than true. The authors were, therefore, Jewish!
Now I saw the liberal tendency of that press in a different light. The moderate tone of their replies, or their grave silence in the face of the attacks directed against them, must have struck me as a game that was both skillful and villainous. Their glorifying theatrical reviews were always directed at the Jewish playwright, and never did they cast a negative assessment on anyone other than a German. Precisely because of the perseverance with which they scorned Wilhelm II and, at the same time, recommended French culture and civilization, one could deduce the systematic nature of their actions. The meaning of everything was so visibly damaging to Germanism that their purpose could only be deliberate.
Who had any interest in it? Was it all a coincidence?
In Vienna, as surely in no other Western European city, with the possible exception of some ports in southern France, one could better study the relationship between Judaism and prostitution, and even more so, with the white slave trade. Walking at night through the Leopold district, at every step one was—willingly or unwillingly—a witness to events that remained hidden from the vast majority of the German people until the 1914 war gave German combatants on the Eastern Front the opportunity to see, or rather, to have to see, such a state of affairs.
I felt chills when for the first time I discovered in the Jew the businessman, heartless, calculating, venal and shameless, of that irritating traffic in the vices of the scum of the great city.
From then on, I couldn’t take it anymore, and I never tried to avoid the Jewish question again; on the contrary, I forced myself to deal with it from the outset. Thus, following the traces of the Jewish element through all manifestations of cultural and artistic life, I unexpectedly stumbled upon it where I least expected it: Jews were the leaders of the Social Democratic Party!
With this revelation, a long process of internal struggle must have ended for me.
*
**
Gradually, I began to realize that the Social Democratic press was dominated by a Jewish element; however, I didn’t attach much importance to this fact since the situation in the other newspapers was the same. Another circumstance, however, must have caught my attention more: there was no newspaper with Jewish contributions that could have been described, according to my education and judgment, as a truly national publication.
Every Social Democratic pamphlet I came across, I examined the name of its author: it was always a Jew. I examined almost all the names of the Social Democratic Party leaders; the vast majority of them also belonged to the “chosen people,” whether they were representatives in the Reichsrat or secretaries of trade union associations, presidents of party organizations or popular agitators. It was always the same sinister picture, and I will never forget the names: Austerlitz, David, Adler, Ellenbogen, etc.
I now clearly saw that the leadership of that party, whose small representatives I had been tenaciously combating for months, was almost exclusively in the hands of a foreign element, and I finally knew definitively that the Jew was not German. Now I truly knew the perverters of our people intimately.
A year in Vienna had been enough to convince me that no worker, no matter how stubborn, would eventually yield to better knowledge and clearer explanations. Over time, I had become familiar with his own doctrine, and I myself could now use it as a weapon in support of my convictions.
Success almost always leaned towards my side.
The great masses could be saved, but only at the cost of enormous sacrifices of time and perseverance.
But a Jew, on the other hand, could never be freed from his judgment. When one of them was once subdued, because, observed by those present, he had no other recourse but to assent, and it was even believed that at least some progress had been made, great must have been the surprise experienced the next day when one realized that the Jew did not remember the slightest thing about what had happened the day before and continued to repeat
The same old nonsense. I was often astonished, not knowing what should surprise me more: the Jew’s loquacity or his art of mystifying.
I was in the period of the most profound ideological transformation in my life: from a weak cosmopolitan I had to become a fanatical anti-Semite.
Once again – this was the last time – overwhelming thoughts came to me.
Studying the influence of the Jewish people over long periods of human history, the troubling doubt arose in my mind that perhaps fate, for unfathomable reasons, reserved the final triumph for this small people. Will the land be awarded as a reward to this people who live eternally only for this land? Do we truly possess the right to fight for our own preservation, or does this, too, have only a subjective basis for us?
Fate itself took care of giving me the answer by immersing me in the penetration of Marxist doctrine in order to thoroughly study the actions of the Jewish people.
The Jewish doctrine of Marxism rejects the aristocratic principle of Nature and substitutes, in place of the eternal privilege of strength and vigor, numerical mass and its dead weight. It thus denies individual merit in man and impugns the importance of nationalism and race, thereby arrogating to humanity the basis of its existence and culture. This doctrine, as the foundation of the universe, would inevitably lead to the end of all natural order conceivable by the human mind. And just as the application of a similar law to the mechanics of the largest organism we know would provoke chaos, on earth it would mean nothing other than the disappearance of its inhabitants.
If the Jew, with the help of his Marxist creed, were to conquer the nations of the world, his diadem would then become the funeral crown of humanity, and our planet would once again rotate deserted in the ether as it did millions of centuries ago.
Eternal Nature inexorably avenges the transgression of its precepts.
SO I BELIEVE NOW TO ACT ACCORDING TO THE WILL OF THE SUPREME
CREATOR: IN DEFENDING MYSELF FROM THE JEW, I FIGHT FOR THE WORK OF THE LORD.
