JOURNALfor the STUDYof ANTISEMITISM

2011] THE MURDER OF HUGO BETTAUER 227
of all Jews by year’s end. But enthusiasm for this measure soon waned.
Cultural life became insufferably dull. Playgoers soon tired of a meager diet
of the alpine idylls of Ludwig Ganghofer and the sentimental village sagas
of Ludwig Anzengruber. Deprived of their Jewish patrons, elegant cafés
were obliged to convert into snack bars selling sausages. Jewelers, couturiers,
and furriers, no longer patronized by wealthy Jews, were forced to
move to Prague and Budapest. Unemployment rose steeply. Inflation was
rampant. The once vibrant and exhilarating Vienna rapidly sank to the level
of a dull provincial town. Leo Strakosch, one of the Jews who had been
expelled, disguises himself as a French artist and returns to Vienna to visit
his wealthy girlfriend. He immediately starts a poster campaign to repeal
the expulsion order. The government is toppled and the Jews return amid
general jubilation. The film differs substantially from the book, causing a
severe altercation between Bettauer and Breslauer because the political
message was blunted. Vienna becomes Utopia, the entire story a nightmare
dreamt by an antisemitic member of parliament, whose waking words are:
“Thank heavens that this stupid dream is over! We are all human beings and
do not want hate. We simply want to live together in peace and quiet.” Jews
are seen as a necessary evil, the “world’s yeast.” The film is further distanced
from reality by expressionistic sets in the manner of Robert Wiene’s
classic The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari. Yet even in this anodyne form, the film
caused an outrage. Much of the satire backfired. Did the novel as well as
the film not show that Austria’s culture and economy were dominated by
the Jews, just as the antisemites claimed? Nazis rioted and threw stink
bombs into cinemas. It was banned in Linz. There were calls for “self-help”
against the Jewish pornographer Bettauer, which Otto Rothstock promptly
answered, thereby becoming a popular hero.
Amid the uproar over the Bettauer assassination, a hastily prepared
book appeared that provides remarkable testimony to the strength of
antisemitic sentiment in the Vienna of the 1920s. Herwig Hartner-Hnizdo’s
Erotik und Rasse: eine Untersuchung über gesellschaftliche, sittliche und
geschlechtliche Fragen (Eroticism and Race: A study of the social, moral
and sexual question) provides an exhaustive and disturbing justification for
Bettauer’s assassination, by detailing the charges laid against him and
Vienna’s Jewish community. 6 The author starts from the premise that contemporary
theater and film, both of which were dominated by Jews, emphasized
the sexual at the expense of the intellectual. While both mediums of
entertainment claimed to be realistic they failed, for the obvious reason that
all were written by Jews, to take account the destructive influence of Jewry.
6. Herwig Hartner-Hnizdo, Erotik und Rasse: eine Untersuchung des gesellschaftliche,
sittliche und geschlechtliche Frage, Munich 1925.