JOURNALfor the STUDYof ANTISEMITISM

2011] THE MURDER OF HUGO BETTAUER 235
question. 24
The second half of Erotik und Rasse is devoted to a ferocious attack on
Hugo Bettauer, who is presented as being the most pernicious of all these
German-Jewish writers. When the police tried to stop the sale of Er und Sie
to minors, Karl Sietz, the mayor of Vienna whom Hartner-Hnizdo claimed
was the illegitimate son of “the Jew Pollak,” stepped in to save his Jewish
comrade. 25 This outraged the chancellor, Ignaz Seipel, who called for “the
rehabilitation of souls” (Seelensanierung) and the outlawing of publications
such as Er und Sie and Bettauers Wochenschrift, a view that was shared by
the Zionist paper Wiener Morgenzeitung, which described Bettauer as “a
professional pimp disguised as a journalist,” whose paper offered “the satisfaction
of every imaginable sexual indulgence by people of all ages, even
sixteen-year-olds, on provision of the client’s age and due payment.” 26
Hartner-Hnizdo agreed with this judgment, but questioned the paper’s
motives. Bettauer had become an embarrassment for the Jewish community
and was an anti-Zionist. He asked why the Wiener Morgenzeitung did not
also attack Freud, suggesting as an answer—with blissful disregard of the
fact that Freud was a prominent anti-Zionist—that it was probably because
he was a Zionist. 27 Bettauer was charged on twenty-three counts of attacks
on public decency under paragraph 516 of the criminal code, but a jury
court found him not guilty.
Bettauer’s propagation of free love was a constant thorn in the side of
the respectable right and prompted antisemites like Hartner-Hnizdo into
frenzied outbursts of indignation. His claim that prostitutes voluntarily plied
their trade, making the preposterous accusation that this assertion was cover
for the fact that the sex trade was firmly in Jewish hands, caused particular
outrage. Bettauer campaigned for the rights of women, including prostitutes,
and mounted a campaign against the law that denied them the right to
vote. 28 He strongly endorsed Magnus Hirschfeld’s efforts to legalize homosexuality.
29 In addition, he supported the idea that before a couple could get
24. Franz Schattenfroh, Wille und Rasse, Berlin 1938.
25. Harald Gröller, Karl Seitz, Vienna 2002; Wolfgang Maderthaner, Karl Seitz,
Vienna 2000; Rudolf Spitzer, Karl Seitz: Waisenknabe, Staatspräsident, Bürgermeister,
Vienna 1994. Seitz’s father died young, leaving his wife and eight children
destitute. For this reason, and not because he was illegitimate, Seitz was raised in
an orphanage. Seitz was the architect of “Red Vienna,” a model of social democratic
town planning.
26. Erotik und Rasse, 135. The Wiener Morgenzeitung was the only Germanlanguage
Jewish daily in Europe.
27. Freud abandoned his opposition to Zionism when the Nazis came to power.
28. Prostitutes were also disenfranchised in Italy and Spain.
29. Lesbianism was criminalized in Austria, but not in Germany.