Professor Otto Loewi, Nobel Prize winner for physiology and medicine in 1936, who conducted pioneer investigations on the transmission of nerve impulses, was first jailed, then managed to get abroad. His notes and plans for further experiments and research crossed the borders with him.
Professor Erwin Schredinger, Nobel Prize winner for physics in 1933, and Professor Victor G. Hess, the 1937 winner in cosmic-ray research, were removed from their university positions..
Professor Ferdinand Blumenthal, internationally known cancer specialist, who had already fled to Austria from Germany, was arrested. His colleagues were seeking his release and emigration.
Professor Heinrich Neumann, world-known ear specialist, was arrested and imprisoned. In London, colleagues and friends rushed affidavits and visa applications for him.
More than half the assistant professors and instructors on the medical faculty of the University of Vienna were summarily dismissed, Jews and Aryans alike. These included:
Professor Egon Ranzi, director of the Surgical Clinic
Professor Leopold Arzt, dermatologist
Professor Ernst P. Pick, pharmacologist
Dr. Arnold Durig, physiologist
Dr. Otto Kinders, psychologist
Professor Otto Marburg, noted neurologist
In Austria’s other universities twelve hundred professors, teachers, research workers were ousted or arrested. Most of them sought visas to other lands. These included:
The President of the Austrian Academy of Science, Professor Oswald Redlich
Dr. Armand Kaminka, founder of the Vienna Maimonides Institute
Dr. Julius Schnitzler, professor of surgery
Dr. Ernst Straussler, criminologist
But some of Austria’s leading scientific men escaped the ousting, the arrests, the pleas for affidavits and visas. They, for their personal reasons, for their secret reasons, chose suicide instead.
Professors Nobl and Oscar Frankl, the brother physicians of the University of Vienna, chose it instead. Dr. Gustav Bayer, of Innsbruck, and his daughter chose it. Professor Ismar Boas, Albert Smolenskin, mathematician, Dr. Gabor Nobl, dermatologist, Professor Denk, head of the Second Clinic of Medicine, all chose it. And also Egon Friedell, author, playwright, and actor, Marianne Trebitsch-Stein, writer, and Dr. Kurt Sonnenfeld, editor of the Neue Freie Presse. These also chose it.
Franz Werfel, novelist, was already in exile.
Gina Kaus, biographer of the Empress Catherine, escaped to Switzerland.
Siegfried Geyer, author and translator of Molnár, was jailed. So too was Ludwig Hirschfeld, the witty publicist. Richard Bermann was captured as he tried to escape, but he tried again and succeeded. Anton Kuh escaped to Prague. René Kraus, and the essayist, Alfred Polgar, escaped also.
The Vienna Opera dismissed half its orchestra players for “tainted blood.” Dismissed too were its featured singers, Else Flesch and Margit Bokor, its director, Lothar Wallerstein, and its conductor, Josef Krips.
Fritz Lohner, who wrote librettos for Franz Leháor, was sent to the concentration camp at Dachau.
The Vienna Philharmonic ousted Dr. Hugo Burghauser, its chairman.
Hermann Leopoldi, composer of comic songs, lighthearted and merry, got his visa in time and fled; so too did Bruno Walter.
Dr. Ernst Lothar, who leased Reinhardt’s Josefstadter Theater, managed to emigrate; Friedrich Rosenthal, director of the Burg Theater on the Ring, was dropped, as were also the Burg’s featured players, Hans Wengraf and Franz Strassni. Albert Basserman escaped, but Rudolph Beer, head of the Reinhardt School of Acting, wrote some farewell notes and killed himself.
From museum walls certain canvases were banished, from the keys of Austrian pianos and the strings of Viennese fiddles certain melodies were outlawed, from the pulpits in Austrian churches many voices now spoke only in parables.
Celebrate the cleansing. Celebrate, Völkischer Beobachter, celebrate. Austria is whole now.
And on a breakwater in the Danube, fifty-one Jews crowded together, watching the waters, watching the skies. The night before, Austrian storm troopers had brought them there, left them without food, money, water, or identification papers. There was, obviously, nothing else to do. All three of Austria’s neighboring countries, Germany, Hungary, and Czechoslovakia, had refused to give them even transitory admission.
Celebrate, celebrate.
Dr. Vederle reread the letter from America. She must be a very understanding person, this Vera M. Stamford. Ann Willis had done them a good turn in her choice of a substitute.
“…so bad an impression of your country-to-be. We’re not all like that. Do not ever feel guilty about bothering me…feel as though we really know each other already.”
It was kind of her to offer this small personal assurance of continuing interest. As if she were saying, ‘What does it matter if April and May and half of June have already gone by and we are still not successful with the visas? I am not going to turn away in boredom; how could I, since we are in this together? The Consulate is behaving badly, we must humor them, but we shall succeed before long…”
He wondered what she was like actually, what she looked like, this woman who had become so important to himself and Christa and the children. It was strange not to know whether she was tall or short, homely or beautiful; he knew her age, knew of her education and marriage and divorce, of her work and success, for all that was in the affidavit. But the face? The eyes and mouth, the smile, the tone of voice, all the features and mannerisms and timbres that described the contents of a human being? He was beginning to be curious about her as a person.
Affidavits should really be less austere, more gossipy and informative. He chuckled to himself.
“Deponent is a pretty blonde, with blue eyes and appealing feminine charm.” Now, that’s the way an affidavit really ought to read; that would give ne something to go by in one’s attempts to visualize the person to whom one owed so much. “Deponent has a soft, low voice, a warm and ready smile; she is a woman men admire. Deponent is tall and willowy, with charming legs like Dietrich’s. She loves music, she owns a Bechstein piano, no, no, a Steinway, and is an admirer of the Beethoven sonatas and the Schubert
“What are you smiling over, Franz?”
Christa came out to join him in the small garden.
They were living in a small summer chalet, east of the lovely town of Erlenbach. The town was only nine miles from Zurich, and their own chalet only a few minutes’ walk from the slow crescent curve of the lake. The whole region smiled in beauty, cradled by the Zurichberg and the Ütliberg, not very imposing mountains but all the friendlier, for that, in contrast to the regal snow-tipped Alps in the farther distances.
They had moved there after only a fortnight in Basel. Visas were not issued in Basel, they found, but only in Zurich, a two-hour trip by train. Aside from that, Basel was oddly depressing. Hotel life restricted Paul and Ilse to much, the bustling city, with its baroque and Gothic houses, seemed to have no place for them. And, though it remained an unspoken thought, there was a curious need for being nearer to the American Consulate in Zurich. They felt like drawing close to it, as one does to a friend who offers understanding and help in a troubled time.
So far, the understanding and help had been leisurely and impersonal, but one knew of the constant pressure on all the consulates and could forgive some delay. The very first day after he and Christa had rejoined each other at Basel, they and the children had gone to Zurich. The Americans in the Consulate were polite and efficient, their papers and Mrs. Stamford’s affidavits and other documents were given quick preliminary examination, and their applications for reservations on quota numbers were entered in the books.
The whole thing had taken little more than an hour. Apart from their own excitement over the very act of applying in person for American visas, there was almost no incident to mark the visit. For a moment, it seemed there might be one.
“Budapest? You were born in Budapest?” the young man
interviewing them asked Christa, in very passable German.
“Yes. My parents were Austrian citizens, but they were there just then. I have always lived in Austria.”
“Yes, I understand. The country of birth, though,” isn’t Austria, but Hungary. The Hungarian quota—”
Christa looked quickly at Franz.
“Among German friends, heard we—we heard often,” he offered helpfully in English, “that all the wifes go on the quota of the husband’s country.” The pleasant young man smiled and replied in English.
“Yes. There has to be a discretionary ruling on each case.”
Franz was not completely clear about what this meant, but the voice was reassuring. Apparently it was a routine matter, for the young man was going on through the rest of the documents. Over each paper or statement, he nodded his head in some affirmation.
When it was over, they felt in a holiday mood. They spent the rest of the day sight-seeing around the famous lake. Later, when they first thought of exchanging Basel for some more appealing surroundings, there was not a moment’s doubt where it should be.
The little house pleased them all, though it was old-fashioned and inconvenient in many ways. An old Swiss woman, Thilde, came in twice a week to do the heavy cleaning; for the rest Christa insisted that it would help the days along if she marketed and cooked and cleaned herself. Paul and Ilse thought this a capital way to live. They loved going to market every morning with their mother; it was a new and exciting pastime. There was a small tennis club and Paul took his first lessons. And the lake—that was best of all, with the sight-seeing steamers, the rowboats for hire, and the swimming. Paul was sure America could offer nothing as good as this. It was a million times better than their summer place at the Traunsee.
Franz liked the small house, too. It was a pleasant way in which to wait until their visas would be in their hands. Even though it seemed impractical for so short a time, he had rented a piano, and each day he practiced for two or three hours. It had been years since he had had free time for this, his restoring and gracious hobby, and one by one he worked back to his old proficiency on his best-loved Beethoven sonatas, Schubert impromptus, Brahms ballades, and Bach preludes and fugues.
The steady practicing was deeply good for him, and Christa often said that she enjoyed the sound of the great German music more than she had ever before enjoyed it or any other music. She said it tentatively, as though Franz would laugh. He felt it too, though, and did not laugh or wonder. All that had happened had been unable to prevent their carrying this beauty across the frontiers with them. There were things the Nazis and their decrees and Secret Police could never confiscate or proscribe. For as long as men in prison could whistle a few bars of the verbotene Mendelssohn, or say over in their minds the verbotene Heine’s Aus meinen grossen Schmerzen, they had the untouchable at their command, they could know themselves still defiant and unvanquished.
Now Franz rose eagerly to meet Christa as she came through the trellised door to the garden. Her question saddened him; she herself smiled rarely these days, and today particularly she felt slightly ill. It was as though she found him heartless to be able to find amusement in anything.
“I was smiling over a foolish notion I’ve been entertaining myself with,” he answered. “About affidavits—it’s no matter. How do you feel now, Christl? Better?”
“Oh, yes, it was nothing. A headache is so boring, though.”
“I don’t like it that you have one so often.”
“It’s silly, I know you must think they are only neurotic.”
“The pain is just as painful—”
“Oh, Franzi, isn’t it too bad an analyst cannot take his wife for a patient? I suppose it would do me good now. Couldn’t you pretend to have a proper objectivity with me, as if I were just someone you’d never seen before.”
“No, I couldn’t even pretend it if I wanted to.”
He smiled at her, and now she returned his smile. But he was concerned. Christa woke often in the night and lay tossing and tense. She ate unevenly; sometimes for days she was entirely uninterested in meals, only to change to an almost wolfish appetite. Often she spoke sharply to the children, and then her remorse afterward was too great, disproportionate to the offense. She was oversensitive to being spoken of as a “refugee.” Emigration was never easy; but with Christa he began to see it was more of a horror than it need be.
Sometimes he tried to speak about it, to help her accept it. Then she only felt a new guilt, that she was somehow betraying his entire profession by behaving in this strange manner. As though an analyst’s wife should, by some unheard-of osmosis, absorb the analytic process into her own being! He explained the folly of this guilt to her and she always nodded in complete acceptance and understanding. But she went right on feeling it.
“It will be easier for you when we have the visas and start for America,” he said. “Shall we take the children out on the lake?”
“Oh, yes, let’s. We’ll have a picnic supper on the shore or in the woods. It will be so nice.”
They took a cab to the near-by town of Küssnacht, and boarded one of the small lake steamers. They found seats up forward, and the children immediately plastered their slight bodies to the railing, to watch the prow-rolled water. Christa and Franz sat in close silence, their eyes turning always to the mountains in the clear high skies.
Soon Christa leaned her head back, closed her eyes. The little boat was rather crowded; voices and laughter came at one from all directions; it was soothing and friendly to lose one’s identity in a crowd of sight-seers and vacationers.
“…ist überfremdet.”
“Jawohl, die Überfremdung in der Schweiz ist so furchtbar, dass…”
The voices drifted to her from a near-by group of talkers. They talked in the special Swiss-German dialect, but she had already become familiar with it. She glanced at Franz; he had not heard. She turned angry, wary eyes toward the loud-voiced speakers.
“Überfremdet.” An insulting word, a heartless and arrogant word. “Overaliened.” A newly coined word, to express a newly felt scorn. And the answer, the disgusted agreement. “Yes, indeed, the overaliening in Switzerland is already so dreadful that…”
She sat forward sharply, trying to see the enemies. A moment ago they had seemed merely pleasant fellow passengers on a friendly little ship. Now their very faces were threats to her pride, her sense of equality. Her sudden movement caught the eye of one of them, a flabby-bosomed woman in an embroidered blouse, a full plaid skirt, with red sandals over wide bare feet. Their eyes held for a moment. Then with the grotesque exaggeration of a third-rate actor “expressing scorn,” the flabby one raised her eyebrows and the shoulder nearest Christa. She turned away, said something un-catchable to her companions, and a laugh assaulted the sunny air.
Christa gripped the arms of the deck chair, started to rise, then helplessly sank back again. Sick anguish twisted inside her, and a hatred. How did these contemptuous strangers know that she and her family were foreigners; did she and Franz bear some mark on their foreheads that stamped them to all the world as aliens?
“Aber in Wien…” Ilse’s high vice drifted back to her. Of course, the children, prattling about Vienna, the Traunsee, Döbling in their Viennese accent.
Oh, that made it even worse; that these strangers should listen to children, to her and Franz’ children, and know only disgust and reluctance for their presence.
“Franz—” His eyes opened. Instantly concern filled them.
“You are ill, Christl? The motion of the boat?”
“No, oh, please don’t be so ridiculous,” she answered, irritated inexplicably. “I’m not a baby to get seasick from this.”
He made no reply. He saw her tight lips, saw the high color still rosying her throat, though above it her face was quite pale. His glance wandered about, in search of the cause for this sudden change in her.
“I—I’m sorry I spoke so,” Christa said quickly. “My foolish nerves
play tricks. I am not seasick, Franz, I just heard those horrible people there…”
He listened, nodding in sympathy. A dozen times a week, in a dozen different places, came this small attack on their dignity. When they had joined each other in Basel, Christa had told him that in Italy her Austrian passport had stamped her everywhere as an inferior being; only foreigners with German passports were treated there with respect. He had not been surprised; that was Italy. Here in Switzerland, in democratic, international-minded Switzerland…But soon he found that even here, no day ended without its small deposit of contempt.
“Have you anything to identify yourself, sir?” The teller at the bank, so courteous, so affable. Then the Austrian passport slid over the marble counter, and the subtle change would come.
“Austrian? Yes, of course.” The voice a shade cooler, the eye a touch evasive. Vederle had been amused at first, then he had been angry, found himself constantly en garde in advance in any public place. He finally had achieved the armor of partial indifference. But it was, after all, only partial.
The same subtle attack came at one from the post-office clerks, the credit manager of the piano store, the registering officers at the police, even the librarian at the Municipal Library.
“It is maddening, my darling,” he said in a low voice to Christa, when she finished, her hot eyes burning into the oblivious back of the bloused and skirted woman. “You know, it is nothing new, this hatred of the foreigner. ‘Xenophobia,’ the ancient Greeks called it—‘fear of the stranger.’ That describes it more closely than ‘hatred.’ ”
“Fear? Why should they fear us? Why should they fear anyone who has had to leave his own country and come begging to a country that doesn’t want him? If any human being could be weaker, less to be feared—”
“It’s confused, most fear is. Some of it is that the alien might earn a few marks or francs or pounds that you feel belong to you. Some of it is fear of the different, the unknown.”
“How stupid, how provincial.”
“Yes, but calling names doesn’t change it. I even think these nations around Germany fear refugees because they fear the future for themselves.”
The Trespassers Page 13