Neue Freie Presse
- Three Hundred Against One
- In Trier Too, a German Shot Dead by a Frenchman
- Austria, You Have It Better!
The Neue Freie Presse of 30 September 1926 led with a Viennese workplace story told with open sarcasm: some 300 workers at a Heiligenstadt coachwork factory demanded the dismissal of a young colleague who had marched with a Catholic youth group whose procession had clashed with the Social Democratic Schutzbund, and struck when management refused. A correspondent's telegram from Trier reported that a German workman had been shot dead by a French laboratory assistant attached to the occupation forces, on the same Sunday as a shooting at Germersheim. Alice Schalek's feuilleton argued that Austrians took for granted the legally secured leisure to enjoy art and mountain scenery, something even well-off Americans could not reach.
Translation
Three Hundred Against One
[?] Vienna, 30 September. One of the worst excesses of the trade-union struggle took place yesterday. On Sunday a young worker takes part in the procession of the Hernals Catholic youth association, during which the clash with the republican Schutzbund men occurred on Elterleinplatz. This encounter, in which, as we know, about a dozen light injuries occurred, is probably to blame for the fact that the procession is also being talked about out in Heiligenstadt, where the young man is employed at the Weiser carriage and coachwork factory. His comrades hear of it, and right on Monday they emphatically demand the dismissal of the wrongdoer, who has committed the crime of belonging to the bourgeois Christian Social association instead of marching as a good Social Democrat in the ranks of the Schutzbund. The management, however, does not concede the dismissal, and since the innocently guilty man refuses to hand in his notice himself, although his colleagues make life as hard as possible for him, the workers go on strike to a man, three hundred strong, in order to force through their demand with this most powerful of means. [?]
In Trier Too, a German Shot Dead by a Frenchman
[?] Trier, 29 September. On the same Sunday on which a French second lieutenant in Germersheim shot down peaceful Germans, a workshop worker named Feodor Hollstein was shot dead in Trier by a Frenchman named Motet. This Frenchman, too, belongs to the occupation force; he is a laboratory assistant at the French military hospital in Trier. Hollstein was on his way back from a walk in the company of several acquaintances when he fell victim to the Frenchman's fatal bullet. The murderer and his companions escaped in the darkness, and only today did it prove possible to identify the perpetrator as the French laboratory assistant Motet. [?]
Austria, You Have It Better!
[?] In an argument that recently flared up over whether married or single life offers more advantages, a bachelor maintained that he did not envy married people, although they were undoubtedly better off, because they mostly found their advantages all too self-evident, and indeed were often no longer even aware of them. Austria seems to me to be in a similar position. Every one of us knows exactly what we lack, but what we enjoy every day is appreciated only by someone who has missed it abroad: namely, that Austria is filled with art and natural beauty, which the law gives everyone enough time to enjoy; what of this is still accessible here to people of small means remains out of reach even for the well-to-do in work-driven America. And above all, that in this country even the average citizen scrimps the butter off his bread to satisfy his longing for music and the rapture of the heights, whereas over there one gives nothing at all in exchange for nature, and for art only one's surplus. [?]
Context
What was the Schutzbund, and why could one Catholic procession set off a factory strike?
The editorial calls the Heiligenstadt strike one of the worst excesses of the trade-union struggle and mocks the workers for treating a colleague's membership of a Christian Social youth association, rather than marching with the Schutzbund, as a crime. The organization at the centre of the story was the Republikanischer Schutzbund, a paramilitary force that the Social Democratic Workers' Party founded in 1923 to defend the republic. It was armed and organized on military lines, and its membership peaked at about 100,000 men in 1925. Between 1923 and 1927 Austrian politics saw repeated clashes between party militias: the Social Democrats' Schutzbund on one side, and on the other the conservative Christian Social Party with the Heimwehren and other formations. The brawl on Elterleinplatz in Hernals belonged to that pattern of street confrontation, and the strike shows the same divide between the camps reaching into a factory. The Neue Freie Presse presented the workers' demand as coercion by the labour movement. The figures of 300 strikers and about a dozen light injuries are the paper's own account. Less than a year later the conflict escalated sharply: after a jury acquitted the men charged over the Schattendorf shootings, the July Revolt of 1927 in Vienna ended with 84 people killed when police opened fire.
Why were French personnel in Trier and Germersheim in 1926?
The Trier telegram describes the shooter as a member of the occupation force working at the French military hospital, and ties the killing to a shooting by a French second lieutenant at Germersheim on the same Sunday. Both towns lay in the Allied-occupied Rhineland. Under the Armistice of November 1918, the Treaty of Versailles and a parallel Rhineland Agreement, the region west of the Rhine was under Allied control from 1 December 1918. An Inter-Allied Rhineland High Commission, led by a French commissioner, oversaw it. After the Locarno treaties the British left the Cologne zone in January 1926, but the French remained in the other zones. The Koblenz zone was evacuated only in November 1929 and the Mainz zone on 30 June 1930, which ended the occupation. The Rhineland Agreement left civil and criminal jurisdiction with Germany except for offences against occupation troops, which came under Allied military jurisdiction. Relations with the population were more strained in the French and Belgian zones than in the American and British ones, and the early years brought frequent outbreaks of minor violence. Both sides waged propaganda campaigns, and German material could be highly charged: during the Ruhr occupation one appeal spoke of 'French and Belgian thieves and murderers'. The telegram's picture of peaceful Germans shot down and a 'murderer' escaping into the dark belongs to that climate. The names and circumstances of the Trier case rest on the paper's report alone.
Who was Alice Schalek, and why did she write about art, mountains and America?
'Austria, You Have It Better!' is a signed feuilleton by Alice Schalek (1874–1956), who had written for the Neue Freie Presse feuilleton since 1903 and worked for the paper for more than thirty years. She made her name with travel reports from journeys to Scandinavia, North Africa, India and East Asia, and in 1913 on a trip through numerous countries, as well as with thousands of photographs. During the First World War she was the only woman war correspondent in the k.u.k. War Press Office, and Karl Kraus attacked her fiercely, accusing her of glorifying war. From 1923 she was travelling again as a travel journalist. She was also a keen mountaineer who wrote novellas and feuilletons about climbing, which gives weight to the essay's praise of the 'rapture of the heights'. In June 1926, a few months before this piece, the same paper had printed her feuilleton on the Rax cable car. Her contrast with 'work-driven America' can be set beside her own travels: in August 1914 the paper printed her 'Wild-West-Karriere' piece from the Grand Canyon of the Colorado, and she visited the United States in 1930, four years after this essay. The essay credits Austrian law with giving everyone enough time to enjoy art and nature, but the excerpt does not name the law she had in mind.
Original
Dreihundert gegen einen.
[?] Wien, 30. September. Einer der ärgsten Exzesse des gewerkschaftlichen Kampfes hat gestern stattgefunden. Ein junger Arbeiter nimmt Sonntag an dem Umzug der Hernalser katholischen Jugendvereinigung teil, bei der es auf dem Elterleinplatz zu dem Zusammenstoß mit den republikanischen Schutzbündlern gekommen ist. Dieses Renkontre, bei dem, wie wir wissen, etwa ein Dutzend leichte Verwundungen vorgekommen sind, hat wohl Schuld daran, daß von dem Umzug auch draußen in Heiligenstadt gesprochen wird, wo der junge Mann in der Wagen - und Karosseriefabrik Weiser beschäftigt ist. Die Kameraden hören davon und gleich am Montag verlangen sie mit Nachdruck die Entlassung des Uebeltäters, der das Verbrechen begangen hat, statt als braver Sozialdemokrat in den Reihen des Schutzbundes mitzuziehen, dem bürgerlichen christlichsozialen Verein anzugehören. Die Entlassung wird jedoch von der Direktion nicht zugestanden, und da der unschuldig Schuldige sich weigert, selbst seine Kündigung einzureichen, obwohl ihm die Kollegen das Leben so schwer als möglich machen, treten die Arbeiter allesamt, dreihundert Mann hoch, in Streik, um ihre Forderung mit diesem kräftigsten Mittel durchzusetzen. [?]
Auch in Trier ein Deutscher von einem Franzosen erschossen.
[?] Trier, 29. September. An demselben Sonntag, an dem in Germersheim ein französischer Unterleutnant friedliche Deutsche niederschoß, ist in Trier ein Werkstättenarbeiter namens Feodor Hollstein von einem Franzosen namens Motet erschossen worden. Auch dieser Franzose gehört zur Besatzung, er ist Laboratoriumsgehilfe am französischen Militärlazarett in Trier. Hollstein befand sich auf dem Rückwege von einem Spaziergange in Begleitung von mehreren Bekannten, als er der tödlichen Kugel des Franzosen zum Opfer fiel. Der Mörder. und seine Genossen entkamen in der Dunkelheit und erst heute gelang es, den Täter in der Person des französischen Laboratoriumsgehilfen Motet zu ermitteln. [?]
Oesterreich, du hast es besser!
[?] Bei einem Streit, der jüngst darüber entbrannte, ob das Leben der Verheirateten oder Ledigen mehr Vorteile biete, behauptete ein Junggeselle, daß er die Eheleute, wiewohl sie es zweifellos besser hätten, nicht beneide, weil sie zumeist ihre Vorteile allzu selbstverständlich fänden, ja sich ihrer oft gar nicht mehr bewußt seien. In ähnlicher Lage scheint mir Oesterreich. Was wir entbehren, weiß jeder von uns ganz genau, aber was wir täglich genießen, würdigt nur derjenige, der es im Ausland vermißte: daß nämlich Oesterreich von Kunst und Naturschönheit erfüllt ist, die zu genießen jeder durch das Gesetz Zeit genug hat: was davon bei uns dem wenig Bemittelten noch zugänglich ist, bleibt in dem arbeitdurchtobten Amerika auch dem Wohlhabenden unerreichbar. Und vor allem, daß hierzulande sich auch der Durchschnittsbürger die Butter vom Brot abspart, um seiner Sehnsucht nach Musik und Höhenrausch zu genügen, während man drüben Natur gar nicht, Kunst aber nur gegen Ueberfluß eintauscht. [?]