Noted Actor Cancels Performance in Vienna to Protest Anti-semitism

Fritz Kortner, a dedicated Jew who is considered by many to be the greatest living actor and director of the German stage, has notified local theatrical manager Ernst Haeussermann that he cannot appear in “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, “the Tennessee Williams play, “until such time as the intellectual, representative and official circles of Vienna have dissociated themselves” from recent anti-Semitic episodes.

Kortner, who was in Hollywood during the War, is presently directing Shakespeare’s “Henry IV” in Munich. He had been looking forward to his first postwar appearance in his native Vienna, he points out in his communication to Haeussermann, but does not care to do so, as long as Vienna fails to repudiate those responsible for certain “hideous anti-Semitic occurrences.”

The incidents that led to Kortner’s action involve German actress Kaethe Dorsch, who now appears in this city’s famed Burgtheater, prominent Austrian film director Franz Antel and Vienna Jewish drama critic Hans Weigel. When the latter published an unflattering account of a performance by Miss Dorsch, she beat him and shattered his glasses.

Munich’s “Sueddeutsche Zeitung,” the most important daily in South Germany, insists that Miss Dorsch was influenced by neo-Nazi motivation in selecting Jewish critic Weigel for her assault. At any rate, the cast of the Burgtheater backed her up in extraordinary fashion, with veteran actor Raoul Aslan demanding that Vienna born Weigel be expelled from the country. Antel followed up the Dorsch uproar by publicly jeering at Weigel as a “repulsive Jew.” When challenged, he blustered defiantly that he was proud of being an “old Nazi.”

(In New York, Variety, show business trade newspaper, reported that Republic Pictures has Antel’s picture, “The Congress Dances,” for release. The report noted that Antel was still active in both Austrian and German film production.)

Kortner’s protest was directed against this climate of heedlessness and brought to a head the indignation voiced in some sections of the German press. In consequence, Antel has now been compelled to tender a full apology to Weigel, which the latter has accepted.