The Cabinet has to-day approved the Bill providing for the regulation of the question of student rights at the Austrian Universities, which has been unsettled since the Constitutional Court last summer declared the previous student rights conferred on the German-race students’ organisation as unconstitutional.
The new law, which still has to pass Parliament, bases the student rights on national citizenship, which the Jewish students and the Jewish Community opposed, demanding that it should be based on citizenship apart from any question of nationality, but it accords equal rights to all student nationalities.
At the same time, the law gives legal snaction to the principle of the Germanic character of the Austrian Universities, which thus fortified by legislation is now secure from further attack on the ground of unconstitutionality. It is this point which it is feared may give rise to fresh anti-Jewish manoeuvring.
Under the new law Jews who are konfessionslos, meaning that they have left the Jewish Community on the ground that they have no religious faith, or Jews who have become baptised, will have to belong to the Jewish national student body, or they will have to form a special mixed nationality students’ body.
The Zionist students at Vienna University have adopted a resolution setting out their views on the question of student rights, which says: The Jewish student body recognises itself proudly and freely as belonging to its nationality, and has constituted in its national federations adequate forms of organisation, which can represent it in the general students’ chamber without being subject to any suspicion of taking up such representation for assimilationist reasons. If the State authorities establish the principle of student nationalities, voluntary recognition of membership of the nationality should be made by statute the basis of the student nationalities and all student nationalities should be granted full and equal rights in every regard.
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The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
