German Groups Consider Action on German Day Celebration Banned by Mayor O’brien

Prominent German Jewish residents of New York yesterday predicted the collapse of the United German Societies as a result of Mayor O’Brien’s ban on German Day celebrations in the drill hall of the 165th Regiment Armory. Twenty-fifth Street and Lexington Avenue, next Sunday evening.

In an effort to devise ways and means of overcoming the mayor’s edict the United German Societies were to meet last night at the New Yorker Turnhalle on Lexington Avenue and Eighty-fifth Street. Representing seventy societies with a membership of about 10,000, the governing body of the organization was to meet two hours before the general meeting to consider methods of forcing a withdrawal of the mayor’s threat to “stop the celebration” if the societies themselves did not do it.

Among the measures contemplated by the societies were the withdrawal of Heinz Spanknoebel from the rostrum at the celebration and the adoption of legal processes against the mayor for “abandoning American democratic principles of free speech and assembly rights.”

At the City Hall yesterday it was indicated that the mayor would not be persuaded to deflect from his announced determination to ban German Day celebrations. In a letter to Rev. Dr. William Popcke, President of the 250th Aniversary Committee of the United German Societies, the mayor had militantly declared that he would not allow Hitlerite propaganda to be broadcast at the celebration.

“I have been advised by numerous citizens of German blood that the occasion will be seized upon by certain alien agitators recently arrived from Germany … to expound and proclaim the doctrines now being preached by Herr Hitler in Ger-