The Jews in the Vienna synagogues to-day were alarmed by the news that the Heimwehr organisation, which is largely organised on similar lines to the Hitlerists in Germany, had organised a successful rising in the Province of Styria, where they had established a Heimwehr dictatorship. It was added that the Jews in the places where the Heimwehr had seized control, had been ill-treated.
Later in the day reports arrived that the police and army, and also the Socialist Defence organisations, had succeeded in putting down the rising, and that the Heimwehr dictatorship was at an end.
In Vienna itself, everything has remained quiet.
The Heimwehr dictatorship was set up soon after midnight on Friday and lasted for the greater part of Saturday. Dr. Pfrimer, one of the leaders of the Heimwehr was proclaimed Dictator. Dr. Pfrimer, Pince Starhemberg, who was Minister of the Interior in the Vaugoin Government, and other Heimwehr leaders are stated to be under arrest. The Heimwehr headquarters in Vienna have been seized by the police, and about 50 Heimwehr members have been arrested here.
Dr. Pfrimer, like Prince Starhemberg, is a violent antisemite. In 1929, when there was a big controversy in the Heimwehr ranks over the question whether the organisation was antisemitic or not, and Dr. Steidle, who was one of the two co-leaders with Dr. Pfrimer, tried to assure public opinion by declaring that patriotic native-born Jews were welcome in the Heimwehr movement, Dr. Pfrimer immediately came out with a declaration that the Jews must be regarded as an alien people, and treated accordingly.
When the Heimwehr participated in the Austrian Government last year, with Prince Starhemberg as Minister of the Interior, and Dr. Hueber as Minister of Justice, they neither of them disguised their antisemitism, and the Jews of Austria were seriously concerned about the anti-Jewish policy which they were conducting in their official capacities.
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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.
