“judaised Constitutional Court”: How Vienna Antisemitic Students and Professors React to Court’s Dec

“Judaised Constitutional Court” is the reaction of the antisemitic students and professors at Vienna University to the verdict of the Federal Constitutional Court (reported yesterday) that the regulation of the University Senate conferring student rights only on the antisemitic German race-students’ body is unconstitutional and therefore void. No account is taken in this connection of the fact that there is not a single Jew among the members of the Constitutional Court.

The University and the Technical High School and the School of Agriculture have been closed, mainly as a protest against the verdict of the Constitutional Court. Most of the Professors are standing solid with the antisemitic students.

Posters reading “No Jews admitted” have been torn down by the police from the entrance to the University building. The police forces have been strengthened, and are showing vigour and firmness in preventing the antisemitic disturbances spreading to the streets. Attacks on Jewish students are continuing and so far eighteen Jewish students have had to be given medical attention for their injuries. The University Senate has had a consultation with the Minister of Education, Dr. Czermack with regard to measures being taken to maintain order.

The closing down of the University has created a great deal of dissatisfaction among the English and American students here, both Jewish and non-Jewish, and they intend to demand the repayment of their fess from the University authorities, declaring that they will not hesitate to go to court even, in order to protest against the University being closed before the end of the period for which they have paid their fees.

The new Buresch Government, which has just been constituted in succession to the Ender Government (practically unchanged except for Dr. Buresch replacing Dr. Ender as Premier and Dr. Joseph Redlich replacing Dr. Juch as Minister of Finance) is very much disconcerted by this antisemitic trouble occurring now when Mr. Lionel de Rothschild, the head of the London house of N. M. Rothschild and Sons (and President of the United Synagogue, the Jewish Memorial, and the League of British Jews) has arrived here to discuss with the Government the reconstruction of the Credit-Anstalt and the placing of Austrian treasury bonds on the London market, and when the International Rotary Conference has been opened here, with about 4,000 delegates present from all parts of the world, among them a considerable number of Jews and many important personages like Lord Cecil of Chelwood.

The new Minister of Finance, Dr. Joseph-Redlich, who is himself of Jewish birth and known for his Jewish sympathies, is also not likely to sit by quietly and allow anti-Jewish disturbances to continue.

Professor Joseph Redlich, who was born in 1869, left the Jewish Community in 1903. He was a member of the Austrian Parliament in the days of the monarchy, and in 1918 he was Minister of Finance in the last Imperial Government. He is a man of liberal views and has retained many Jewish friendships. He was a friend of Dr. Theodor herzl and was one of the signatories to the appeal issued in 1929 for the erection of a Herzl monument in Vienna.

Professor Redlich is a recognised authority on Parliamentary government and constitutional administration, particularly in England, and his published works include “The Procedure of the House of Commons”, “The Theory of English Local Administration”, “The Rights and Procedure of British Parliamentarianism”, and “The Common Law and The Case Method in American University Law Schools”, as well as a number of books on the Austrian Constitution and Austrian local administration.

He has been for a number of years Professor at Harvard University, and returned to Vienna recently to accept the offer of the Ministry of Finance, which he has on several previous occasions refused.