The Government was hotly accused in Parliament to-day by the Socialist Deputy Leuthner, of having introduced an anti-Jewish law, in order to regulate the question of student rights at the University, which would result in creating a ghetto in the University.
The civilisation of Germany and Austria, Deputy Leuthner said, has during the past 160 years been advanced enormously by the contributions made to it by some of the finest Jewish minds. The Jews have contributed to German cultural life immense values, he declared, which can never be taken away from the sum-total of German culture.
As for the talk about a pure Germanic race, he went on, half the population of Vienna are people whose names are not German, and who are racially a mixed body. This applies even to the Minister of Education, Dr. Czermak himself, he said.
The Minister of Education in his reply said it is essential in the interests of the preservation of order at the University to regulate the student rights on the principle of race-citizenship. The Government would therefore in the next few days introduce a bill which it hoped Parliament would accept, he said, because if the bill is rejected, they would be faced with the danger of disorder at the University.
The Cabinet has unanimously adopted the draft law providing for the recognition of student rights at the University, on race-citizenship lines, the J.T.A. representative learns, and has decided that the measure should be put to the vote in Parliament before the House rises for the Christmas vacation.
The Social Democratic Party, the J.T.A. representative understands, contends that a majority for the bill will not be enough to enact it, claiming that it is an amendment to the Constitution, replacing the principle of State citizenship by that of race-citizenship, to which the Social Democratic Party is implacably opposed, and should not, therefore, enter into effect unless it receives a two-thirds majority of the House.
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