Trouble Again at Vienna University: Antisemitic Students Restive at Reports of Anti-jewish Excesses

The student rights which were enjoyed by the German student organisation at Vienna University, which does not admit Jewish students to membership, being based on the Aryanrace principle, and were abolished last June after the Constitutional Court of the Austrian Republic had pronounced them to be unconstitutional, are to be reintroduced, the Minister of Education announced to-day at the session of the Budget Commission of Parliament. The new students’ rights will be made valid by means of special legislation, he declared, but the first condition is that the students should keep order at the University.

The Social Democratic Deputies on the Commission warned the Government against enacting any Statute which would legalise student rights which would be in contradiction to the principle of equal rights for all citizens.

At the same time that the question was under discussion in Parliament, new antisemitic disturbances at the University seemed imminent, and were averted by the Professors only with great difficulty. The Nazi students at the University who have been restive for some days, having been worked up to a high pitch of excitement by the reports of the anti-Jewish student outbreaks in Warsaw and Vilna Universities, were on the verge of starting anti-Jewish attacks, but were finally persuaded by the Professors to keep quiet pending the Government’s action with regard to the question of student rights.

The Jewish students at Vienna University feel that a new outbreak is likely at any moment, and are preparing to resist it by forming a Jewish self-defence organisation.

The withdrawal of the student rights conferred on the antisemitic student organisation, on the pronouncement of the Constitutional Court that they are illegal, because they are not in accordance with the principle of equal rights for all citizens, was the same day followed by an outbreak of anti-Jewish rioting in Vienna. The Constitutional Court was denounced at demonstrations as a “Jewish Constitutional Court”. Jewish students were thrown through the windows of the classrooms, and many were injured. The disturbances raged for several days, and threats were made that if they did not stop the right of autonomy enjoyed by the University would be with-drawn, and the police would be instructed to enter the University building to put down the fighting and arrest the studentrioters.