Dr. Pfrimer, the leader of the Heimwehr organisation in the Province of Styria, and a number of his chief officers were put on trial to-day at Graz on a charge of treason, for having attempted an armed rising last September for the purpose of establishing a Heimwehr dictatorship in Austria.
Meanwhile, Prince Starhemberg, the leader of the Heimwehr Organisation, who was Minister of the Interior in the Vaugoin Government last year, has delivered a speech here, simultaneously with the opening of the trial, in which he has declared that he is determined whatever the cost to smash the present Democratic system of Government and establish a Heimwehr dictatorship.
The Jews in the Vienna synagogues last Rosh Hashanah 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 remained quiet.
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 violent antisemitism, and the Jews of Austria were seriously concerned about the anti-Jewish policy which they were conducting in their official capacities.
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.
