Archive for Antisemitism

“City without Jews” in Vienna & Budapest

Posted in Uncategorized with tags , , , on 28 May 2012 by delclem

Stadt ohne Juden(“City without Jews”) was the title of a 1922 best-selling novel by the Jewish Viennese author Hugo Bettauer  who was assassinated by an Austrian Nazi three years later; it is available in print again (see the review in the German section of my blog). It is an disturbingly prophetic piece of fiction about a Viennese mayor who expels the jews from ‘his’ city (although everything comes to a happy ending eventually; unfortunately is subscribes to some stereotypes about Jews as well).

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Undoing Lueger in Vienna

Posted in Uncategorized with tags , , , , on 29 April 2012 by delclem


Vienna in row over legacy of historic mayor Karl Lueger: the plans to change street signs bearing name of the antisemitic politician who inspired Hitler cause far right complaints >article (c) THE GUARDIAN, 2012

A German poem that caused global turmoil

Posted in Uncategorized with tags , , , , , , , , on 7 April 2012 by delclem

“During his long literary career, Günter Grass has been many things. Author, playwright, sculptor and, unquestionably, Germany’s most famous living writer. There is the 1999 Nobel prize and Grass’s broader postwar role as the country’s moral conscience – albeit a claim badly undermined in 2006 when it emerged that the teenage Grass had served in the Waffen SS. But at the ripe old age of 84, Grass has triggered a furious row with a poem criticising Israel.”

Article and English translation of the poem (c) THE GUARDIAN, 2012

Photo: Graeme Robertson

Original version of the poem (in German) (c) SZ, 2012