Quote of the day - The City without Jews

“A human wall encircled the beautiful, calm, and noble parliament building. The wall extended from the city’s university and went all the way up to the Bellaria. This one morning in June at 10 o’clock, it seemed that the whole of Vienna had gathered to witness a historical event of unprecedented magnitude…. And again and again, an excited one would step forward and address the audience around him; and again and again, the same call could be heard:

‘Out with the Jews!’

…Suddenly, the masses cried out with one voice:

‘Let’s cheer for Dr. Karl Schwertfeger: hip, hip, hooray! Long live the liberator of Austria!’

…‘You’ll immediately hear what will happen. Our chancellor Dr. Karl Schwertfeger will explain meticulously the “Deportation of all Non-Aryan People from Austria Act’…

…‘Ladies and Gentlemen! I am here to introduce an act and an amendment to the constitution which together will do nothing less than to enforce the deportation of the non-Aryan, Jewish population of Austria.

…Throughout my five years as party leader, the so called liberal press and the social democratic press alike, or, in other words, all the newspapers published by Jews have tried to make me look like some sort of boogeyman. They portrayed me as an angry anti-Semite and as a fanatic hater of Judaism and the Jews. Today, now that the power of the press has come to an irrevocable end, I feel the urge to declare that all of this talk is nonsense. Oh, yes, I’m brave enough today to stand here on this very platform and to declare that I’m a friend of the Jews rather than their enemy!

…Yes, Ladies and Gentlemen, I cherish the Jews. …I am prepared to admire the down-to-earth Jewish virtues, their extraordinary intelligence, their efforts to climb the social ladder, their exemplary sense of family, their internationality, and their ability to adapt to any milieu!

…Nonetheless, that’s exactly the reason why, with time, I came to believe that we, the non-Jews, can no longer live amongst and with the Jews. It’s either hook or crook. We have to either lose our Christian ways, our very essence, or renounce the Jews.

…They’ve taken control over our economy, our spiritual and our cultural life.

…And now that we hold the power in our hands, we’d be fools, no, our own enemies and the enemies of our children if we did not make use of this power and drive away the small minority that is destroying us. This has nothing to do with catchphrases and slogans such as “humanity,” “justice,” and “tolerance,” but with our mere existence, our very lives, and the lives of future generations!’

…And 10.000 throats answered from the street: ‘Out with the Jews!’

Dr. Schwertfeger let the excitement fade out, received handshakes from his fellow ministers, and then started talking about how the law would be implemented. One would proceed with utmost care and fairness and in accordance with the demands of humanity and the terms of the League of Nations….” - Hugo Bettauer, The City without Jews (1922)

The City without Jews is a satirical work describing the unforeseen consequences of the deportation of Jewish people from Austria. It’s not a great work of literature but it is a short, lively story with some darkly funny moments.* That it was written as political satire with no knowledge of what was to happen in Austria or to the author himself and the comedic treatment of the situation and the leading anti-Semites (allegedly based on real political figures) make it a difficult book to read. Its prescient details – the greeting “Heil!” gains popularity after the deportations, for example – leave a knot in your throat.

In an interesting coincidence, two of the characters who are government representatives are Secretary of the Treasury Trumm and Privy Councilor Tumpel, who argues shortly after the expulsion that “the Indogermanic naivety of our people ventures out again!”

In 1925, following open calls for his death in Austrian Nazi publications and the release of the Expressionist film based on the popular book, Bettauer was murdered by a young Nazi named Otto Rothstock. Pleading insanity, Rothstock was sent to a psychiatric institution, from which he was released within months.

* I’ve read some reviews suggesting that Bettauer at times falls into anti-Semitic stereotypes, but I believe they’re missing the point. As a satirist Bettauer – a Jewish man who converted to Evangelicalism in his late teens, possibly to try for a career in the Austrian military – was likely using and exaggerating these stereotypes for comedic and critical effect. This would seem to be confirmed by the stereotypes of Austrian Christians, who often state themselves that they have to expel the smart and adaptable Jews for whom, in their honest simplicity, they’re no match. Some of the funniest moments are in the descriptions of Vienna in the months and years after the Jews have been deported – style, glamour, and sophistication gone; the city giving way to “ruralization”; women wearing dirndl skirts (“which, indeed, look very nice when worn in the open country. Here, they looked like a bad joke or caricature”); cultural establishments turned into beer halls; businesses going to pot; and so on. I think what Bettauer is trying to do is to show how the anti-Semitic stereotypes implied a contrasting, and amusingly stereotypical, picture of non-Jewish Austrians.

The best art I saw in 2014

We’re now well into February, but I still have a couple of categories to go in my 2014 favorites series.

Chilean artist Francisco Tapia’s work remains my favorite individual piece of 2014. The two others are museum exhibits.

The first is almost a punchline – “You know you’re in Maine when…” “…you’re viewing ‘Andrew Wyeth: The Linda L. Bean Collection’ at the Ogunquit Museum of American Art.” It doesn’t get much Mainer than that, unless maybe you’re there snacking on blueberries with Stephen King and a lobster named Bog. A beautiful, wistful exhibit in a gallery overlooking the sea.

The small museum is in a pretty, peaceful location, and I enjoyed their permanent collection quite a bit. My favorite piece was a 1979 sculpture, “The Tyrant,” by Clark Fitz-Gerald. Unfortunately, and inexplicably, they didn’t have any images of it in the gift shop and I can’t find a decent picture online.

The second was the “Degenerate Art: The Attack on Modern Art in Nazi Germany, 1937” show at the Neue Galerie in New York. The exhibit, so popular they had to extend its run, was extremely well done. It presented the history clearly and set the works (present and missing) in their historical context. One painting I was compelled to return to and ultimately had to tear myself away from was Lasar Segall’s stunning “The Eternal Wanderers”:

[Source]

I read some reviews of the exhibit later and one concern some reviewers expressed, and which had crossed my mind at the time, was that because the show presented some art that was favored by the Nazis alongside the works they hated, it could lead to the message that art can or should be judged in these terms - if fascists liked it, it’s not good art, and vice versa. It’s a valid concern. The exhibit did show how the Nazis often (mis)interpreted art not on the basis of its political content or the artist’s “race” or politics but on its formal qualities. So an artist doing religious pieces in an expressionistic style, for example, could be persecuted for producing grotesque images or for denigrating or mocking religion, even if he was apolitical (or sympathetic to fascism) and even if he saw his work not as a criticism but as a celebration. The Nazis, unwittingly, were “right” in the sense that many of these works promoted a dangerously humanistic attitude; but that wasn’t the basis for their fearful rejection of these modernists. So it’s a complicated matter, and they probably could have done a better job in addressing it. Overall, though, a tremendous exhibit.

In related news, the Neue Galerie will host “Gustav Klimt and Adele Bloch-Bauer: The Woman in Gold” beginning on April 2 and coinciding with the April 3 release of the movie Woman in Gold starring Helen Mirren:



(I don't know how good the film is. The trailer isn’t especially promising, and the early critical reviews are negative. On the other hand, it can’t be worse than The Monuments Men. Come to think of it, I learned of both stories through The Rape of Europa, which I would recommend quite highly.)

Psychiatric detention and drugging: Fear-mongering in the US, defending human rights at the UN

In a moment when a there’s a shameful and dishonest campaign underway in the US to stoke public fear of people diagnosed with a mental illness and push for their forcible incarceration and drugging, it’s encouraging to learn of positive international developments in protecting people’s human rights in psychiatric contexts.

Tina Minkowitz continues to report from the UN, where the Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities has made it absolutely clear that “the ‘danger to self or others’ standard cannot legitimize psychiatric detention, and that all legislation authorizing such detention must be repealed.” As Minkowitz explains, Article 14 of the CRPD – which requires that “States Parties shall ensure…that the existence of a disability shall in no case justify a deprivation of liberty” – prohibits “commitment based on a psychiatric diagnosis plus criteria such as ‘danger to oneself or others’ [or ‘need for care and treatment’].”

Because this prohibition of psychiatric commitment was a dramatic departure from the previous standard, though, “there were many law professors, human rights organizations and, needless to say, governments, as well as the World Health Organization (which is highly influential in developing countries), that misinterpreted Article 14 to re-inscribe the old standard.”

This problem has persisted for some time, and last month Minkowitz went to Geneva to address the Committee. “My intention,” she describes,

was to encourage the Committee to makes its guidance entirely clear on the prohibition of psychiatric detention, and in particular on the prohibition of detention using a ‘danger to self or others’ standard, so that governments would be put on notice that they are committing human rights violations by continuing to apply their commitment laws.

Her efforts met with success, especially in that “the Concluding Observations adopted on the three countries under review – El Salvador, Austria and Australia – all take the resoundingly clear position that psychiatric detention is prohibited under Article 14.” Minkowitz quotes from the Concluding Observations on these three countries – Australia, for example, must repeal “legal provisions that authorize commitment of individuals to detention in mental health services, or the impositi[o]n of compulsory treatment either in institutions or in the community via Community Treatment Orders (CTOs).”

Furthermore, “The issues raised under Article 14 in the criminal context, in particular the prohibition of criminal or forensic psychiatric commitment, are now beginning to be addressed by the Committee and also by the Special Rapporteur on Torture.” Also, “with regard to the Committee’s stance against forced psychiatric drugging and other coercive practices, they are continuing to be quite firm, addressing forced psychiatry as a form of torture and ill-treatment as well as a violation of the right to free and informed consent in health care, the right to integrity of the person, and the right to legal capacity.”

Good policy can be made when decisions are based not on fear and propaganda but on respect for human rights (and just human beings). What’s more, as I think Ted Chabasinski has argued, defending human rights is inseparable from developing positive approaches to psychological problems. Denying governments the option of violent and coercive (and often commercially profitable) measures pushes people to consider, imagine, and create humanistic alternatives.

*This was an appallingly credulous and dangerous segment from 60 Minutes, blithely repeating long-debunked claims and simply refusing to seek out or even recognize other perspectives. To drive the problem home, watching it online I was treated to two ads for the “antidepressant” Pristiq.