Bear Cave (anti-Semitism)

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Name-giving seminar room for paleontology at the University of Vienna in 1928

From the 1920s onwards, Bärenhöhle was the name of a network of Christian-social , German-national and anti-Semitic professors from the Philosophical Faculty of the University of Vienna .

According to Klaus Taschwer's research , this network sought to prevent habilitations and appointments from Jewish or politically left - wing scientists through interventions and agreements . The lead and likely founder was the paleontologist Othenio Abel . The material basis for Taschwer's investigations are Abel's autobiographical notes on his vita, published by his student and son-in-law Kurt Ehrenberg .

Emergence

Othenio Abel, organizer of the "Bear Cave"

After Othenio Abel was appointed full professor of palaeontology at the University of Vienna in 1917, he began to engage in university-political activities. According to his own statements, Abel feared that under the new conditions from 1919 onwards, the "Communists, Social Democrats, and Jews allied with Jews and Jews again" could come to power at the university. Presumably in 1922 he founded a secret network of Christian-social and German-national professors at the Philosophical Faculty. The reason for the name of the clique was that the secret meetings were held in the windowless seminar room (between stairs IX and VII in the main building of the university ), where, among other things, Abel's collection of cave bear bones from the Dragon Cave near Mixnitz was housed.

Act

The Bärenhöhle was closely linked to the similarly aligned anti - Semitic networks Academic Section , German Community and German Club . Well-known scientists whose applications for a habilitation in Vienna were rejected with the participation of members of this anti-Semitic network were Karl Lark-Horovitz , Otto Halpern , Leonore Brecher , Paul Alfred Weiss and Edgar Zilsel . Other young researchers who were Jewish or of Jewish origin, including Karl Popper , refrained from applying to the University of Vienna from the outset because of the hopelessness. The network in turn protected anti-Semitic scientists. According to Ehrenberg, the Bear Cave also supported the election of paleontologist Karl Diener as rector in 1922 , who advocated a numerus clausus to limit the number of Jewish students. Some of the professors involved, including Abel, lost their professorships with the rise of Austrofascism in 1934. After the annexation of Austria in 1938, many of those involved made careers. Even after 1945 some of the bear cave members were able to remain in important positions in the scientific community, even if others lost their professorships. Richard Meister , President of the Austrian Academy of Sciences from 1951 , made sure that almost all still living members of the Bear Cave were accepted back into the Academy.

Members

The group consisted of 18 members - with the exception of Abel, all humanities scholars - with several officials from the faculty and the university. According to Abel's records, these included: Hans Uebersberger (dean 1924/25, rector 1930/31), Heinrich von Srbik (dean 1932/33), Gustav Turba , Wilhelm Bauer , the educationalist Richard Meister (dean 1930/31), the philosopher Robert Reininger , the prehistoric historian Oswald Menghin (dean 1928/29, rector 1935/36), the Slavist Carl Patsch (dean 1925/26), the German scholars Rudolf Much and Dietrich Kralik , the orientalists Rudolf Geyer , Friedrich Kraelitz and Viktor Christian (dean 1938 –1934), the Egyptologists Hermann Junker (dean 1922/1923) and Wilhelm Czermak , the musicologist Robert Lach and the linguist Anton Pfalz . The continuity of the personnel composition is not known.

literature

  • Mitchell G. Ash: The University of Vienna in the political upheavals of the 19th and 20th centuries. In: Mitchell G. Ash, Josef Ehmer (Ed.): University - Politics - Society. V&R unipress, Göttingen 2015, ISBN 978-3-8471-0413-1 , pp. 29–174.
  • Klaus Taschwer: Bear's cave is a secret. How an anti-Semitic professor cartel from the University of Vienna expelled Jewish and left-wing researchers after 1918 . In: Regina Fritz, Grzegorz Rossoliński-Liebe, Jana Starek (Eds.): Alma mater antisemitica: Academic milieu, Jews and anti-Semitism at the universities of Europe between 1918 and 1939 , Volume 3, new academic press, Vienna 2016, p. 221– 242 ( online ).
  • Kurt Ehrenberg : Othenio Abel's life path, using autobiographical records. Vienna 1975 (private print).

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c Klaus Taschwer: Othenio Abel. Paleontologist, anti-Semitic faculty and university politician. In: University - Politics - Society . Ed .: Mitchell Ash, Josef Ehmer. Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2015, p. 288–290 ( limited preview in Google Book search).
  2. ↑ Völkischer Beobachter, January 17, 1941 evaluated by Klaus Taschwer: Othenio Abel. Paleontologist, anti-Semitic faculty and university politician. In: University - Politics - Society. Ed .: Mitchell Ash, Josef Ehmer. Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2015, p. 289 ( limited preview in the Google book search).
  3. ^ A b c Mitchell G. Ash: The university as a place of politics since 1848. In: University - Politics - Society . V&R unipress, 2015, p. 84–86 ( limited preview in Google Book Search).
  4. ↑ Klaus Taschwer: The Bear Cave, a secret anti-Semitic professor clique from the interwar period. 1918-1965. In: http://geschichte.univie.ac.at . University of Vienna, March 14, 2017, accessed on August 2, 2017 .
  5. ↑ Kurt Ehrenberg: Othenio Abels Lebensweg using autobiographical records, Vienna, 1975 cited in Taschwer, Secret thing Bear Cave, evaluated by Mitchell G. Ash: The University as a place of politics since 1848. In: University - Politics - Society. V&R unipress, 2015, p. 85, note 196. ( limited preview in Google book search )