Hugo Bettauer

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Photo by Wilhelm Willinger from the 1920s

Maximilian Hugo Bettauer (born August 18, 1872 in Baden near Vienna , Austria-Hungary , † March 26, 1925 in Vienna , Austria ) was an Austrian writer and screenwriter .

Life

Maximilian Hugo Bettauer was born as the son of the stockbroker Arnold (Samuel Aron) Betthauer from Lemberg and his wife Anna nee. Alarm clock born. He was the youngest child and had two older sisters, Hermine (Michi) and Mathilde. In 1887/1888 he attended the 4th grade of the Franz-Josephs-Gymnasium on the Stubenbastei ; his classmate at the time, Karl Kraus , did not particularly appreciate him, but later defended him against the Viennese scandal press.

At the age of 16, Bettauer ran away from home and traveled to Alexandria , from where he was sent back.

In 1890 Bettauer converted from the Jewish to the Protestant faith and changed his name from Betthauer to Bettauer . In the same year he went to the Kaiserjäger as a one-year volunteer .

Wedding and emigration

After five months in Tyrol , he resigned from military service after difficulties with his superiors. Together with his mother he moved to Zurich and at the age of 24 (1896) took over the considerable paternal inheritance.

In Zurich he married his childhood sweetheart Olga Steiner and emigrated with her to the USA after the death of his mother . During the crossing, Bettauer lost his entire fortune through speculation. The two stayed in New York until 1899 , where his wife appeared as an actress. Since Bettauer couldn't find work, they both moved to Berlin , where their son Heinrich Gustav Hellmuth was born.

Bettauer worked in Berlin as a journalist with American citizenship and became known for uncovering a number of scandals. Among other things, as a result of a scandal, he wrote the book Bobbie , published in 1921 , in which he described a rich and powerful child kidnapper. In 1901, Bettauer was expelled from Prussia after the director of the Berlin court theater, whom he had accused of corruption, committed suicide .

Bettauer moved to Munich , worked in the cabaret Die Elf Scharfrichter and went to Hamburg in the fall of 1901 to become head of the specialist journal “ Küche und Keller ”.

Second marriage

After divorcing his wife, Bettauer met his second wife in Hamburg, Helene Müller, then 16 years old. In 1904 Bettauer ran away with Helene and emigrated again to America. On the crossing, he married his lover, who gave birth to a son that same year: Reginald Parker Bettauer, b. August 23, 1904 in Phenicia / USA, who was later to change his middle name to his last name. Hugo Bettauer worked as a journalist for newspapers in New York and began writing for these serial novels.

In 1910 he returned to Vienna and started working for the Neue Freie Presse . When he wanted to join the army at the beginning of the First World War , he was denied this with reference to his US citizenship.

As a war correspondent, the Neue Freie Presse granted him only one repaired typewriter, which the angry editor threw on the dung on return. The dismissal without notice followed immediately (1918).

Career after the war

Immediately after the war, Bettauer worked as a correspondent for New York newspapers and started an aid program for the people of Vienna in the USA. From 1920 he wrote novels on a large scale; four to five titles appeared annually. Bettauer specialized in crime novels with social commitment. His novels also became popular because their settings were not just Vienna, but also New York and Berlin.

His best-known novel was Die Stadt ohne Juden, from 1922, in which he describes how Vienna would develop if all Jews had to emigrate. He took up the anti-Semitism that was becoming more and more offensive in Vienna, but still believed in a peaceful coexistence of religions: He let his novel end with the "understanding" of the Christians that the Jews must be brought back for the good of the city.

First title page of He and You

From 1924 he gave the magazine Er und Sie. Wochenschrift für Lebenskultur und Erotik , which was later continued under the title Bettauer's Wochenschrift . The journal regularly caused scandals because of its educational and sometimes sensational content. Among other things, he advocated modern divorce law , abortion and impunity for homosexuality among adults. As in the USA, he also implemented the concept of the serial novel here. In the course of time, Bettauer also earned his book rights for stage and film versions.

He was not only one of the most controversial but also most successful writers of his time. Greta Garbo made her international screen debut in the film Die joudlose Gasse ( GW Pabst , 1925) . The city without Jews was founded in 1924 under the direction of Hans Karl Breslauer a . a. Filmed with Hans Moser and Ferdinand Maierhofer .

Because of his " discovery journalism " and his advocacy of sexual education and freedom of movement , Bettauer was repeatedly the subject of public discussions. His opponents tried to disqualify him as " asphalt literary ". After a public escalation of the dispute and the confiscation of the magazine, a trial was brought against Bettauer, accompanied by public threats and calls for murder. Bettauer was surprisingly acquitted, and the successor magazine achieved the highest circulation among the weekly newspapers of the time with 60,000 copies.

Assassination and Trial

The death mask, removed by the sculptor Alexander Jaray
The urn grave at the Simmering fire hall

After a week-long media campaign against Bettauer, the dental technician Otto Rothstock shot Bettauer in his editorial office, which was located at Langen Gasse 5-7, on March 10, 1925. Bettauer was admitted to hospital seriously injured with five shots in the chest and arms. He died on March 26 at the age of 52 as a result of the attack.

While he was still in the hospital, there were violent arguments in the Vienna City Council. The assassin's motives have long been puzzled over. He claimed that he wanted to set a beacon against the alleged immorality of an author who had become famous for his sexually permissive writings. The fact is that Otto Rothstock was a member of the NSDAP before the attack , resigned and was supported by Nazi-related lawyers and friends after the attack . He was acquitted of the murder by the jury , but the court ordered the assassin to be transferred to a psychiatric clinic, which he left as a free man after 18 months at the end of May 1927.

In 1977, Otto Rothstock could in an interview in the show telephoto lens of the Austrian Broadcasting Corporation the "extinction" Bettauer boast.

Others

Bettauer's novel Die Stadt ohne Juden ( The City without Jews) and his subsequent murder inspired Artur Landsberger to write the gory novel Berlin without Jews (1925).

In 2009, a traffic area near the former editorial offices in Hugo-Bettauer-Platz was named in Vienna's 8th district of Josefstadt .

Works

Novels

  • Under the spell of New York , 1907
  • In the struggle for happiness , 1907 (reprinted 1926)
  • On hot ground , 1907
  • In the shadow of death , 1907 (reprinted 1925)
  • From the depths of the cosmopolitan city , 1907
  • Law of the thumb , 1920
  • Unrestrained , 1920 (Reprinted 1988, 2009, ISBN 978-3-85286-184-5 , 2011, 2013)
  • Bobbie on the Track , 1921 (reprinted in 1926 under the title " Bobbie or the love of a boy ", further reprinted in 2012)
  • Elizabeth Lehndorff's three hours of marriage , 1921
  • The Woman Killer , 1922 (reprinted 2008, 2012)
  • The Lord on the Gallows Ladder , 1922 (2014 reprint)
  • The blue mark , 1922 (reprinted 2012)
  • The city without Jews , 1922 (Reprinted in 1988, 1996, 2013: ISBN 978-3-942378-43-7 )
  • The Battle of Vienna , 1922/23 (abridged reprint under the title Ralph and Hilde 1926, further reprint 2012: ISBN 978-3-85286-229-3 )
  • The merry women of Vienna , 1924
  • Cranked Fate , 1924
  • Die joyllose Gasse , 1924 (Reprinted in 1988, 2011: ISBN 978-3-85286-216-3 )
  • Vienna unleashed , 1924
  • The most beautiful woman in the world , 1924
  • Memories of an impostor , 1924
  • Collected works in six volumes , Hannibal, Salzburg, 1980 DNB 206499906 , contains:
    • Part 1: Battle for Vienna ,
    • Part 2: Vienna unleashed ,
    • Part 3: The joyless alley ,
    • Part 4: The city without Jews ,
    • Part 5: Law of the thumb
    • Part 6: Unrestrained
    • Supplement: The Bettauer case: a literary-sociological chapter of the interwar period , by Murray G. Hall , from the yearbook of the Grillparzer Society , Volume 13, Volume 3 (20 pages).

Novellas

  • The Death of a Grete and other short stories , 1926
  • Everyday stories , 1926

Plays

  • The city without Jews (with Hans Sassmann), 1922
  • Blue Love (With Klemens Weiss-Clewe), 1924

Magazines

  • He and She , February 14 - March 13, 1924
  • Bettauer's Wochenschrift , May 15, 1924 to August 26, 1927
  • The Bettauer Almanac for 1925 , 1925

Filmography

literature

Web links

Commons : Hugo Bettauer  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Karl Kraus: The torch . Years 1922–1925 corpus1.aac.ac.at
  2. ↑ Anna L. Staudacher: "... announces the departure from the Mosaic faith". 18,000 exits from Judaism in Vienna, 1868–1914: names - sources - dates . Peter Lang, Frankfurt / M. u. a. 2009, ISBN 978-3-631-55832-4 , p. 58.
  3. ↑ Klemens Kaps: "Scrofulous Wild Boar". In: Date - Pages of Time. March 1, 2005, archived from the original on December 21, 2014 ; accessed on July 9, 2020 .
  4. ^ Assassination attempt on the writer Hugo Bettauer. In:  Wiener Bilder , March 15, 1925, p. 1 (online at ANNO ).Template: ANNO / Maintenance / wrb
  5. ^ Revolver attack on the writer Hugo Bettauer. Mortally injured by five shots. - A fight to the death. The juvenile assassin arrested. In cold blood and without remorse. He claims to have no confidante .. In:  Oesterreichische Kronen-Zeitung. Illustrirtes Tagblatt / Illustrierte Kronen-Zeitung / Wiener Kronen-Zeitung , March 11, 1925, p. 4 (online at ANNO ).Template: ANNO / Maintenance / short
  6. ^ Assassination attempt against the writer Hugo Bettauer. In:  Neue Freie Presse , March 11, 1925, p. 1 (online at ANNO ). “In the editorial offices of the weekly, which he directs, the writer Hugo Bettauer was the victim of a revolver attack yesterday afternoon that the 21-year-old dental technician Otto Rothstock carried out in order, as he admitted during police interrogation,“ to protect his peers from further moral ruin ". The assassin denies belonging to a political party. He fired five revolver shots at Bettauer, two of which pierced the upper right lobe of the lung, one the liver and the pancreas. In spite of the immediate operation, the condition of the injured person is described by the treating physicians as very serious. Rothstock could be arrested without making the slightest attempt to escape. "Template: ANNO / Maintenance / nfp
  7. ^ The death of Hugo Bettauer. In:  Neue Freie Presse , Abendblatt, March 26, 1925, p. 2 (online at ANNO ). “Around 6 o'clock in the morning, however, a heart failure occurred, the inspection doctor was called from the office, but he found the patient already breathing heavily and unconscious. Injections were made quickly to get the heart to work more quickly, but in vain. "Template: ANNO / Maintenance / nfp
  8. ^ The murder of the writer Hugo Bettauer. Otto Rothstock acquitted as a mentally ill person. In:  Neue Freie Presse , October 6, 1925, p. 9 (online at ANNO ). “The jury's deliberation lasted an hour. The jury has just appeared in the hall. The question of murder was answered unanimously in the affirmative. The supplementary question as to whether the defendant had been deprived of reason when he committed the murder was answered with six votes in favor and six votes against. That meant acquittal. At the request of the public prosecutor, however, the court decided to intern the accused as insane on the basis of the verdict. "Template: ANNO / Maintenance / nfp
  9. ^ Otto Rothstock's release from the insane asylum. In:  Wiener Zeitung , May 31, 1927, p. 6 (online at ANNO ). “In a closed session, the Supreme Court decided on the internment matter of Otto Rothstock, who is known to have killed the writer Hugo Bettauer, brought in by Dr. Riehl [added: from 1919 Chairman of the German National Socialist Workers' Party (DNSAP) in Austria ] by Rothstock's defense attorney Appeal against the decision of the Viennese civil district court, which declared the internment of Rothstock admissible, followed. "Template: ANNO / Maintenance / wrz
  10. ^ Andreas Brunner, Barbara Staudinger, Hannes Sulzenbacher, Miriam Zadoff (eds.): The city without. Jews, foreigners, Muslims, refugees. NS Documentation Center Munich; Jewish Museum Augsburg Swabia. Munich (Hirmer Verlag) 2019 ISBN 978-3-7774-3337-0
  11. ^ Hugo-Bettauer-Platz in the Vienna History Wiki of the City of Vienna
personal data
SURNAME Bettauer, Hugo
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Bettauer, Maximilian Hugo (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Austrian writer and screenwriter
DATE OF BIRTH August 18, 1872
PLACE OF BIRTH Baden near Vienna , Austria-Hungary
DATE OF DEATH March 26, 1925
Place of death Vienna , Austria