Friction part

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Immediately after the "Anschluss" , the Viennese Jews, with the participation of the population, were forced to clean pro-Austrian slogans from the sidewalks in "friction games".

As Reibpartie were referred to in the Austrian political jargon of the 1930s groups of political opponents, the public to humiliating washing, commonly known as "rubbing out", ie removal of political slogans that were undesirable to the respective rulers were forced.

Prehistory: The "cleaning troops" of the corporate state

Since the summer of 1933, the authoritarian regime of the corporate state had been using the instrument of the “cleaning crews” against the graffiti of the illegal National Socialists: Nazi supporters who were known locally were forced to publicly remove the secretly affixed slogans of their group. The term can be understood in an ironic analogy to martial expressions of political Catholicism such as Sturmschar , in Austria for example " Ostmärkische Sturmscharen ". However, the weakness of the Catholic authoritarian system was very evident. Again and again people refused to work in the cleaning crowd; there were also ongoing complaints. In a circular to all security directors and federal police directors , the General Directorate for Public Security therefore stated in November 1933 that it would make sense "to refrain from using public employees when putting together the so-called cleaning crews in the interests of preserving the reputation and authority of the authorities," unless the perpetrator was directly committed or the persons concerned did not favor or promote the criminal act through their current attitude. The clusters of cleaners of the corporate state were subsequently named as a “justification” for the “friction parts” of 1938, but they were far more harmless.

Follow-up pogrom

The "rubbing parties" of Jews washing the streets in connection with the follow-up pogrom in March 1938 meant completely different degrees of humiliation and mockery. The previous mobilization of the Nazi opponents as part of the plebiscite planned by Chancellor Kurt Schuschnigg had numerous anti-Nazi and pro-Austrian slogans mainly in the Viennese cityscape. To get rid of these slogans as quickly as possible, only a few political opponents of the regime were called in, but mainly Jewish citizens who were completely uninvolved in the political struggle. The friction parts are therefore among the most shocking phenomena of March 1938, even for outside observers such as George Eric Rowe Gedye. The writer Carl Zuckmayer described these days in his autobiography (1966) as a nightmare painting by Hieronymus Bosch [...]. The air was filled with an incessant, harsh, hysterical screeching from the throats of men and women, which went on for days and nights. And all people lost their face, like distorted grimaces: some in fear, others in lies, others in wild, hate-filled triumph. [...] I experienced the first days of Nazi rule in Berlin. None of this could be compared to those days in Vienna. […] What was unleashed here was the revolt of envy, resentment, bitterness, blind, malicious vengeance - and all other voices were condemned to silence.

The sudden outbreak of rampant violence on the streets of Vienna was not related to the fact that there was more radical anti-Semitism among Austrians or Viennese than among Germans. Rather, the cause lay in the specific Austrian history between 1933 and 1938. The five-year prohibition period of the NSDAP and the imprisonment of many Nazi functionaries had created special mentalities among the Austrian Nazis, which sometimes led to personal accounts in March 1938. During the prohibition period, people with connections to the underworld were also able to develop particularly well; illegal activities were mainly a tougher type of people. The sudden eruption of violence was also related to the hasty development during the "Anschluss". On Friday, March 11, 1938, the Austrian National Socialists did not yet know that they would be in absolute power on Sunday.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Under the same conditions, notaries and notary candidates, attorneys and trainee attorneys, finally, public prosecutor functionaries are not to be divided into clusters. The fact that such people were members of the National Socialist German Workers' Party at the time is not enough ... in itself to be able to induce them to work in clusters "(Diploma thesis Kurt Bauer: Structure and Dynamics of Illegal National Socialism in Upper Styria Industrieregion 1933/34 , University of Vienna, 1998, footnote 201, p. 86).
  2. ↑ Emmerich Tálos, Wolfgang Neugebauer, Christine Schindler: Austrofascism: Politics, Economy, Culture, 1933-1938 , Münster 2005, p. 105.
  3. ↑ See Federal Agency for Civic Education: Harry Kranner Fiss - Witness to the November Pogroms in Vienna | bpb . In: bpb.de . ( bpb.de [accessed on November 22, 2018]).
  4. ↑ Cf. Carl Merz , Helmut Qualtinger : Der Herr Karl : “There was a Jew in municipal housing, a certain Tennenbaum. Otherwise a nice person. There were things against the Nazis written on the sidewalk ... and the Tennenbaum had to wipe it up. Net he allan, the other Jews eh aa .. I got him to wipe up. The caretaker laughed, he was always with Ana Hetz ... Besides - someone would have had to wipe it away ... i maan, the caretaker was aa ka Nazi. ... "
  5. ↑ Martin Haidinger , Günther Steinbach : Our Hitler. The Austrians and their compatriot. Ecowin, Salzburg 2009, ISBN 978-3902404718 , p. 357.

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