Chain & Charter

Elected eleven years ago by a two-thirds majority. Vienna's Socialist Burgomaster Karl Seitz was in jail last week. At the same time a new Burgomaster, for whom not one Viennese had voted, was inducted into office with considerable ceremony in the neo-Gothic Rathaus. Appointed directly by Chancellor Dollfuss. Burgomaster Richard Schmitz is a fellow War veteran, a fellow Catholic, a fellow mem ber of the Christian Socialist Party and a onetime Vice Chancellor of Austria. He appeared in the city hall wearing round his neck the golden chain of office of Vienna's Burgomasters, first time it had been worn since the Socialist administration discarded it after the War as a useless bourgeois symbol.

But the new Burgomaster brought more to his city than a chain. Proclaimed three days before was a new municipal charter. Municipal elections are totally abolished. The Burgomaster is appointed directly by the Chancellor, and together they choose three Vice-Burgomasters. They chose one to represent the Heimwehr, one the employers, one labor. The Burgomaster will choose a new advisory body called the Wiener Buergerschaft. Three Catholic priests will be on it. and there will be one Jew to represent the dwindling rights of that race. All must swear to uphold "the Christian German character of Vienna." Any or all the Buergerschaft may be dismissed at will by the new Burgomaster.

It was instantly apparent last week that the life of the Jewish member of the Buergerschaft will not be an easy one. No sooner was the new city charter announced than Heimatschueter, the personal organ of Prince Starhemberg, printed a sharp anti-Semitic attack:

"The Jews have acquired here, especially since the War, a supremacy which must be broken if we others are not to suffocate. That does not mean confiscation, expulsion and other violent methods, but strict limitations of the superfluous. The Jews who have elbowed their way upward everywhere--even to the extent of establishing a monopoly in many spheres--must be shown their place."

First proclamation of Burgomaster Schmitz was to announce that May Day, traditional holiday of Socialist Vienna, will still be a holiday, but to celebrate the Socialist defeat in the bloody revolt of February.

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