''Spring Cleaning"

As German Austria's celebration-weary populace worked hard last week to keep up the enthusiasm required by Naziism, their new Nazi officials embarked on what the Vienna Nazi press jokingly called "the great spring cleaning"--the wholesale purge of Jews, monarchists, Schuschnigg supporters, Socialist and Communist workers.

Suicides. Jailed or jobless was every Jewish journalist as Nazis took over Austrian papers, filled them with glowing reports on the new Anschluss. Carefully kept from the populace was the news that a wave of suicides had swept over once-gay Vienna, until hundreds were reported to have taken their lives rather than Nazification. Burly, raspy-voiced Major Emil Fey, Vice Chancellor under Dollfuss and former Vienna commander of the Heimwehr of Prince Ernest von Starhemberg,* shot his wife, his 19-year-old son, then turned the gun on himself. Ruthless suppressor of the incipient Nazis and Socialist workers alike, he momentarily expected "liquidation" after the Nazis came into power.

Sensational father-daughter joint suicides were reported throughout German Austria. Tyrolean Tycoon Friedrich Reitlinger, ardent Catholic and financial backer of the Heimwehr, had his daughter shoot him, then herself. At Innsbruck a 69-year-old university professor, Gustave Bayer, Catholic member of the Heimwehr, and his daughter swallowed overdoses of morphine, turned on the gas. Vienna's collection of world-famed Jewish medical men was thinned as specialists and hospital heads chose death by their own hands. Other prominent suicides were bespectacled Baron Odo Neustaedter-Stuermer, a Heimwehr leader under Dollfuss; Financier Gottfried Kunwald and Dr. Otto Russo, director of Austria's largest bank, the Oesterreichische Credit-Anstalt. At week's end erudite Egon Friedell, Jewish historian and playwright, jumped to his death from a fourth-floor window.

One citizen in Vienna's Doebling section took a pot shot from his window at Storm Troopers, missed, killed himself. In a downtown cafe, a Jewish diner rose, sneered "Heil Hitler!" stabbed his table companions with a butcher knife, then slashed his own throat.

Arrests. The Vienna Nazi press jubilantly reported that thousands of deserted automobiles had piled up along the frontiers as Jews, Catholics and Schuschnigg supporters were caught trying to escape. Typical of the thoroughness with which Nazi adherents had prepared for "the day" was the fact that 24 hours after Nazification the Nazi guard at the remotest frontier post was armed with a fully tabulated, thumb-indexed book of many thousand names on the Nazi black list, which he checked against the passports of those wishing to cross. Most sensational arrest in Jewish financial circles was that of retired Banker Baron Louis von Rothschild, to whose castle the Duke of Windsor went after the Abdication (TIME, Dec. 21, 1936). Top-flight correspondents of Jewish blood left voluntarily, others were arrested.

Still under "protective arrest" were former Chancellor Schuschnigg and former President Wilhelm Miklas, the latter permitted to go out only to church, escorted by Storm Troopers.

Jew Baiting. Virtually all Jewish department stores, cafes and shops were taken over by Nazis. Hapless Jews were set to work scrubbing Fatherland Front posters off lampposts, Schuschnigg plebiscite slogans off sidewalks. Leering young Nazis jibed, "Who has found work for Jews? Adolf Hitler!" When Jews timidly protested against over 100 unwarranted seizures of their property by ruffians in Nazi uniforms, Nazi police officials explained that persons carrying on such unauthorized expropriations were "Communists who in some manner had managed to get themselves disguised in Nazi uniforms." The whole stock of two large department stores had been expropriated meanwhile.

Cultural Cleanup. Nazi commissioners were appointed to direct all Viennese artistic and cultural activities, in which Jewish influence has always been particularly strong. Nazi heads took over the National Library, pride of the Habsburgs and Vienna, the state Burg-Theatre and Opera House, three Jewish-owned playhouses, the Society of the Friends of Music, the Vienna Symphony and the world-famed Vienna Philharmonic. Jewish Conductor Bruno Walter resigned as director of the Vienna Opera and as Nazis ripped down name plates on Max Reinhardt Platz in front of the Salzburg Festival Theatre, Jewish Regisseur Reinhardt severed his connections with the famed Salzburg festival.

At week's end the jails were filled to overflowing. Nazi officials took over the Northwest Railway Station, unused for traffic, converted it into a makeshift concentration camp. Crucifixes on the walls of devout Kurt Schuschnigg's Fatherland Front Headquarters, which had now become Nazi Headquarters, were torn down by Nazis who stuck them up with guffaws in the water closets.

Barbarians. This week 150,000 was the estimated number of German Army troops in Austria and their officers, most of whom are not Nazis, in many cases asked tourists they happened to encounter: "You don't think we are barbarians, do you?"

*Newly-married Prince von Starhemberg (TIME, Dec. 13) was reported last week in Switzerland. His mother, 62-year-old Fanny Starhemberg, was arrested for her work in Schuschnigg's Fatherland Front women's organization, was later released and put under " protective custody."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.