Lueger Makes a Peaceful Exit
Dr. Karl Leuger, the noted Austrian anti-Semite, passed away during this month, leaving behind him a record of political activity that was decidediy unpleasant especially to the Jews of Vienna. In addition to unfair and evil policies of legislation, Lueger was also an ungrateful wretch, for he owned his start in life to the very people whom he later endeavared tn nersernte
The Vienna correspondent of the Jewish Chronicle writes:
"The death of Dr. Lueger recalls to the minds of the Austrian Jews the whole sorry story of the past two decades which—so far as Vienna is concerned—are bound up with the name and works of the deceased.
"The revolution which was effected to the prejudice of the Jews, the fact that to-day there is not a single Philo-Semitic party in the Austrian parliament, are to be attributed to the systematic anti-Semitic activity of Dr. Lueger. He played on every string of popular passion to drive the Jews, from whose midst he had sprung, with whose help he had started his career, out of public life, to destroy their economic existence and even cow them with threats of pogroms. If, in Austria, and especially in Vienna, there are Jews who refuse to believe in Dr. Lueger's anti-Semitism and who bowed the knee before his mighty energy, that is merely a futher proof that Dr. Lueger, in his masterful lust for power, not only climbed over the prostrate bodies of his opponents to the goal of his vanity but added insult to injury by bestowing upon them the dry crumbs of his favour. Lueger's House Act, his Hawkers' Act, his exclusion of Jews from the municipal service, are cogent testimony to the "Christian love" with which Lueger treated his political opponents. It has been said that Lueger did not persecute the Jews on account of
their religion. If, this be so the deceased Burgomaster had a curious method of dissembling his principles. For seven long years the synagogue in the Josefstadt could not be built owing to his opposition, and the fact that the Vienna Jewish Communal Council still meets in the Council Chamber dating from the days of the Ghetto is also to be ascribed to Lueger's refusal to grant facilities for the provision of a suitable meeting-place.
"Lueger was descended from a Jewess and it may have been the recollection of his Jewish ancestress that inclined him to more moderation when he had attained the summit of his ambition. But it was too late, then, for him to repair the wrongs of his earlier days. Old, ill and physically broken-up, he had no longer the power to exorcise the evil spirits he had conjured up and allowed to grow into a monster. He. died as an anti-Semite, as an enemy of the Jews and never made any recompense for all the evil that he wrought. Although he maintained .close relation with the Vatican, it is notorious that the Pope, who has many Jewish friends, was never able to understand Lueger's anti-Semitism."
OPULENCE.
"If I had Rothschild's money" said one schnorrer to another dreamily, "If I had Rothschild's money, I'd be much richer than Rothschild."
"How so?" asked his fellow traveler.
"Why," said the first earnestly, "I could still keep up my schnorring."
OVERCROWDING.
A Viennese bank director was baptized and became a Protestant. He was ‚asked why he had not rather joined the dominant Catholic religion, which in Austria, would have been much more to his advantage. He replied:
"Let me give you a tip. There are too many Jews already among the Catholics for me."