The Lost Honor of Julius Deutsch: Jewish Difference, “Socialist Betrayal”, and Imperial Loyalty in the 1923 Deutsch-Reinl Trial
Journal Title: Religions - Year 2017, Vol 8, Issue 1
Abstract
In 1922, Julius Deutsch, one of the leading Viennese Social Democrats, spent a weekend in the Strudengau in Upper Austria. In a local inn, he was insulted by a right-wing alpinist, who accused him of being a traitor to the Emperor. The man claimed that Deutsch, along with other “Jewish Revolutionaries”, played a part in overturning the old order and helping to “stab” the Empire’s army “in the back”. Deutsch brought his opponent to trial, in an attempt to present his actions both in the World War and as a State Secretary for Military Affairs in the new Austrian Republic in a better light. However, the provincial courts acquitted the defendant on appeal, following the anti-Semitic arguments of his defending lawyer. Like other trials in the interwar years, the lawsuit unfolded into a “court of injustice”, with contested concepts of “Jewish difference” being performed. In the courtroom, Deutsch, who left the Jewish religious community as a young man, was forced to engage with his Jewish family background. The article focuses on Deutsch’s retrospective narration of the Austro-Hungarian Empire in his courtroom speech and the insights that can be gained about Jewish difference and the antagonistic political arena of the new nation-state of (Deutsch-)Österreich.
Authors and Affiliations
Georg Spitaler
Keywords
Related Articles
- EP ID EP25656
- DOI https://doi.org/10.3390/rel8010013
- Views 249
- Downloads 6
Buddhist Ritual from Syntax to Cognition: Insight Meditation and Homa
The concept of “ritual syntax” is developed by relating it to cognitive studies of ritual, providing a fuller theoretical basis. Developing theoretical grounding requires differentiating between the members of five pai...
What is Jewish (If Anything) about Isaiah Berlin’s Philosophy?
This paper has two central aims: First, to reappraise Isaiah Berlin‘s political thought in a historically contextualized way, and in particular: to pay attention to a central conceptual tensions which animates it betwe...
Producing High Priests and Princesses: The Father-Daughter Relationship in the Christian Sexual Purity Movement
This article describes and analyzes father-daughter purity balls in the context of the contemporary U.S. American conservative Christian sexual purity movement, with an emphasis on taking the self-understanding of thos...
Comparative Theology: An Alternative to Religious Studies or Theology of Religions?
This paper examines the relationship between Comparative Theology, Religious Studies and Theology of Religions and questions whether Comparative Theology is an alternative to the last two. Comparative Theology, a faith...
Studies on Bhartr .hari and the Pratyabhijña: The Case ¯ of svasam . vedana
The article addresses a critical problem in the history of South Asian philosophy, namely the nature of the ‘knowledge of knowledge’ (svasam. vedana). In particular, it investigates how the Saiva tantric school of the...