Hugo Bettauer

Hugo Bettauer (18 August 1872 – 26 March 1925), born Maximilian Hugo Bettauer, was a prolific Austrian writer and journalist, who was murdered by a Nazi Party follower on account of his opposition to antisemitism. He was well known in his lifetime; many of his books were bestsellers and in the 1920s a number were made into films, most notably Die freudlose Gasse (The Joyless Street, directed by Georg Wilhelm Pabst, 1925), which dealt with prostitution, and Die Stadt ohne Juden (The City Without Jews, directed by Hans Karl Breslauer, 1924), a satire against antisemitism.

Maximilian Hugo Bettauer, later known as Hugo Bettauer, was born in Baden bei Wien on 18 August 1872, the son of the Arnold (Samuel Aron) Bettauer from Lemberg (Lviv) and his wife Anna (née Wecker). He had two older sisters, Hermine (Michi) and Mathilde. In 1887-88, together with Karl Kraus, he attended the fourth form of the Franz-Joseph-Gymnasium in the Stubenbastei, Vienna. Kraus was to be his fiercest critic for the whole of his life.

At the age of 16 Bettauer ran away from home and travelled to Alexandria, from where the Austrian Consul sent him straight back again.

In 1890 Bettauer converted from the Jewish faith to the Evangelical church. In the same year he joined the Kaiserjäger (Imperial mountain infantry) as a one-year volunteer. The change of religion was presumably connected with the fact that Jewish soldiers who lacked noble status found it virtually impossible to make any kind of career in the military, and for conversion purposes the Evangelical Church was preferable to the Roman Catholic Church.

After five months in Tyrol he left the army again, due to difficulties with his superiors. Together with his mother he moved to Zürich and in 1896, aged 24, gained possession of his substantial inheritance from his father.

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