Page - 243 - in Universities in Imperial Austria, 1848–1918 - A Social History of a Multilingual Space

243 cHApter 7 Habsburg Legacies After the murder of Chancellor Dollfuss by a troop of Austrian National Socialists, Schuschnigg had taken over, and had demanded from all persons employed by the state, or by local governments, including all teachers and professors, that they join an organization which he called the Patriotic Front. . . . All university professors signed, (and es­ pecially those who were Nazis). There was only one exception: Professor Heinrich Gomperz whose family came from Germany and whose cultural background and Greek scholarship made him partial to a union with Germany where Greek scholars abounded. He himself was of Jewish descent. . . . [H]is failure to sign up with Schuschnigg’s Patriotic Front led to the dismissal of Gomperz from his professorship with total loss of his income: and censorship prevented this from ever getting into the papers. Nobody heard of this dismissal. No rumor reached me, until one day he rang me and we met. Then he told me what had happened and that after his dismissal he had decided to emigrate to the United States. But he had not the money to pay for the costly journey. So he went to Prague, to ask his old colleague and friend Masaryk for a loan. Masaryk gave him the money from his own personal savings as a gift, rejecting a loan and explaining to Gomperz that he did not wish to use any kind of official funds for this purpose because the political element in it might make it look as a pro­ German act, and even as pro­ Hitler. . . . And Gomperz told me how wonderful and moving his meeting with Masaryk had been. —Sir kArl popper, 19941