The situation changed visibly when sentimental reasons and long-term political aims gave way to a stern, ruthless nationalist ideology which would br… - Kurt Schuschnigg

Austria had become the second German state in fact, because there German culture, now homeless in its old home, found a new country. The more violent the opposition to German National-Socialism, the more justified became the Austrian claim to be the representatives of the now homeless German culture and of the higher values of Germanism. To all intents and purposes Weimar had been exiled from the Third Reich and had found its home in Vienna.

In the turbulent years after 1933, anti-semitic slogans were current among the small shopkeepers of Vienna, as they had been sixty years before; they were directed primarily against the big department stores. In glaring contrast to the racial anti-semitism of the National-Socialists, however, the background to this movement was purely economic. No legal restrictions were placed on the Jews nor were any economic handicaps imposed, . . . There was never any discrimination in the schools, and in the academic profession, the business world and cultural life Jews continued to play their respected, even leading, role.

As in other European countries there were anti-semitic tendencies in pre-Hitler Austria too. Formerly political forces, together with the official authorities, had been sufficiently strong to prevent any excesses and nip any outburst in the bud apart from some verbal invective. Karl Renner says: … Throughout the Christian Social period in power no harm came to a single Jew in Vienna; in fact the Jewish element made far greater progress in the press, literature, theatre and business worlds than in the previous so-called liberal period. . . It must not be forgotten, however, that Vienna was the entry point for Jews from the East who did not assimilate easily.