Résumé
Résumé de La Ville sans Juifs
À qui s’adresse-t-il ?
For readers who love political satire, Vienna between the wars, and stories of how prejudice becomes policy, with comedy and a love affair woven into public events.
De quoi parle ce livre ?
The City Without Jews is a satirical novel by Hugo Bettauer, an Austrian journalist who published it in Vienna in 1922. Bettauer wrote it in a country shaken by defeat in the First World War, by inflation and by loud public hatred of Jews. He imagines what would happen if that hatred got exactly what it asked for. The story is set in Vienna itself, the capital of Austria.
You get a sharp, fast story that mixes politics, comedy and a love affair. You meet a chancellor who needs someone to blame, a law that sends the Jews away, and a city that slowly finds out what it has lost. The book works as a thought experiment, and it is also a warning written by a man who saw the danger early. Let us start with the country Bettauer builds and the leader who rises in it.
Dans ce résumé
- 1A troubled country looks for someone to blameFree
- 2A chancellor builds his power on hatred
- 3The law passes and the trains begin to leave
- 4The empty city loses its life and its money
- 5A love story and a stranger who comes back
- 6What the satire says and how it is told
Point clé 1 sur 6
A troubled country looks for someone to blame
The story opens in Vienna, in the years after a great war. It is the once proud heart of an empire that has shrunk to a single struggling city. Prices rise every week, wages cannot keep up, and ordinary families feel they are sliding downward. Bettauer paints this mood with a journalist's eye, and the reader quickly sees why people are angry.
In that anger a familiar voice grows louder. Newspapers, speakers and party men say that the country's troubles are the work of the Jews. They claim that Jewish bankers, shopkeepers, doctors and writers have grown rich while honest people suffer. The charge is simple and it needs no proof, which is exactly why it spreads so well.
Bettauer is careful to show that the Jews of Athen are not one group with one plan. Some are wealthy and some are poor. Some are devoted to the city's music and theatre, and some are only trying to earn a living. Many feel as Austrian as their neighbors. The satire begins here, by letting the reader see how absurd it is to blame a whole people for a nation's ills.
The book also shows how many ordinary people go along with the talk without hating anyone in particular. They are tired and frightened, and a ready answer is comforting. Bettauer treats this as the real danger, more than a few loud fanatics. When a tired public hears the same easy claim every day, it begins to feel like common sense.
That’s 1 of 6 key points.
The rest of the summary, written and spoken, and the whole book: free to start.
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Questions about La Ville sans Juifs
What is The City Without Jews about?
It is a satire about a country that expels all its Jewish citizens. As the Jews leave, the city loses its trade, its culture and its comfort, and the folly of the law becomes plain.
Is The City Without Jews a true story?
No, it is fiction. Hugo Bettauer published it in Vienna in 1922 as a satire and a warning, setting it in Vienna. It imagines events that had not happened, in response to real antisemitism.
Where is the novel set?
It is set in Vienna, the capital of Austria, after the First World War. Readers of the time recognized their own city and its politics.
Why was Hugo Bettauer killed?
Bettauer was shot in 1925 by a young man with Nazi sympathies, after a fierce press campaign against him by antisemitic and right-wing groups. His novels and magazines had made him a target. He died of his wounds that year.
Is The City Without Jews hard to read?
No. The chapters are short, the style is that of a newspaper writer, and the plot moves quickly. Its humor, its political scenes and its love story make it easy to follow, though its subject is serious.