Vienna Quotes

“The ringleader of the right-wing professoriate was a palaeontologist called Othenio Abel, appointed to a full professorship at the university in 1917. He clearly exerted considerable power within the institution, claiming no fewer than twenty-four rooms for his extensive collection of bones, fossils and taxidermy specimens. A German nationalist, Catholic and virulent anti-Semite, Abel made it his job to corral like-minded colleagues into resisting what they regarded as the increasing incursion of Jews, socialists and women into the university. Reporting to a sympathiser in early 1923, he wrote: ‘We bound together our anti-Semitic groups at the University so firmly, that we are building a strong phalanx.’ This work Abel considered to be just as ‘necessary . . . as writing books’.21”
― Richard Cockett, Vienna: How the City of Ideas Created the Modern World

“that research should serve people instead of perpetuating the unworldliness of the ivory tower’.3”
― Richard Cockett, Vienna: How the City of Ideas Created the Modern World

“Dicker-Brandeis herself was transported from Terezín to be murdered in Auschwitz in October 1944. Before leaving she managed to pack about 5,000 of the children’s drawings in two suitcases and leave them with a trusted friend. She always insisted that her pupils sign their pictures, and it is deeply affecting that they did so, for of the nearly 660 authors of the drawings, 550 were killed in the Holocaust. Of the 15,000 children who passed through Theresienstadt”
― Richard Cockett, Vienna: How the City of Ideas Created the Modern World