Editor’s Note: The follow-

ing article is an excerpt from 
a book the author is current-
ly writing titled “The Search 
for Marcel.”
O

n 
January 
15, 

2020 — a day 
that history will 

remember for the grim pro-
cession delivering two arti-
cles of impeachment to the 
Senate of the United States 
— I first read an article 
written in 1937 by my great-
grandfather, Otto Schirn, 
titled “Chancellor Schus-
chnigg’s Work.”

Four months earlier, I 

had come across a strange 
document in my grand-
mother’s 
photo 
album 

about her father’s European 
life. Though I had always 
thought of my great-grand-
father 
as 
an 
Austrian-

Jewish refugee — a simple 
academic who was incred-
ibly lucky to escape in 1941 
with his life — the yellow, 
faded document claimed 
that he was so much more 
than that. “As a journalist,” 
it said. “Dr. Schirn had spo-
ken against the Nazi gov-
ernment.”

I never met Otto; he died 

six years before I was born. 
His life had affected me only 
through the loving memories he left with 
my grandmother and mother. But as soon 
as I read those words, I knew I would have 
to dedicate months of my life to rediscov-
ering Otto’s history. It hinted at a story too 
powerful to be left untold.

From my grandmother’s files, I learned 

that Otto turned to journalism after four 
years searching for an academic post. A 
member of the Vienna University’s in-
augural economics doctoral class, Otto 
would later write to my grandmother of 
the “casual anti-Semitism” that made a 
teaching career impossible.

Otto spent a year studying journalism in 

Brussels before he was hired as the Vien-
nese correspondent for “L’Indépendance 
Belge,” a left-wing Belgian newspaper. He 
was given the pen name Marcel Legrand 
to disguise his Jewish identity. From May 
1937 to February 1938, he chronicled the 
fall of Austria’s right-wing fascist party as 
Austria became part of the Third Reich.

In his reporting before “Chancellor 

Schuschnigg’s Work,” Marcel began to es-
tablish two dominating themes that would 
carry through the rest of his reporting. 
The first was the hidden motive behind 
all Austrian political developments: Aus-
tria’s fight for independence from an in-
creasingly aggressive German state. Mar-
cel wrote of this struggle as the tragedy it 
would soon become.

The second theme was the increasingly 

violent strain of anti-Semitism that was 
taking root both inside and outside Aus-
tria’s borders. It was an aggressive institu-
tionalization of the casual anti-Semitism 
Otto first witnessed in his days at the Vi-
enna University. As he wrote in his second 
article, Europe would soon face a “Jew-
ish problem” as Britain closed Palestine’s 
borders to European Jews and Germany 
sought to instigate the next diaspora.

This reporting took place against a 

backdrop of domestic unrest. Austria’s 
chancellor, Kurt Schuschnigg, was a not-
ed authoritarian. History would later de-
scribe Schuschnigg’s brand of far-right 
Austrian nationalism as Austrofascism. 
His predecessor, Engelbert Dollfuss, had 

seized power by forcing the police to sus-
pend Austria’s legislature. After Dollfuss’s 
assassination by 10 Austrian Nazis, Schus-
chnigg’s chancellorship became focused 
on maintaining Austrian independence, 
quashing Austrian Nazism and suppress-
ing political dissent.

Though in the beginning Marcel sup-

ported Kurt Schuschnigg, he did so with-
out acknowledging his anti-democratic 
tendencies. He wrote of Schuschnigg as 
the defender of Austrian independence, 
the defender of Austrian Jews in the face 
of the violence that lurked on the other 
side of Austria’s border.

But in the article I read on January 15, 

I watched my great-grandfather’s opinion 
evolve. For the first time, he admitted his 
support for an illiberal political figure. 
“Authoritarianism without dictatorship!” 
read the article’s subtitle. I wondered if it 
was written with any sliver of sarcasm.

“After the tragic death of Dollfuss,” 

Marcel began. “Austria found itself at a 
very dangerous turning point in its post-
war history. The whole country was still 
under the impression of the National So-
cialist coup d’état.”

In two sentences, Marcel summarized 

Schuschnigg’s powerful response. “Al-
though naturally hostile to the ideas of 
dictatorship and violence, [Schuschnigg] 
understood that Austria’s exceptional 
circumstances warranted an authoritar-
ian government. This is what he achieved 
without resorting to measures of violence 
that would be repugnant to the Austrian 
people.”

I was horrified by the contradiction I 

found in this paragraph, a contradiction 
that carried through Marcel’s full body 
of reporting. It was the same contradic-
tion that I see taking place today, the slick 
realpolitik that sacrifices precedent and 
principle for the perception of raw politi-
cal power, the failure to defend the under-
lying principles of our electoral system in 
hopes of avoiding the wrath of an outgo-
ing party leader.

For my great-grandfather, of course, 

the stakes could not have been higher. In 
1945, he learned that his sister had died of 

pneumonia. A few months later, he learned 
his parents had during their transport to 
Auschwitz. Though he remembered them, 
Josef and Tauba, they died at 61 and 62, 
two names among the thousands trans-
ported from Malines that day. 

While writing as Marcel, I believe my 

great-grandfather thought Schuschnigg 
was the only person that could prevent 
the Nazis from destroying his homeland. 
Marcel was willing to give up his belief 
in checks and balances, legal rights — the 
very principles of democracy — in hopes 
that Schuschnigg might preserve Austria’s 
independence. He was willing to sacrifice 
all moral principles in hopes of prevent-
ing history’s inevitable outcome: the An-
schluss, the fall of Austrofascism and the 
rise of an Austria Nazi government.

As I questioned this moral equivoca-

tion, I thought about the life Otto went 
on to lead in the United States. Why did 
Otto Schirn, the Austrian-Jewish refugee 
behind the Los Angeles Holocaust Me-
morial, once supported an authoritarian 
chancellor? Why had this academic, who 
lectured on behalf of civil rights in the 
early 1950s, support one of the main per-
petrators of Austrofascism? 

Marcel’s position required a cynicism 

and realism I found chilling. Didn’t he be-
lieve that Austria could choose between 
democracy and Nazism? Couldn’t he see 
that Nazism would only grow stronger, 
that it would become more normalized 
in the sinking democratic power vacuum 
Schuschnigg’s party had helped create?

The comparisons to the politics of con-

temporary America, Otto’s adopted home, 
seemed obvious. There was the normal-
ization of racism that accompanied the 
confirmation of judges, the degradation 
of ethical norms that accompanied mi-
nor tax cuts. Decades of moral principles 
sacrificed for modest policy advances, a 
deeply-entrenched political party putting 
forward a platform of blind fealty. 

As I look at the choice Otto once made 

to forfeit morality in pursuit of an end 
goal, I see a reflection of the choice Amer-
ica’s leaders make every day. I can only 
hope they do so while knowing how hard 

it will be to rebuild.

But the more I compare 

these two devil’s bargains, 
the more I am forced to 
acknowledge their differ-
ences. In Otto’s case, he 
was a fake Belgian journal-
ist, an Austrian Jew writ-
ing under a pen name. It 
was Hitler’s Nazism, not 
Schuschnigg’s 
national-

ism, that forced Otto to be-
come Marcel.

Unlike our contempo-

rary leaders, Marcel’s re-
porting did not normal-
ize “very fine people” on 
both sides of Austria’s 
existential fight for in-
dependence. Marcel ac-
knowledged Schuschnigg’s 
authoritarianism for what 
it was. He did this while 
drawing a distinction be-
tween nationalist illiberal-
ism and hate-based racism 
that would soon turn into 
genocide.

Nevertheless, I imag-

ine Otto spent the rest of 
his life questioning his 
support for fascism in the 
buildup to the Anschluss. 
After nearly a year spent 
researching Otto’s life, I’ve 
come to accept that I will 
question my great-grand-
father’s decision for the 

rest of my life.

And after watching America’s vot-

ers defeat the strongest, most blatant as-
sault on American democracy in recent 
memory, I realized that many politicians 
and civil servants must be asking them-
selves the same question. How did they 
allow their desire for power or their fear 
of speaking out to eclipse their allegiance 
to our Constitution-based democratic sys-
tem?

Over the past week, various political 

leaders have attempted to cast doubt on 
the factual underpinnings of this elec-
tion. Lawyers have worked tirelessly to 
peel away votes from a specific candidate. 
Though my great-grandfather’s report-
ing makes me fearful for the health of our 
democracy, I take solace in the 5 million-
vote margin that separates our govern-
ment from the fragile ego and destruction 
of one man.

In Marcel’s world, after all, there was 

no election to save morality. Schuschnigg 
and his opponents could operate without 
any fear of a referendum on their poli-
cies. Once lost, Austria’s political morality 
could not be easily rebuilt.

As if to prove this point, I noticed a 

phrase in an article Marcel wrote a month 
before the Anschluss. The goal of this ar-
ticle was to summarize Schuschnigg’s 
political legacy; toward the end, Marcel 
mentioned Schuschnigg’s most recent do-
mestic policies. 

In all the documents that I’ve read 

about Marcel’s time, I can think of no bet-
ter example of the everlasting damage of 
compromised morality. I fear that Ameri-
ca’s current political climate has similarly 
paved the way for dictatorial destruction 
in the years to come.

Marcel still supported Schuschnigg’s 

fascism at the time of his penultimate ar-
ticle. He viewed it as a bulwark against 
the Nazis. But it was of Schuschnigg’s leg-
islation before the Anschluss, not Hitler’s 
genocide after the Anschluss, that Marcel 
wrote of a chilling new political develop-
ment: “the threat to confine all disturbers 
of social peace to concentration camps.”

The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
statement

Gazing into my 
great-grandfather’s 
shadow

BY SAMMY SUSSMAN, STATEMENT CONTRIBUTOR

photo courtesy of sammy sussman

Wednesday, November 18, 2020 — 15 

