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