h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Entry: The City Without Jews: Hugo Bettauer's Chilling 1922 Comedy - A87907251
Author: Dmitri Gheorgheni - U1590784

This is a strange story, I know, but it's true. I read the book, watched the film, and took notes.

Read in the twenty-first century this sounds sinister . But I suppose comedy works like that - it looks over the edge of the abyss and draws back. And it makes me wonder if future generations will be surprised that we managed to laugh at Donald Trump .

I think it might be helpful to tease out Bettauer's early history a bit. I wondered when he went to America and why. Did he lose his fortune in the US and return to Austria disenchanted?

Bettauer inherited a fortune from his stockbroker father back in the 1890s. He and his first wife went to New York, but while still on the boat, they learned that he'd lost all his money by 'speculation'.

In New York, his wife supported them both as a stage actress. They later moved to Berlin, because he couldn't find work in the US. He wrote in Berlin, where his first son was born, got divorced, met his second wife in Hamburg, eloped with her to the US, where they had a son, then moved back to Vienna in 1910.

I find in genealogical sources that his second son, Reginald Parker Bettauer, is still alive in the US. His older son, Heinrich Gustav, who grew up as a Berliner, died in Auschwitz in 1942.

Since none of this has anything to do with why he wrote 'Stadt ohne Juden', I decided to leave it out of the entry.

Thanks for bringing this up! I've reworded that section slightly to make it a bit clearer and keep the biographical stuff from overwhelming the main narrative. Bettauer's life would make a pretty interesting movie in itself.

Thank you for writing about this - a fascinating slice of history.

I enjoyed reading the Entry, as I think you got the flavour just right, so I have no changes to suggest.

Thanks.

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Hello,
I've read your entry and I would only like to rectify a detail. Professor Reginald Parker Bettauer, born on August 23 1904, died in 1967. His second daughter Eleanor, born in 1940 is still alive. Otherwise, if you are interested in why Bettauer wrote The City without Jews, according to what he says about his book, as he was passing through a street in Vienna he saw written on a wall "Jews out!" At that moment he came up with the idea of writing a novel about how it would be if the Austrian government finally threw all Jewish people out of the country. I have not read the book in English, but in German and I actually find it not so funny. Hugo Bettauer was a man way ahead of his time. He only wrote a fiction based on what he was seeing in his everyday life as a Viennese and a great journalist and reporter. I hope that you won't mind the "rectification" and that you will read the other books he wrote. They are all very good and surprisingly contemporary (not in a very good way!)
Thank you for writing about him!

Thank you for this correction, and the new information! And thank you for reading this.

Hugo Bettauer was definitely a man ahead of his time. We need more of them, and people need to treat them better.