The Vienna Melody (56 page)

Chief of Police:
Didn't you ask what all these men were up to?

Sergeant Greifeneder
: I certainly did. But they said I should see in due time. Meanwhile other men in uniform were bringing down all the officials out of the Chancellery in the fourth story, shouting at them, “Hands up!” They waited till everybody was there. I told them it was a bad idea to keep so many people there, for it was too heavy a load for the staircase. One of the men yelled at me: “I
do the commanding here; you have nothing to say about it.”

Chief of Police:
Do you know who he was?

Sergeant Greifeneder:
He wore the uniform of a major. His name was Hermann Alt.

Chief of Police:
How did you happen to know his name?

Sergeant Greifeneder:
Because he himself told me. He said, “I am Major Hermann Alt, in case you would like to know who rid you Austrians of that criminal pygmy who stained for ever the honor of this country and betrayed our Führer!”

Chief of Police:
I see. What happened then?

Sergeant Greifeneder:
A non-commissioned officer came and ordered us to go down into the courtyard. Here the civilian officials were separated from us policemen. We were left in the first courtyard near the main gate.

Chief of Police:
How long did you stay there?

Sergeant Greifeneder:
The whole thing may have taken ten to twelve minutes. Between half-past one and a quarter to two the major came
.

Chief of Police:
Don't call him major. He merely stole and wore a major's uniform.

Sergeant Greifeneder:
Very well, sir. The man by the name of Alt came to us in the courtyard and asked my colleague. District Inspector Jellinek, if toe knew that Chancellor Dollfuss had been wounded. When we said no, he asked if we would like to see him, and we told him yes. But he let only me go up at once.

Chief of Police:
How do you account for that?

Sergeant Greifeneder:
I don't know. He may have supposed I was a Nazi too.

Chief of Police:
Proceed, please.

Sergeant Greifeneder:
Herr Alt and I went up and found His Excellency the Chancellor in the so-called corner salon by the window near the Congress Hall.

Chief of Police:
Do you recall his position?

Sergeant Greifeneder:
He was lying on a couch, his hands spread out.

Chief of Police:
What did you do?

Sergeant Greifeneder:
I asked the major—pardon me—Herr Alt, whether he was seriously wounded and by whom. He answered he did not know, and it was none of my business. Then I saw blood coming from the Chancellor's lips. I asked whether a doctor had been attending to the patient. He answered no. Then I asked whether a doctor was sent for. He again answered no. “You can attend to him yourself, if you like,” he said, sitting at the writing desk and smoking a cigarette. I said, “Yes, I will.” Thereupon he opened the window and yelled out of it: “Some of you! Come up with a first-aid kit!” Then he asked me: “Do you know how to put on a bandage?” I said, “Yes.” But it was some time before one of the rebels came up with the bandages—

Chief of Police:
One moment. What did Alt do in the meantime?

Sergeant Greifeneder:
He kept on sitting at the desk, smoking.

Chief of Police:
Did he say anything?

Sergeant Greifeneder:
Not then.

Chief of Police:
Was the Chancellor conscious or unconscious?

Sergeant Greifeneder:
Unconscious.

Chief of Police:
Proceed, please.

Sergeant Greifeneder:
The rebel who came up with the bandages slit the Chancellor's clothes with a pocketknife and cut away the shirt. There was nothing but blood. I asked the man to hold the Chancellor's head while I tried to apply the bandage. But the man said: “I won't. This man cold-bloodedly murdered scores of my fellow workers. He told every one how good a Catholic he was. Now he shall know what blood for blood means.”

Chief of Police:
Did you succeed in putting on the bandages?

Sergeant Greifeneder:
I applied them but was unable to check the haemorrhage. Nobody was there to help me. Afterwards I washed the Chancellor's forehead with water from the carafe on the table, and he came to.

Chief of Police:
Did he speak?

Sergeant Greifeneder:
Yes. He asked whether the other Ministers who were closeted with him when the rebels started their putsch were all right. I told him so far as I knew they were. For a moment he seemed to think he was free, because he said: “Thank God you reached here in time! Did you catch the lot of them?” Then his eyes fell on Herr Alt, who was laughing. Whereupon the Chancellor said to me, “This major, a captain, and several soldiers shot at me at a distance of four inches.”

Chief of Police:
Did he mention the names of the major or the captain or the soldiers who shot at him? Or did he give you any indication or characteristics by which to identify them?

Sergeant Greifeneder:
He did not.

Chief of Police:
Did Alt say anything?

Sergeant Greifeneder:
He said, “Herr Chancellor. You shot at thousands of innocent German workers. You despised our beloved Führer. We shot at you, and we despise you!”

Chief of Police:
Did the Chancellor answer?

Sergeant Greifeneder:
Not for a moment. Later he asked for the Minister of Education, Dr. Schuschnigg. Herr Alt said, “Schuschnigg is not here” Then the Chancellor asked for the State Secretary of Police, Karwinsky, but Herr Alt paid no attention. Finally the Chancellor asked for a priest. Herr Alt listened but didn't move. I begged him to send for one. He laughed, said “No,” and left the room.

Chief of Police:
Does this mean you were alone with the Chancellor?

Sergeant Greifeneder:
Yes.

Chief of Police.
What did you do?

Sergeant Greifeneder:
I tried to console him. I told him it was only a flesh wound. But he asked me to raise his arms and legs. I did, and he said, “I can't feel anything, I am paralysed.” I said, “No, Herr Chancellor. You'll be all right in no time.” He looked at me and answered, “You are so kind to me. Why weren't the others kind? God forgive them.” Then he said he wanted Dr. Schuschnigg to form a Government. If Schuschnigg was no longer living then you, Herr Chief of Police, should undertake it. These last words were-overheard by Herr Alt, who had come back a little while before. He said, “Herr Chancellor, come to the point! All that is of no interest to us. Nobody will form a Government except the people of our choosing. Give the order at once that neither the police nor the executive must take any action concerning the Chancellery until Minister Rintelen has taken over the Government. Phone immediately to the chief of police. I'll connect you.” He then brought the portable telephone from the desk to the couch where the Chancellor was lying. The Chancellor murmured, “Yes. No bloodshed.” Blood was coming up into his mouth; he tried to wipe it away. Then there was a rattling sound in his throat. He said almost inaudibly, “Tell Mussolini to care for my wife and children.” This last was meant for me. Then there was more sound of rattling, and he died. That was about a quarter to four in the afternoon.

Signed before me
:
S
KUBEL,
Chief of Police;

JOHANN GREIFENEDER,

Police Sergeant

 

On August 4 Police Sergeant Greifeneder deposed further:

 

In completion of my statement of July thirty-first, and in answer to questions, I have to state that I never left the room while Chancellor Dollfuss was dying and therefore must have heard everything that was said. The Chancellor spoke in a low tone, but his voice was dear, and I never moved farther from the couch than to the writing-desk for fresh bandages and once to the table for the water carafe. The distance may be about three feet.

 

The record of the hearing of Hermann Alt, held for trial, read as follows:

 

County Court Criminal Cases, Vienna.

Division of the Examining Magistrate Alois. Osio of the Court of Appeals. Recorder: Dr. Eugen Schick.

 

Name of the accused: Hermann Christoph Alt.

Date of birth: November 3, 1893.

Place of birth: Vienna.

Religion: Roman Catholic.

Marital status: Single.

Profession: Assistant to Chief of Program at Ravag.

Domicile: First District, 10 Seilerstätte, Vienna.

 

After the accused had been brought into court and was informed that the prosecuting authority of Vienna had filed an indictment charging him with the crimes of murder, high treason, and instigation to riot, and that he was to be examined in accordance with Paragraph 38 of the Code of Criminal Procedure, he made the following statements in answer to interrogation.

“I admit that I am guilty according to outmoded Austrian penal law, but innocent in the eyes of the living peoples' law of our beloved Führer.”

On being warned by the examining magistrate that he would have to omit such remarks under pain of additional disciplinary punishment, the accused replied:

“Don't be ridiculous. Do you think I do not know that even without this farce I have no chance under your justice?”

Interspersed with frequent vituperative remarks made against the members of the Government, the higher clergy, and officials, despite reprimands from the examining magistrate as to their being inadmissible, the accused gave the following coherent account.

“I knew, from the very day that my uncle personally instituted a house search in our apartment house, that I was finished. For it was then he discovered the spiral staircase which I had had constructed between my ground-floor apartment and the cellar under our house, as well as the printing press, also in the cellar, on which the leaflets of the National Socialist party in Austria were printed. At that time my uncle harboured another suspicion against me, of which I am just as guilty as I am of all the other so-called crimes I am now charged with, and of which I am just as proud today as ever. Your incompetent justice has only now discovered, in relation to the present investigation being held against me, that it was I who liquidated the Jewess Selma Rosner. In this connection I desire the following to be recorded verbatim. For what I have to state here is to be preserved for the day when this Austrian system of government, which fires on working men and Germans, will be swept away by the wrath of the populace and my memory will be reinstated, in all honor, by all true Germans as that of the Austrian Horst Wessel.

“The Brown House in Munich had no need to remind me that I could perform no services for the party as long as I lived with people, and as long as people belong, to my family, who were Jews. This is the one reproach I make to my party comrades. It was absolutely superfluous, and a failure either to appreciate or estimate me, to order me to Munich so that I should be impressed with the necessity of ridding my family of such members as did not meet with the racial requirements of our Führer. For from the very first instant when I was privileged to look the Führer in the eye and to swear blind fealty to him I should never have tolerated breathing the same air and being under the same roof with persons whose every expression was unsympathetic and intolerable. My mother has Jewish blood; my so-called sister-in-law was a full-blooded Jewess. To get rid of both of them was my intention, of which the major part was executed. The one thing that I regret about my otherwise perfect plan is that my mother, thanks to the vacillation of my brother, who was always a pitiable weakling, has for the time being escaped the fate I had prepared for her. I regret this, but at the same time wish to emphasize I have great sympathy for people who condemn a son because he opposes his mother. A mother, for me too, is the highest being on earth. But she must be a mother. My mother was what that philosopher of our times, Alfred Rosenberg, calls Jewish mothers: ‘a monstrosity of unmotherliness.' I never considered her to be my mother, never in my life followed her advice, never nourished any feelings for her except those of disgust and shame that she should have borne me. From the very start the blood of my pure Aryan German forbears in me fought against her, and when I came back from a war lost through Jewish treason I knew what I had to do.

“My uncle's death was a definite piece of luck both for me and for the National Socialist party in Austria. And yet, despite the fact that he turned against me through a false interpretation of duty, I cannot refrain from paying the tribute due to a man of such sterling German worth. Under his scrutiny I should no longer have been able to serve our Führer. But he died on the very day when he uncovered our cellar printing press, and so I succeeded, with the help of party comrades, in nipping all suspicion in the bud.

“Since I lode upon this examination as an accounting not to this court, which I do not recognize, but to my Führer and my fellow countrymen, I wish to record once more my admiration for the farsightedness and thoroughness with which our party knew how to act even when our Führer, although he was triumphant in the Reich, was barred from Austria, stricken as it was with blindness. It has been the Jews, the so-called artists, writers, and journalists, who have made Austria blind and dumb. To save their profits and their skins they found no insult too low, no calumny too vile. They have trampled in the filth the purest and most heroic party there is and have made the Austrians think that Messrs. Otto Bauer, Seipel, Dollfuss, Schuschnigg, and their like were fit even to breathe the same air as our Führer.

“When I came back from the war I immediately recognized these dangerous vermin for what they were. That was my reason for joining the National Socialist party in Austria, with the express desire of becoming an active and acting member. I have been a party member since the creation of the Austrian Gau. My party number is seventy-one.”