Welcome to Part Seven of our seventy-eighth audio entertainment in Tales for Our Time. You'll find eight-and-a-half years' worth of our Tales archived here, in handy easy-to-access Netflix-style tile format. (Oh, and we do poetry, too.)
In this season of Epiphany, we're enjoying (if that's the word) The City without Jews by Hugo Bettauer, who paid for this book with his life. If you've missed the beginning of our tale because you were too busy fleeing Minnesota, you can start fresh with Part One and have a good old binge-listen.
In tonight's episode the great changes in Viennese life are not turning out as expected:
In the years that followed the war and revolution Vienna had developed more and more into the hub of Central-European extravagance, and the life of certain classes had grown so luxurious that it became the talk of all the world. The masses of Vienna, however—not only the laborers, but also the middle classes—had gnashed their teeth as they watched the foreign elements, especially the Galician, Roumanian, and Hungarian Jews, lord it over Vienna. Spending lavishly the practically worthless money of Austria, they drank champagne when the poor man could hardly pay for his glass of beer; they adorned their women with pearls and furs while the real aristocracy was forced to sell its family jewels one by one; they raced through the streets in their luxurious automobiles, they took away the homes of Viennese residents of long standing, and filled the cultured old city with their noisy ostentation.
When the Jews had been exiled all this was changed entirely overnight.
But not necessarily for the better. Members of The Mark Steyn Club can hear Part Seven of our tale simply by clicking here and logging-in.
If you'd like to know more about The Mark Steyn Club, well, we'd love to have you along for the climax of our ninth season. So please click here for more info - and don't forget, for fellow fans of classic fiction and/or poetry, our Steyn Club Gift Membership.
Do join me back here tomorrow for Part Eight of The City without Jews.
