"I believe in the good in man, but advise (you) to trust only in the bad in him. My birth place is Vienna"
Alfred Polgar
“There was hardly a city in Europe where the drive towards cultural ideas was as passionate as it was in Vienna.”
Stefan Zweig. The World of Yesterday. English translation. London, 1943:12
“Like you I have an uncontrollable affection for Vienna, but unlike you I know her deep abysses.”
Sigmund Freud to a friend. Quoted in: George E. Berkley. Vienna and Its Jews. The Tragedy of Success. 1880s-1980s. Cambridge, MA - Lanham, MD, 1987:1
“It was not possible, especially not for a Jew in public life, to ignore the fact that he was a Jew; nobody else was doing so, not the Gentiles and even less the Jews. You had the choice of being counted as insensitive, obtrusive and fresh; or of being oversensitive, shy and suffering from feelings of persecution. And even if you managed somehow to conduct yourself so that nothing showed, it was impossible to remain completely untouched.”
Arthur Schnitzler. My Youth in Vienna. English trans. Catherine Hutter. New York, 1970:6-7
“When someone thought he was becoming prominent, he might move to Vienna where a man's opportunities were less limited and the rewards were higher. Vienna's attractions remained irresistible to the Germans and German-speaking Jews in Ostrau. [...] My mother's annual visits [...] were considered almost a status symbol at home. It was said, perhaps not jokingly, that some people stayed up late at night trying to discover a relative in Vienna whom they might visit, just as a start.”
Joseph Wechsberg. The Vienna I Knew: Memories of a European Childhood. Garden City, New York, 1979: 137.
“One circumstance puzzled me before I had been long in Vienna. In Germany I had associated with Jews scarcely at all; only now and then did one appear in my circle and no special stress was laid by either himself or others on the fact that he was Jewish. Here, however, all whom I came into professional or social contact with were Jews. [...] I soon realized that all public life was dominated by Jews. [...] The court, the lower class and the Jews gave the city its stamp. And that the Jews, as the most mobile group, kept all the others in continuous motion is, on the whole, not surprising. Yet I was amazed at the hosts of Jewish physicians, attorneys, clubmen, snobs, dandies, proletarians, actors, newspapermen and poets.”
Jakob Wassermann. My Life as German and Jew. New York, 1933:186