The City Without Jews: Dutch edition of Bettauer’s novel satirizing antisemitism

A prophetic satire on antisemitism, published in the fateful year Hitler came to power.

Hugo Bettauer (1872–1925), born to Jewish parents in Baden bei Wien, was a journalist, editor, and prolific author of crime novels who also championed social reforms such as modern divorce law, abortion rights, and the legalization of homosexuality. His outspoken positions—and above all his satirical novel Die Stadt ohne Juden—made him a target: in 1925, he was assassinated by Otto Rothstock, a member of the Nazi Party.

First published in German in 1922, Die Stadt ohne Juden imagines an Austrian politician expelling all Jews from the country to great public acclaim. Yet, stripped of Jewish culture and enterprise, Austria rapidly collapses. A movement soon rises demanding their return, the expulsion law is repealed, and the Jews are welcomed back. At once biting satire and chilling prophecy, the novel was a huge bestseller, critically acclaimed, and adapted into a feature film in 1924 by Hans Karl Breslauer.

This Dutch edition of 1933, the only one ever published, was translated and edited by Philip Johan Godlieb Roest, who would later join the Dutch resistance and edit an underground newspaper during the Second World War. The publisher’s blurb makes clear that this translation was prompted by the rise of antisemitism in Nazi Germany, intended as a timely warning to Dutch readers.

Bettauer’s warning proved tragically prescient. Just a decade later, Baldur von Schirach deported 65,000 Viennese Jews to Nazi concentration camps. What Bettauer had satirized in 1922 became a grim reality.

A powerful survival: this Dutch edition embodies literature’s role as both mirror and warning in one of Europe’s darkest chapters.