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In the guest blog, geologist and librarian Thomas Hofmann looks at three criminal cases - the victims and perpetrators included renowned scientists.
It should have been a solemn ceremony in the central cemetery on June 30, 1932. Numerous celebrities, including Mayor Karl Seitz, and the who's who from the world of science gathered at the honorary grave of the botanist Richard Wettstein late on a Thursday morning. The occasion was the unveiling of the gravestone of the scholar, who died on August 10, 1931 at the age of 68. Wettstein, head of the Botanical Garden and the Botanical Institute on Rennweg, had held the highest positions at the university. He was dean (1909/10), rector (1913/14), and a member of numerous international specialist organizations, but also of the German Club, which was known for its German nationalist and anti-Semitic positions.
But back to Vienna-Simmering to the central cemetery, to group 14 C, grave no. 3. The Vienna men's choir was lined up on one side, and on the other the festival guests, including the zoologist Camillo Schneider, who was looking for a good place to carry out his plan.
When Othenio Abel, rector of the University of Vienna, gave his speech, Professor Schneider shouted: "You scoundrel, now comes the reckoning!" and fired a shot at Abel. But he missed him. "In the next moment, Mayor Seitz, who was standing right next to Abel, grabbed the perpetrator's right arm by the wrist and, while the gun was still smoking, pushed him to the ground. Schneider shouted to the mayor: 'Don't hurt me!' and tried to get his right arm free. Mayor Seitz replied: 'I don't want to hurt you at all, I just want to take the gun away from you.' At the same time, Professor Tandler grabbed the assassin from behind by the collar and held him until the quickly rushing detective arrested him." (Neue Freie Presse, July 1, 1932).
The vita of the paleontologist Othenio Abel, who lived from 1875 to 1946, has been re-evaluated in recent years, not least thanks to the work of Klaus Taschwer. His scientific merits as the founder of paleobiology are beyond doubt. Abel had studied at the University of Vienna, completed his dissertation under Eduard Suess in 1899 and then at the k. k. Geological Reichsanstalt (today: Geosphere Austria) found his first job. His university career began in 1904 with a teaching position, followed by an associate professorship in paleontology in 1907, and a full professorship in 1917, before he became dean of the Faculty of Philosophy in 1927/28 and finally rector in 1932/33. Abel once again took advantage of these high positions to fully carry out his anti-Semitic agitation as a convinced National Socialist and party member of the NSDAP within the framework of the so-called Bear Cave, a clique of professors whose enemies included Jews.
Camillo Schneider (1867 to 1943), a German native from Saxony, studied natural sciences with a focus on zoology in Leipzig and Munich and received his doctorate in 1890. In the winter semester of 1890/91 he started as an assistant at the Second Zoological Institute at the University of Vienna. Of course, his career did not progress as steeply as Abel's. Schneider, always versatile and broadly interested, turned to, among other things, the occult and saw Abel as a culprit who prevented his appointment as professor of zoology at the University of Vienna. Hence his exclamation: "You scoundrel, now comes the reckoning!"
"The learned magnate was certainly a Hungarian with every fiber of his being," wrote Franz Eduard Suess in 1933, son of Eduard Suess (1831 to 1914), in an obituary about Franz Baron Nopsca (1877 to 1933). Nopsca, who was born in Transylvania, attended the Theresianum in Vienna and studied paleontology with Eduard Suess and Viktor Uhlig. He soon belonged to "the Viennese scientific circles" and made a name for himself as an expert on dinosaurs that still carries weight today.
But that's not enough. Nopcsa was a restless person with a wide range of interests who also succeeded as a Balkan researcher with a focus on Albania. This is evidenced by 154 publications in German, Hungarian, English and French. Although the majority deal with paleontological (99) and geological (32) topics, 23 works are dedicated to Albanology.
Southeastern Europe expert Adelheid Wölfl described the colorful personality of the eccentric aristocrat in the article “Franz Nopcsa: Balkan traveler, dinosaur explorer and would-be king.” Nopsca had found a man of life in Bajazid Elmas Doda, an Albanian ten years his junior who had saved his life during a robbery. In recent years, Nopsca has had not only health problems (vagotonia) but also money worries.
Nopcsa had meticulously planned his departure from this world in his downtown apartment at Singerstrasse 12. He had given his friend, who outwardly acted as a secretary, sleeping pills in his food before killing him with a shot in the head from a revolver. After the bloody crime, Nopsca took his own life.
In response, the newspapers outdoed each other with dramatic headlines. “Sensational bloodshed in the inner city,” was the headline in the Illustrierte Kronen Zeitung. The Neue Freie Presse was more factual on April 25th: “Murderous act of a Hungarian aristocrat in Vienna.” On the day of the tragedy, April 25th, the Austrian Abendblatt had found sensational words: "Albania's pretender to the throne shoots his friend" and also published details of his private life, without any trace of piety.
"This friendship was so deep that many people in the know claimed that there were also homosexual relationships between the two. However, the talk about the secretary is less favorable. He is said to have been quite disgusting and had a great tendency to drink. (...) But the Baron was so attached to him that he always turned a blind eye." While this paper claimed that "nervous breakdown" and not "economic difficulties" was a possible motive, the reading in other media is somewhat more differentiated.
According to the Neue Freie Presse on April 26, Nopcsa had not paid his operator, who also discovered the bloody act, for four months. He had already initiated the sale of his valuable library and offered it to the Prussian Ministry of Education in Berlin for 3,000 Reichsmarks. He explained his motive in a letter he signed to the police: "The cause of my suicide is a shattered nervous system. The fact that I also shot my long-time friend and secretary, Mr. Bajazid Elmas Doda, in his sleep and without him knowing is because I did not want to leave him sick, miserable and without money in the world, as he would then have suffered too much. I wish to be cremated."
From the 650th anniversary of the University of Vienna in 2015, in addition to celebrations, well-founded commemorative publications and books, there were also pages on the Internet, including "The Murder of Prof. Moritz Schlick". If there are no visible reminders of the attacks of the 1930s on Wettstein's grave in the Central Cemetery or on Singerstrasse, things are different here. In 1993, the following inscription was made in the marble of the Philosopher's Staircase in the university building (Universitätsring 1) at the site of the massacre: "Moritz Schlick, protagonist of the Vienna Circle, was murdered at this location on June 22, 1936. An intellectual climate poisoned by racism and intolerance contributed to the crime."
What had happened? If you follow the headlines, they read relatively factually and soberly. "Murder in the Vienna University Building!" was the title of the Illustrierte Kronen Zeitung's report on June 23, 1936 inside the paper, whose cover was adorned with the drawn scene of the murder including portraits of the murderer and victim.
It was a well-known motif. A misunderstood student takes revenge on his teacher. Dr. After graduating from high school in Wels in Upper Austria, Hans Nelböck (1903 to 1954) studied with Professor Moritz Schlick from 1925 and wrote his dissertation on "The Meaning of Logic in Empiricism and Positivism" in 1930. Schlick, a native German (born in 1882), accepted a call to Vienna in 1922 after studies in Berlin, Heidelberg, Göttingen and Lausanne, habilitation (1911) in Rostock and full professorship (1921) in Kiel.
He is considered the founder (1924) of the "Vienna Circle", an association of philosophers and scientists from all areas. While its members valued logical empiricism, these theses were a thorn in the side of anti-Semitic and reactionary circles. In this field of tension, Schlick must be considered on the one hand and Nelböck on the other. Added to this is Nelböck's disturbed personality structure and jealousy over a woman.
The trigger was Nelböck's dreary circumstances when he applied for a position at the Ottakring adult education center in Vienna. From his point of view, that was only Plan B, because he actually wanted to teach at the university. But he was barred from going there because of disciplinary proceedings. The reason was previous assassination threats against Schlick, which led to Nelböck receiving psychiatric treatment. But the VHS also found out about it, and so nothing came of the job. In his madness, Nelböck saw only Schlick as the preventer.
Seeking revenge, he ambushed his teacher and shot him with four shots from a Browning at close range. Schlick fell to the ground after the first shot, and the murderer shot the fallen scholar three more times. After the bloody act, which was equivalent to an execution, Nelböck remained calm at the crime scene. "Yes, I'm the culprit! Do whatever you want with me." (Thomas Hofmann, April 25, 2023)