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[82], (52) Lines: 34 ——— 0.0900 ——— Normal P PgEnds: T [82], (52) 15 Concerning Emigration in 1938 As I explained previously, I barely escaped from Austria. The Gestapo was about to confiscate my passport, and that would have meant the end of any possibility of emigration short of a secret border crossing. But the Gestapo’s attention also had its funny side. For instance, in the general survey of university personnel, a Gestapo officer came to our home and searched around my desk, drawers, and bookcases in order to see what I did. He was a young man in his mid-twenties, and when we got friendly he told me that he was originally a lawyer from Hamburg. First he inspected my desk for incriminating material. At the time, since I had been fired and had nothing to do but prepare for my emigration, I had complete leisure for the exploration of complicated problems. I was working at the time on questions of empire, and my desk was piled high with treatises on Byzantium, several of them in French and English. So he thumbed through this Byzantine empire literature ; and after a while he remarked that he was in charge of inspecting all of the professors in the Law School, and that my desk was the first he had seen that looked like the desk of a scholar. The atmosphere became more relaxed. He had to take with him some incriminating evidence concerning my political interests. I had of course standing on my shelves the principal sources of a political nature: Hitler’s Mein Kampf; Kurt von Schuschnigg’s book, Dreimal Österreich; Mussolini’s Dottrina del Fascismo; and Marx’s Communist Manifesto. So he took away Schuschnigg and Marx. I protested that this would give an unfair impression of my political interests, which were strictly impartial, and suggested that he take along Hitler’s Mein Kampf. But he refused, and that is how I kept my copy of a very early edition. But by 82 concerning emigration in 1938 [83], (53) Lines: 355 t ——— 10.86002 ——— Normal Pag * PgEnds: Pag [83], (53) that time we had already become more friendly. Because he also had to take with him some of my own books, such as Über die Form des amerikanischen Geistes and those on the race question, I suggested that it would not be nice to take the good hardcover copies, and he could take as well the volumes of page proofs. He was agreeable and was satisfied with the page proofs, so I could keep the hardcover editions, which I still have. When he came in, my wife, who is a very orderly lady, wanted to take his coat, which he had thrown over a chair, and hang it in a closet. Whereupon he yelled, “Don’t touch it! There is my revolver in it.” But what had to be considered due process of law under the now-valid statutes was on the whole observed, and while I was apparently a target of some interest my wife was not. Besides, when I left she could stay with her parents, who were National Socialists and had a huge picture of Hitler in their living room. Of course, as soon as I had left on the evening of the day when the Gestapo man wanted to confiscate my passport, the next morning he came back in order to ask where the passport and I were. Then a guard was put in front of the house of my parents-in-law, where my wife was staying. But after I arrived in Zurich and sent a telegram, the guard disappeared, and twenty minutes later my telegram arrived. He obviously knew that I had left for good. A week later, my wife joined me in Zurich. Of course we had to leave almost everything behind, but it was possible to get some of the furniture out and, most important, the library. Certain items, however, had to be left. Again the details are more or less funny. For instance, I had to leave behind my stamp collection, which I had accumulated as a boy, this being an object of value. Books apparently were not. I know from other people that in spite of rather strict enforcement one could get a lot of things through. I know for instance of a young lady who was an artist and who had acquired a few original prints by Dürer. In order to export...

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