Classic Tragedy

On the parish church in small Konigsbrunn, northwest of Vienna in Germany's Ostmark, the white-&-gold banners of the papacy fluttered in the Sunday morning sunlight. The flags showed that a cardinal was within. In the church sounded the peaceful mutter of the Mass. Outside, a mob of bumpkins grew. As the Mass neared its end, with its "Go, it is finished," shouts came from the mob:

"Give the black Cardinal a one-way ticket to Dachau!" (Naziconcentration camp).

"Innitzer preaches peace and means war!"

"Down with the political priest!"

In the church door, a red biretta on his close-cropped head, an old black overcoat covering his scarlet-piped soutane, appeared hollow-eyed Theodor Cardinal Innitzer, Archbishop of Vienna. As he raised his arms in bewildered alarm, the mob let go a volley of eggs and potatoes. A schoolteacher shouted: "Herr Cardinal, your hands are sticky with the blood of Holzweber and Planetta!"* Someone swung an umbrella at the Cardinal, knocked off his biretta. By that time his chauffeur, his clothes torn during a mauling by the crowd, had managed to bring the Cardinal's automobile up to the church. Egged on by the crowd, Cardinal Innitzer darted into his car, headed for Vienna and the safety of his palace.

Thus, according to reports which trickled from the countryside into Vienna last week, ended an archiepiscopal tour in which Cardinal Innitzer had twice been menaced before he reached Konigsbrunn. Unlike the storming of the Cardinal's palace last autumn (TIME, Oct. 17), the incidents in his rustic progress did not appear to have been stage-managed by Nazi leaders. But Cardinal Innitzer may have expected something of the sort. He has ceased flying a papal flag on his automobile, has had its license number changed. Last fortnight he ordered all priests, monks and nuns in his archdiocese to wear secular dress in the streets.

When Hitler took Austria, more than a year ago, Cardinal Innitzer heiled and voted Ja with the best of them. He was, indeed, credited with helping end the Schuschnigg regime, by letting the Austrian Catholic press back Arthur Seyss-Inquart, Nazi go-between. Many Catholic observers, nonetheless, believe Cardinal Innitzer is no timeserver but a sincere, bewildered wrong-guesser who believed that Catholicism could honestly come to terms with Hitlerism. Praising the Cardinal's attempts at conciliation, the Commonweal said last week of his experience at Konigsbrunn: "It is one of the few classic tragedies in our melodramatic age."

*Murderers of Chancellor Engelbert Dollfuss in 1934, Nazis have been taught to believe that Cardinal Innitzer could have successfully interceded for the assassins before they were executed.

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