“How does a Hungarian Jew get to make an appeal for Austria?” A 1940 anonymous marginalia on the page of a Shanghai daily newspaper

There is a certain excitement to being in the former library of the Shanghai Jesuits, hunching over old newspapers in a dim reading room. Shutters closed, shimmering reading lamps, heavy wooden desks. It doesn’t take too long to get immersed in the past. The environment helps if only you are able shut out a soft male voice set on eternal repetition – the faint but steady sound of the visitors’ introduction to the building. But what’s this atmosphere compared to the thrilling moment when you realize that you aren’t alone reading the now-tattered pages from the 1940s? Well, you are alone, but you discover that someone before you left their comments on the margins with a red pencil. Judging from the vehemence of the note, it must have been written by someone contemporary, responding to what they were reading, back on that March 11, 1940, in wartime Shanghai. That adds a layer between you and the first author who you thought you were alone with.

1) The Biblioteca Zikawei (Xujiahui Library 徐家汇藏书楼) from the outside (by M.M.); 2) from the inside (by Michelle Qiao, Shanghai Daily) 3) (Baidu.com)

The main page of the Gelbe Post (March 15 1940 issue)

The Gelbe Post (Yellow Post) was a German-language daily newspaper (originally a semimonthly periodical) published in Shanghai between 1939-1940 by the Central European Jewish refugee, Adolf Josef/József Storfer. Born in 1888 in Botoșani (Kingdom of Romania) as a son of wealthy Bukovinian (Austria-Hungary, today Romania) parents[1]. Storfer was raised and educated in Kolozsvár, Transylvania (Austria-Hungary, today: Cluj Napoca, Romania), and was a high-school classmate of the future communist revolutionary Béla Kun. In the 1910s he studied in Vienna, Austria and joined the “Vienna Circle” around Sigmund Freud. Wounded in the Great War, the break-up of the Monarchy saw him in Budapest. Following the fall of the Hungarian Soviet Republic (1919) he fled to Vienna where he worked as a journalist as well as an editor and writer of psychoanalytic works. In 1938 he escaped from the Nazi takeover and settled in Shanghai along with the thousands of other Jews from German-occupied territories. He founded and edited the Gelbe Post that aimed to cover topics in East Asian cultural life as well as contents relevant to the lives of Jewish emigrants in China.[2]

Marginalia No. 1: Storfer’s article from March 11 1940 marked up and commented with a red pencil 

On March 11 1940 Storfer published an article, commemorating the upcoming two-years anniversary of the Anschluss, Austria’s occupation by Nazi Germany. In “Oesterreichischer Trauaertag” [A Sad Day for Austria] Storfer recalled the moment when Chancellor Schuschnigg announced the capitulation of his government to the German forces entering from the Western borders. While recognized the defenselessness (wehrlos) of the country, Storfer didn’t fully exonerate (nicht ganz unschuldig) the people who allowed authoritarianism rule even before Hitler’s troops annexed the ex-Habsburg land. Nevertheless, the piece ends on an encouraging note, calling the Austrian people to take their place in the community of the people who respect freedom, human rights and democracy. Needless to say, it is a quite different take compared to that of the exulting article written by another Shanghai Austrian in the Nazi Party-affiliated Ostasiatischer Lloyd (East Asian Lloyd) back in 1938, days after the occupation.

The issue of the Ostasiatischer Lloyd where Th. Di Gaspero’s article “Our wish has come true! By an Austrian Shanghai-German” appeared on March 16, 1938

We can only guess, who wrote the following lines on the top of the page, just above the title of Storfer’s essay: “Wie kommt ein Ungarischer Jude dazu – ein Einspruch für Österreich zu tun?”( “How does a Hungarian Jew get to make an appeal for Austria?”) Could that be an Austrian Jew? Or a gentile Austrian? Unfortunately, as I flipped through the rest of the pages of the issue, our mysterious commenter didn’t appear to disclose their opinion to any further extent. However, their red pencil appears later on even in other issues, highlighting specifically Hungarian-related news, or other writings of A.J. Storfer. What’s more, the scarlet traces also appear on the pages of the Ostasiatischer Lloyd, and if not commenting with words, the coloring of the new Hungarian-Romanian borders after the Second Vienna Award betrays keen interest in Central European politics. I don’t really know how to go about this, how to figure out who’s our mysterious commenter? To whom did these issues belong to before they ended up in the library? Or if the Zikawei itself subscribed to the newspapers, who was marking up the pages? We know that among the Shanghai Jesuits there were some Austrians and Hungarians in the 1930s and 1940s. Could the vermilion stick belong to one of them?

Marginalia No.2: someone marked up the territorial changes between Hungary and Romania (O.L. November 1, 1940)

 

 

 

[1] Lengyel, András, “Az ifjú Sansculotte. Storfer Adolf József indulásáról” Forrásfolyóirat.hu 

[2] ‘Introduction’ at Archive.org/Gelbepost AND Vámos, Péter. “Távoli Menedék. Közép- És Kelet-Európai Zsidó Menekültek Sanghajban a Második Világháború Idején [Home Afar: Central and Eastern European Jewish Refugees in Shanghai During World War II].” Világtörténet, Autumn–Winter 2005, 72–85.