4 - Workers' Writer: Veza at the Arbeiter-Zeitung, 1932–33

Summary

IN THE VIENNESE Arbeiter-Zeitung of 29 June 1932, seven months and a day before Adolf Hitler was appointed Reichskanzler of Germany, the thirty-five-year-old occasional English teacher and freelance translator, Venetiana Taubner-Calderon, published her first short story. It was on the tragic fate of a young working-class woman, but she entitled it “The Victor” after her protagonist's more powerful male employer. This was the same title as a recently released blockbuster from the UFA film studios starring German cinema's leading matinée idol, who soon became Nazi Germany's greatest box office draw and male poster-boy, Hans Albers. Judging from a line in Comedy of Vanity, the title also alludes to her fiancé's interest in the subject and exercise of power. As Canetti elaborates in Crowds and Power, anyone who survives the death of another individual, as Siegfried Salzman survives that of Anna Seidler, experiences a sense of victory over him (III:267–329). When Anna's body is carried back to the factory by a young worker who found her in the snow, Salzman takes satisfaction from her death because it confirms his own more powerful position. There may be a further dimension. In Canetti's Comedy of Vanity, it is Heinrich Föhn (his self-portrait) who joshes to Leda Frisch that she considers him a “victor.” What's more, according to Heinrich, Leda likes him in this role. Yet Veza's Anna kills herself as a consequence of Salzman's refusal to confirm her secretarial skills, which she acquires independently, through private study, and which denies her the chance of finding work with another firm.