Censorship, Persecution, and Suicide
In 1937, Friedell's works were banned by the National Socialist regime as they did not conform to the theory of history promoted by the NSDAP, and all German and Austrian publishers refused to publish his works. The first volume of Friedell's A Cultural History of Antiquity, which he failed to complete, was published by Helikon in Zurich.
On the occasion of the Anschluss of Austria, anti-semitism was rampant, Jewish men and women were being beaten in the streets and their businesses and synagogues ransacked or destroyed. Friedell, knowing that he could be arrested by the Gestapo, began to contemplate ending his own life. Friedell told his close friend, Ödön von Horváth, in a letter written on 11 March: "I am always ready to leave, in every sense".
On 16 March 1938, at about 22:00, two SA men arrived at Friedell's house to arrest him. While they were still arguing with his housekeeper, Friedell committed suicide by jumping out of the window. Before leaping, he warned pedestrians walking on the sideway where he hit by shouting "Watch out! Get out of the way!".
Friedell, of whom Hilde Spiel said "in him, the exhilarating fiction of the homo universalis rose once again", was interred in the Zentralfriedhof cemetery in Vienna.
Read more about this topic: Egon Friedell
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