Moritz Schlick and the Boundaries of Jewishness

ON THE MORNING OF 22 JUNE 1936 Moritz Schlick ascended the staircase of the department of philosophy at the University of Vienna on his way to his last lecture of the semester. As usual, room 41 was overflowing with students eager to hear the words of the distinguished professor. Suddenly, without warning, thirty-three-year-old Hans Nelböck, a former student of Schlick's with a recent history of mental illness, pulled a gun and fired four shots, killing him instantly. Following his arrest, Nelböck was declared fit to stand trial, although his case was not heard until 24 May 1937 — almost a year after the assassination. Ironically, his testimony came across as anything but deranged. He referred to a strain of thought that had become increasingly popular in both academic and government circles during the interwar years. He claimed that Schlick's empirical critique of transcendental knowledge and rejection of metaphysics had caused him to lose all moral grounding and existential coherence. On an even more personal level, Nelböck maintained that Schlick had “ruined” his love life, alluding to an apparently failed, or unrequited, relationship with another of Schlick's students. Nelböck also claimed — significantly, only much later, following the Anschluss — to have carried out the murder because he believed that Schlick was Jewish. Although the court found him guilty and sentenced him to ten years in prison, he was released the following year when the National Socialists came to power in Austria.