March 12, 1938, Saturday

On the orders of Adolf Hitler, the Wehrmacht enters the territory of Austria, which the next day, in violation of the Treaty of Versailles, is incorporated into the Third Reich.

In Schulz’s surviving correspondence, references to the Anschluss of Austria appear several times. A few days later, in a letter to Romana Halpern that expresses his anxiety for her health and complaints about his own fate (“I spend days and nights without a woman and without a Muse, wilting sterile”1), Schulz suddenly adds four vague sentences: “In the meantime, there have been such depressing historical events. Their course is getting worse. It really depresses me. At certain moments I was close to despair, as before an imminent catastrophe”2. A few days ago, he returned to his old idea of going to Paris. For him, the Anschluss has a dimension not only catastrophic and existential, but also practical (he will not want to go to Paris through Nazi Germany) and economic (funds from the fee for Sanatorium Under the Sign of the Hourglass*, which he could spend for this purpose, have declined). (sr) (transl. mw)

  • 1
    Letter from Bruno Schulz to Romana Halpern dated March 20, 1938, [in:] Bruno Schulz, Dzieła zebrane, volume 5: Księga listów, zebrał i przygotował do druku Jerzy Ficowski, uzupełnił Stanisław Danecki, Gdańsk 2016, p. 171.
  • 2
    Ibid.