Le président du PEN club autrichien est alors Felix Salten. Il aurait dit ça dans le contexte du congrès international du PEN de Dubrovnik (alors Raguse) de 1933.
C’est d’autant plus triste que son Bambi de 1923 est aujourd’hui lu comme un livre sur l’antisémitisme (où les cerfs sont les juifs, les scènes de chasse des pogroms, etc.) et que ses livres ont été interdits et brûlés par les nazis quelques années plus tard, lui-même devant fuir l’Autriche en 1938.
À ce congrès de 1933 se pose la question aux clubs des différents pays de condamner le régime nazi, qui envoie 3 écrivains sympathisants. Salten s’y serait distingué par son soutien au club allemand :
In 1933, the Vienna Club was irreconcilably split between its liberal authors and those that subscribed to the völkisch ideology, who in addition to Urbanitzky also included Felix Salten. It is more than likely (though I have not been able to find any information to this effect in any article or report) that the two delegations that voted against PEN’s Constitutive Resolution were the Germans and the Austrians, something that was particularly serious in the latter case, as this was still five years prior to the country’s annexation by the Third Reich. Following this unexpected capitulation to Nazi principles by its president, the Vienna Centre convened a meeting on 28 June 1933, at which it approved a declaration in protest against the “subjugation of individual spirit” and fiercely condemned the events of the German Spring. The declaration was signed by 25 members in favor, while 15 members voted against. The people who signed this “anti-German” manifesto in Vienna could be directly said to make up the list of 25 authors that the National Socialist newspaper Deutschösterreichische Tages-Zeitung called “ninety per cent Jews”, which can be read as a “shortlist of authors forced into exile in 1938” (Bores and Hanuschek, 2014: 492). Nevertheless, it was the Austrian PEN in exile that, thanks to the efforts of Paul Frischauer, who was also present in Dubrovnik in 1933, succeeded in converting PEN International into a “relief organization” that coordinated assistance for writers in danger.
▻https://www.taylorfrancis.com/chapters/oa-edit/10.4324/9780429299407-7/1933-dubrovnik-pen-congress-deal-present-already-history-simona-%C5%A
Les propos de Salten rapportés par Kraus sont assez proches de ceux de l’écrivaine Hollandaise Jo van Ammers-Küller rapportés dans le même article sur ce congrès de 1933 :
"[...] I am Jewish. But it has never been held against me. I have tried with all my might for a reconciliation, because the future of the PEN Club lies in its non-political character. I have done it although I am a Jew. This is the end of the Pen Club” ( Matan, 1993 : 130–131). After the war, Ammers-Küller’s work was banned because of her support for the Nazi occupation, but she was nevertheless not pursued by the authorities and soon returned to the commercial market, though she never regained the fame she had enjoyed before the war.
En lisant sa notice Wikipedia, Salten n’a semble-t-il jamais eu de ligne politique très claire :
Il ne savait pas s’il devait se retirer dans la culture de salon ou choisir l’engagement public.
▻https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Felix_Salten
C’était un ami de jeunesse de Kraus.
