Engelbert´s Demise

Someone is dead. Even the trees know it…Bang! The Chancellor has been shot. The Nazis are attempting a coup. He is not dead. Not yet. My God! It is 25 July, 1934.

„My God! I am dying. Let me have the Viaticum!“ 

„You will die without it. No one can help you now.

„How inhuman to refuse a dying person the Eucharist! Give it to me! That is an order.“

„Your time of ordering is over. Soon a new wind will blow over the land.“

Of the eight Nazis who entered the Chancery building, one was sentenced to life imprisonment, albeit released under an amnesty in 1938, but all the others were tried and hanged.

The To-do List

I must meet Maria Montessori, Engelbert said to his chauffeur, Alvin.

“There’s just one snag,” Alvin said. 

“She is at the height of her influence as an educator when you are assassinated.”

“How can that be a snag?

“In this age of wikis and Workshops our meetings can be virtual; we could meet In a dedicated workshop of like minds, of course.”

Alvin yawned. “And where might that be?” 

“In a cupboard decorated with wiki faces of the past as proof of the importance of Catholic corporatist ideals: my Austrofascism!”

  “There will be civil war.”

  “There will be a new constitution; no more annoying democracy, a new system.”

  “The First Austrian Republic!”