Last Minute

The first Austrian to be sentenced to death since Chancellor Engelbert Dollfuss revived the death penalty to cow Nazis was a non-Nazi farm boy named Hans Breitweiser. Like the hero of Theodore Dreiser's An American Tragedy, he had resolved to marry a well-dowried girl, after he had seduced a poor one. His solution was to murder the poor girl last week, so bunglingly that she lived long enough to accuse him.

Martial law snapped Hans Breitweiser up greedily. The court had two choices: clean acquittal or conviction with death. Quickly convicted, he was sentenced to hang within three hours. Between the judge's grave words, Hans Breitweiser could hear the clunk-clunk of shovels outside digging a hole for his gallows.

His lawyer combed Austria by telephone and telegraph for his last hope, Catholic President Wilhelm Miklas. Locating him in the far Alps opening a new mountain railway, he begged the President to stretch the boy's life beyond the allotted three hours. As pious in a crisis as Chancellor Dollfuss, President Miklas went to mass, spent half an hour alone praying for Divine guidance.

Meanwhile in the little town of Wels the farmer boy stood on the gallows looking away from the hangman. The wardens eyed the minute hands of their watches. There was only one minute to go when an official pushed through the crowd waving a telegram from President Miklas forbidding the execution on the grounds that it was "contrary to the Christmas spirit."

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