The Murder of Prof. Moritz Schlick

90 years ago, on June 22nd, 1936, professor of philosophy Moritz Schlick was shot on the Philosophenstiege (philosophers’ staircase) in the main building of the University of Vienna by a former student.
The assassination was a symbol for the ruling cultural climate during the 1930s and for the subsequent end of the famous “Wiener Kreis” (“Vienna Circle”), which Schlick had founded in 1924 to develop and to propagate a scientific world view.
The way this case was handled shows how corrupted the Christian-conservative and anti-Semitically dominated university- and media landscape was in the years of Austrofascism – the newspaper coverage made it seem as though Schlick’s positivistic teachings were more despicable than the murder itself.