The setting of the pearl

the long version

"Here is an account of the debasement of one of Europe's great cities. Thomas Weyr shows how Hitler turned Vienna, a once vibrant city that was the cradle of modernism, into a third-rate Prussian provincial town. In this narrative, we meet Austrian traitors like Arthur Seyss-Inquart and mass murderers like Odilo Globocnik, proconsuls like Joseph Burckel, who hacked Austria into seven pieces, and Baldur von Schirach, who dreamed of making Vienna into a Danubian capital - and failed miserably. More painfully, Weyr chronicles the swift destruction of a deeply ingrained Jewish culture and the removal of the city's 200,000 Jews through murder, exile, and deportation. He further shows how Hitler throttled the spirit of what remained through changes in education, city government, cultural life, even the architectural form of the city. The book includes Weyr's own experiences as a child in Vienna under Nazi rule in 1938, along with those of his parents and friends, but the book is not simply a memoir; it is a full historical narrative that chillingly captures the spiritual and cultural ruin that Hitler inflicted on this once-great city."--Jacket.