SOURCE: Foell, Kristie A. “July 15, 1927: The Vienna Palace of Justice Is Burned in a Mass Uprising of Viennese Workers, a Central Experience in the Life of Elias Canetti.” In Yale Companion to Jewish Writing and Thought in German Culture 1096-1996, edited by Sander L. Gilman and Jack Zipes, pp. 464-70. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1997.

In the following essay, Foell explains the impact of the burning of the Vienna Palace of Justice on Canetti's thinking and works.

I can still feel the indignation that came over me when I picked up the Reichspost; its huge headline read, “A Just Verdict.” There had been shooting in Burgenland [the region of Eastern Austria bordering Hungary], workers had been killed. The court had let the murderers go free. Now the governing party's newspaper called this exoneration a “just” decision, as the headline trumpeted. … From every quarter of Vienna the workers marched...