From L’Univers Israélite 20, 3 February 1939

Suicide of two Austrian refugees

M. Leopold Lipschutz, aged 69, had been obliged to leave Vienna the day after the Anschluss, where he edited the Kronenzeitung, a newspaper supporting the policy of Chancellor [Kurt] Schuschnigg whose friend he also was. He had come and settled in Nice with his wife, Frau Thérèse Lipschutz, aged 58, and his son Franz, aged 24. In October, after spending some months in a hotel, he moved to a home in the Boulevard Victor Hugo with his wife, the young man living separately in a family pension.

The journalist had great difficulty in adapting to this life of exile. He had often said to political exiles like himself that he had had enough of living like this, that is to say, with the thought that his country was under the Nazi yoke. He got his wife to share his despair and both were found dead in their bedroom, poisoned by barbiturates. Before carrying out his tragic design M. Leopold Lipschutz had written several letters, one of which, addressed to the police commissioner, stated his fatal decision, caused by the situation of his country after the Anschluss, and also by the fact that he was frequently the target of threats. The man now reduced to desperation was well known in Viennese society. He was the president of “Concordia”, an association that brought together the best writers and journalists of Vienna.