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History of the Austrian Working Class: Unity of Scholarship and Practice

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 December 2008

Helmut Gruber
Affiliation:
Polytechnic Institute of New York

Abstract

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Type
Review Essays
Copyright
Copyright © International Labor and Working-Class History, Inc. 1983

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References

NOTES

1. The papers and discussions appeared in: Internationale Tagung der Historiker der Arbeiter-bewegung, Arbeiterkultur in Österreich 1918–1934: ITH Tagungsbericht 16 (Vienna. 1981)Google Scholar.

2. The exhibition was kept running for the remainder of the year to accommodate almost half a million visitors, among whom schoolchildren and organized youth groups were prominent. A folder of 25 information sheets, which provide an historical introduction to the various exhibits, was distributed free of charge. A richly illustrated and annotated catalog. Mit uns zieht die neue Zeit: Arbeiterkultur in Österreich 1918–1934 (Vienna. 1981)Google Scholar. was available at a nominal price.

3. ITH Tagungsbericht 16. 14–15. The most recent and best analysis of Februray 12. 1934. that goes far beyond the customary explanation for the defeat of the Austrian working class as a victim of “objective conditions,” is by Rabinbach, Anson, The Crisis of Austrian Socialism: From Red Vienna to Civil War 1927–1934 (Chicago. 1983), especially chapters 89Google Scholar.

4. For a report of its activities, see Stadler, Karl R., ed., Rückblick und Ausschau: 10 Juhre Ludwig Boltzmann Institut für Geschichte der Arbeiterbewegung (Vienna. 1978)Google Scholar.

5. The democratic work atmosphere created by Steiner at the Dokumentationsarchiv des österreichischen Widerstandes has become legendary. Steiner together with the General Director of the Austrian National Archives. Hofrat Rudolf Neck, also created the ITH. Their efforts to put Austrian working-class history on an institutional footing date from 1958 and were inspired by Kreisky.

6. Under Maimann's skilful administration and with the influential backing of Stadler and Firnberg the Projektteam has integrated virtually all Austrian universities into its scholarly network and particularly their institutes, where the younger and more dynamic academics are concentrated. Also loosely affiliated are a group of libraries including: Verein für Geschichte der Arbeiterbewegung: Karl Renner Instsitut: and Kammer für Arbeiter und Angestellte Wien.

7. Vienna. 1978 This volume of essays commemorates the tenth anniversary of the Linzer Boltzmann Institute. The four editors are the mainstay of the “Linzer team.”

8. No denigration is intended of such outstanding biographies as Steiner's, HerbertKathe Leichter: Leben und Werk (Vienna. 1973)Google Scholar. which blends the experiences of this exceptional woman with the spheres of her activities as trade unionist, socialist, and feminist.

9. In view of this tendency, the absence of a scholarly biography of the most famous Austromarxist. Otto Bauer, is inexplicable. The recent publication of Bauer's collected works. Otto Bauer Werkausgabe. ed. Arbeitsgemeinschaft für die Geschichte der österreichischen Arbeiterbewegung (Vienna. 19751979). 7 vols. without scholarly annotations or commentary adds to the mysteryGoogle Scholar.

10. For an excellent account of the relationship between the Austrian working-class movement and anarchism, see Botz, Gerhad. Brandstetter, Gerfried. Pollak, Michael. Im Schatten der Arbeiterbewegung: Zur Geschichte des Anarchismus in Österreich und Deutschland (Vienna. 1977)Google Scholar.

11. Helmut Konrad argues that regional history makes clear the mutability of social conditions in terms and settings familiar to the local reader and thereby raises his historical consciousness in ways that the history of the working class, written as the great ideas and acts of great men could never accomplish. The interest thus stimulated, he maintains, is translated into larger sales of regional histories. See “Zur Regionalgeschichtsschreibung der Arbeiterbewegung in Österreich.” ITH Tagungsbericht 17 (1983).

12. “Die sozialdemokratische Fraktion im Salzburger Landtag 1918–1934,” Bewegung und Klasse.

13. “Die steirische Arbeiterschaft zwischen Monarchie und Faschismus,” Ibid.

14. “Die Auflösung des Republikanischen Schutzbundes (1933): Eine Initiative der Tiroler Bürokratie,” Ibid.

15. A recent example of this limited approach is Oberkofler's, GerhardtDie Tiroler Arbeiterbewegung: Von den Anfängen bis zum Zweiten Weltkrieg (Vienna. 1979)Google Scholar.

16. “Bemerkungen zu einer Geschichte des Arbeiteralltags.” Bewegung und Klasse.

17. “Zum Stellenwert der Arbeiterkultur in Österreich 1918–1934.” ITH Tagungsbericht 16. 17–23.

18. For the problematic conflict and symbiosis of working-class and bourgeois cultures, see Gruber, Helmut. “Zur Kulturgeschichte der Arbeitenden Klassen: Überlegungen die zur Vorsicht Mahnen.” ITH Tagungshericht 17Google Scholar.

19. “Austromarxismus und Massenkultur: Bildungs und Kulturarbeit der SDAP in der Ersten Republik.” Bewegung und Klasse.

20. Weidenholzer's more ambitious treatment of this subject in Auf den Weg zum ‘Neuen Menschen’: Bildungs-und Kulturarbeit der österreichischen Sozialdemokratie in der Ersten Republik (Vienna. 1981) goes no further in answering these questionsGoogle Scholar.

21. “Zur Entwicklung der österreichischen Arbeitermusikbewegung” and his monograph, which offers interesting insights into worker music as a pre-party organisational form: Zwischen Beethoven und Eisler: Zur Arbeitermusikbewegung in Österreich (Vienna. 1981)Google Scholar.

22. See also. Jank, Werner, “Aspekte der Arbeitermusikbewegung in der Ersten Republik.” Wissenschaftliche Komission des Theodor Körner-Stiftungfonds und des Leopold Kunschak-Preises. Typescript of conference on Intellectual Life in the First Republic. Nov. 1980. to be published in 1983Google Scholar.

23. Arbeitersport in Österreich: Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte der Arbeiterkultur in Österreich bis 1938 (Vienna. 1981)Google Scholar.

24. One nagging afterthought. Can one write about a truly popular leisure-time activity like sports only within the context of the party's cultural structures or even by including the spontaneous activities carried on outside them? Is it not necessary to pay some attention to commercialized sports in the larger, bourgeois-dominated culture as well?

25. The briefest list would include: psychoanalysis and ego psychology; musical twelve-tonality; the “Austrian school” of political economy; analytic philosophy; the artistic secession movement and the Wiener Werkstätte of applied art.

26. “Intellektuelle Aussenseiterstellung und Arbeiterbewegung: Das Verhältnis der Psychoanalyse zur Sozialdemokratie in Österreich zu Beginn des Jarhunderts.” Bewegung und Klasse.

27. No doubt, the party doyen's puritanism played a role in their giving Freud's theory of sexuality a wide berth. See Anson Rabinbach's suggestive introduction. “The Politicization of Wilhelm Reich,” to the latter's “The Sexual Misery of the Working Masses and the Difficulties of Sexual Reform,” New German Critique 1 (Winter. 1973).

28. Judging by recent inquiries from two doctoral students to the author, this important subject has begun to be studied. An impressive social analysis of working-class women during the period already contradicted the party's tendency to picture workers' lives in rosy images. See Leichter, Käthe. So leben wir … 1320 Industriearbeiterinnen berichten über ihr Leben (Vienna. 1931)Google Scholar.

29. Alfred Adler's and Wilhelm Reich's membership and active participation in the Socialist party were fairly unique and led to difficulties. The radical educational theories of the former left the typical, conformist educational functionary bewildered if not outraged. The frank approach of the latter to the impoverished sexual life of workers and the sexual repression of youth indirectly led to his expulsion from the party in 1930. For an interesting collection of essays on high culture (music, literature, painting) mixed with pieces on mass culture (cinema, caricature, poster art. circuses and cabarets), see Kadrnoska, Franz, ed., Aufbruch und Untergang: Österreichische Kultur zwischen 1918–1938 (Vienna, 1981)Google Scholar.

30. Karl Kraus und der Sozialismus (Vienna, 1976)Google Scholar.

31. “Die Sozialdemokratie und die ‘geistigen Arbeiter’; von den Anfängen bis nach den Ersten Weltkrieg,” Bewegung und Klasse.

32. Anti-intellectualism, often tinged with anti-semitism, was widespread among grass-roots worker groups in Vienna seeking to begin the underground struggle after February 12. 1934. A common view expressed was that the intellectual mafia in the party and municipal administration had been long on words and short on deeds and was largely responsible for the catastrophe. See Buttinger, Joseph. In the Twilight of Socialism: A History of the Revolutionary Socialists of Austria (New York. 1953), 68ffGoogle Scholar.

33. “Hunger ist ein schlechter Koch: Die Ernährungslage der österreichischen Arbeiter im Ersten Weltkrieg,” Bewegung und Klasse.

34. (Vienna, 1980).

35. For a monograph which essentially covers the same ground but is more comparative in its general discussion, see the Hamburg historian DieterLangewiesche's Zur Freizeit des Arbeiters: Bildungsbestrebungen und Freizeitgestaltung österreichischer Arbeiter im Kaiserreich und in der Ersten Republik (Stuttgart. 1980)Google Scholar.

36. Pfoser seems to imply that the workers had become encapsulated within the party's cultural network. Neither he nor anyone else has been able to demonstrate this, especially since any simple estimation of those workers who consumed the movement culture and those who did not makes clear that the majority were little touched by the party's efforts.

37. See “Massenästhetik, Massenromantik und Massenspiel.” and the extensive comment by the Turin historian Roberto Cazzola. ITH Tagungsbericht 16.

38. Cazzola puts it bluntly: “… while the workers were throwing down the idol [of capitalism], reaction was active in overthrowing the republic.” (147).

39. Not only Austromarxist theory but also its practice have received considerable attention in Italy and France. See Tafuri, Manfredo. ed., Vienna Rossa: La politica residenziale nella Vienna socialista, 1919–1933 (Milan. 1980)Google Scholar and the June–Sept., 1980 issue of URBI: Arts, histoire. ethnologie des villes, devoted largely to the subject. The former is an annotated catalog of an exhibition in Rome.

40. For a thorough discussion of socialist housing policies in relation to communal politics, see Bauböck, Rainer, Wohnungspolitik im Sozialdemokratischen Wien 1919–1934 (Salzburg, 1979)Google Scholar and Seliger, Maren, Sozialdemokratie und Kommunalpolitik in Wien: Zu einigen Aspekten sozial-demokratischer Politik in der Vor- und Zwischenkriegzeit (Vienna, 1980)Google Scholar. The former discusses the Socialist party's ideology, strategy, and tactics regarding rent control and the socialists' tax policies in realizing their housing program. The latter contains an interesting section on how socialist leaders evaluated their communal policies.

41. For a detailed and comprehensive analysis of the developing housing and living crisis in Vienna, which the socialist municipal government inherited in 1919. see Feldbauer, Peter, Stadt-wachstum und Wohnungsnot: Determinanten unzureichender Wohnungsversorgung in Wien 1848–1914 (Munich, 1977)Google Scholar.

42. Even today, authors who by no means share the outlook of former Catholic and Pan-German reactionaries, make this point. There might have been something to the argument if the original plan to locate all projects on the Gürtel, the outer tier surrounding the bourgeois Ring, had been carried out. But the administration decided early on to disperse the projects in seeking outlying city districts where traffic was lighter and the air was purer and in making use of cheaper plots of land available to the municipality. That some of the projects overlooked important railway yards, bridges, and armories cannot be denied. But if the party had been building military strongholds, would it have used brick and mortar that even the antiquated Howitzers of Dollfuss could demolish?

43. Modern design and modern building techniques and materials, it has been pointed out, were capital intensive, whereas the designs and methods used were labor intensive, creating employment. See Novy, Klaus, “Der Wiener Gemeindewohnungsbau: Sozialisierung von unten,” ARCH: Zeitschrift für Architekten, Sozialarbeiter und kommunalpolitische Gruppen, 45 (July, 1979), 1718Google Scholar. As to the argument that the apartments were too small (34–57 square meters) and lacking in such basic amenities as private bathrooms, the planners answered that in view of the pressing shortage quality had to be sacrificed for quantity.

44. “Die Wohnungsverhältnisse der Wiener Unterschichten und die Anfänge des Genos-senschaftlichen Wohn- und Siedlungswesens,” Bewegung und Klasse.

45. “Entproletarisierung durch Siedlung?; Die Siedlungsbewegung in Österreich 1918 bis 1938,” Bewegung und Klasse. For a well-documented overview, rich in illustrations, photographs, and statistics, see Posch, Wilfred, Die Wiener Gartenstadt Bewegung: Reformversuch zwischen Erster und Zweiter Gründerzeit (Vienna, 1981)Google Scholar.

46. See the fascinating photo documentation of the settler movement through all its stages. Die Wiener Siedlungsbewegung 1918–1934 and the associated text by Novy, Klaus, “Selbsthilfe als Reformbewegung: Der Kampf der Wiener Siedler nach dem 1. Weltkrieg,” ARCH, 55 (March, 1981)Google Scholar.

47. Among the historians, sociologists, architects, and engineers involved are: Michael Mitterauer, Joseph Ehmer, Peter Feldbauer. Wolfgang Sieder. Roman Sandgruber, Gottfried Pirhofer, and Wolfgang Hösl. This is not to suggest that the fruitful but difficult matrix orientation is pursued by this group exclusively. Gerhard Botz of the Linzer Boltzman Institute and the young Viennese historians Wolfgang Maderthaner and Joseph Mattl. for instance, are following the same trail.

48. “Gesindestuben, Kleinhäuser und Arbeiterkasernen: Ländische Wohnverhältnisse im 18. und 19. Jahrhundert in Österreich,” Niethammer, Lutz. ed., Wohnen im Wandel: Beiträge zur Geschichte des Alltags in der bürgerlichen Gesellschaft (Wuppertal. 1979)Google Scholar.

49. “Wohnen ohne eigene Wohnung: Zur sozialen Stellung von Untermietern und Bettgehern,” Ibid.

50. Elsewhere Ehmer offers a far-sighted analysis of the role of the “respectable” worker family in class formation and concludes that its position suggests an ambivalence between class-conscious militancy and embourgeoisement leading to privatism. See “Vaterlandslose Gesellen und respektable Familienväter: Entwicklungsformen der Arbeiterfamilie im internationalen Vergleich. 1850–1930,” Konrad, Helmut, ed., Die deutsche und die österreichische Arbeiterbewegung zur Zeit der Zweiten Internationale (Vienna, 1982)Google Scholar.

51. Familienstruktur und Arbeitsorganisation im frühindustriellen Wien (Vienna, 1980)Google Scholar.

52. “Zur Konstitution der Arbeiterfamilie im Rolen Wien: Familienpolitik, Kulturreform. Alltag und Ästhetik,” Mitterauer, Michael and Sieder, Reinhard, eds., Historische Familienforschung (Frankfurt M, 1982)Google Scholar.

53. I have intentionally left out the many conventional political histories of 20th century Austria in favor of newer directions. Even so, I have quite unintentionally neglected some important studies, mainly because they did not fit readily into my scheme of presentation. Particularly embarrassing is the omission of the judicious history of the youth movement (Neugebauer, Wolfgang, Bauvolk der Kommenden Welt [Vienna, 1975])Google Scholar as well as the work of such senior historians as Karl R. Stadler, Erika Weinzierl. and Herbert Steiner. which at any rate has already received recognition over the years.

54. Neue Menschen: Gedanken über sozialistische Erziehung (Berlin. 1924)Google Scholar.

55. “Geschichte der Arbeiterbewegung in Lehre und Forschung.” Stadler, , ed., RückblickGoogle Scholar.

56. See Neugebauer, Wolfgang, “Zwanzig Jahre Dokumentationsarchiv des österreichischen Widerstandes.” Konrad, Helmut and Neugebauer, Wolfgang, eds., Arbeiterbewegung—Faschismus— Nationalbewusstsein (Vienna. 1983)Google Scholar.

57. See Helene Maimann, “Das Projektteam Geschichte der Arbeiterbewegung.” Stadler, ed., Rückblick.

58. See “Zur Regionalbeschreibung,” in which Konrad stops short of discussing the problem.

59. The working-class culture exhibition “Mit uns zieht die neue Zeit” is a case in point. Photomontage and text presented the institutional side. It was impressive but also misleading. Neither views from below nor the voices of dissent or even commentary by the creators which might have suggested these could be found.

60. In this connection both ethnic minorities and women workers have been remarkably neglected. On the first a beginning has been made with Bunzl, John, Klassenkampf in der Diaspora: Zur Geschichte der Jüddischen Arbeiterbewegung (Vienna, 1975)Google Scholar and Brousek, Karl M., Wien und seine Tschechen (Vienna, 1980)Google Scholar. For the second, see the sparse introduction by Riegler, Edith, Frauenleitbild und Frauenarbeit in Österreich (Vienna, 1976)Google Scholar.