THE RED VIENNA SOURCEBOOK

Studies in German Literature, Linguistics, and Culture

 THE RED VIENNA
SOURCEBOOK

Edited by
ROB MCFARLAND,
GEORG SPITALER,
and INGO ZECHNER

A joint publication of
the International Research Network BTWH (Berkeley/Tübingen/Vienna/Harvard),
the Ludwig Boltzmann Institute for Digital History (LBIDH),
and the Austrian Labor History Society (VGA)
 Copyright © 2020 by the Ludwig Boltzmann Gesellschaft

All Rights Reserved. Except as permitted under current legislation,

no part of this work may be photocopied, stored in a retrieval system,
published, performed in public, adapted, broadcast, transmitted,
recorded, or reproduced in any form or by any means,
without the prior permission of the copyright owner.

First published 2020

by Camden House

Camden House is an imprint of Boydell & Brewer Inc.

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and of Boydell & Brewer Limited
PO Box 9, Woodbridge, Suffolk IP12 3DF, UK
www.boydellandbrewer.com

ISBN-13: 978-1-57113-355-7 (Hardcover)

ISBN-13: 978-1-64014-067-7 (Paperback)
ISBN-13: 978-1-78744-610-6 (ePDF)

Cover design by Frank Gutbrod

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: McFarland, Robert B., editor. | Spitaler, Georg, editor. | Zechner, Ingo, editor.
Title: The Red Vienna sourcebook / edited by Rob McFarland, Georg Spitaler, and Ingo Zechner.
Description: Rochester, New York : Camden House, [2020] | Series: Studies in German literature,
linguistics, and culture ; 204 | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2020002978 | ISBN 9781640140677 (trade paperback) | ISBN 9781571133557
(hardback)
Subjects: LCSH: Vienna (Austria)—History—20th century—Sources. | Popular culture—Austria—
Vienna—History—20th century—Sources. | Vienna (Austria)—Social policy—Sources.
Classification: LCC DB855 .R445 2020 | DDC 943.6/13051—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020002978
.

The Red Vienna Sourcebook was made possible by the generous support of the Cultural
Department of the City of Vienna (Stadt Wien Kultur).

Printed with support from the Ludwig Boltzmann Institute for Digital History (LBIDH).
 CONTENTS

Acknowledgmentsxxiii

Permissions and Credits xxv

A Note on the Structure of This Book xxix

Introduction1
Rob McFarland, Georg Spitaler, and Ingo Zechner

Part I. Foundations
Chapter 1: Constitution, Legislation, and Jurisdiction 15
Vrääth Öhner

1. Hans Kelsen, The Constitution of German Austria (1920) 17

2. Karl Kautsky, Democracy and Democracy (1920) 20

3. Karl Renner, The Free State on the Danube (1922) 22

4. Robert Danneberg, The German-Austrian Financial Constitution (1922) 23

5. Oskar Trebitsch, Jurisdiction and Class Struggle (1923) 25

6. Friedrich Austerlitz, The Murderers of Schattendorf Acquitted! (1927) 27

7. Therese Schlesinger, Criminal Justice and Psychoanalysis (1930) 29

Chapter 2: Finances and Taxes 33

Veronika Duma

1. Robert Danneberg, Finance Politics in the City of Vienna (1921–22) 35

2. Hugo Breitner, Capitalist or Socialist Taxation? Who Should Pay Tax?

The Rich or the Poor? (1926) 37

3. Viktor Kienböck, Foundations of Financial Policy (1927)  39

vi  Contents

4. Anonymous, On the Tax Policy of the City of Vienna (1930) 41

5. Gabriele Proft, No! From the Finance and Budget Board of the National
Council (1931) 42

6. Anonymous, In the Sign of Austerity. Meeting of the Vienna Municipal

Council (1931) 43

7. Otto Bauer, The Budget Restructuring Law: A Speech given on October 9,

1931 by Dr. Otto Bauer before the Delegates of the Postal Union (1931) 44

8. Anonymous, The Financial Demands on Vienna (1933) 46

Chapter 3: Consumption and Entertainment 49

Marie-Noëlle Yazdanpanah

1. Anton Kuh, The Soda-and-Raspberry Existence (1919) 51

2. Margarete Hilferding, Black Market (1919) 52

3. Ludwig Hirschfeld, The Paper Calf: Valuta Miniatures (1919) 54

4. Julius Klinger, The Holy Every Day (1923) 56

5. György Bálint, Jazz Band (1929) 57

6. Neon, Revue (1929) 59

7. Anonymous, Dance around the World: The GÖC Revue (1929) 61

8. Ernst Fischer, I Am Conducting an Economic Study on Myself (1931) 62

9. Anonymous, The Discovery of the Housewife (1931) 64

Part II. Philosophies

Chapter 4: Empirical Social Research 69
Ingo Zechner

1. Käthe Leichter, The Housing Situation (from How do the Viennese

Homeworkers Live? A Survey on the Working and Living Conditions of 1,000
Viennese Homeworkers) (1928) 71

2. Käthe Leichter, Housework (from This Is How We Live: 1320 Women Workers
in Industry Report about Their Lives) (1932) 73

3. Paul F. Lazarsfeld, On the Career Attitudes of the Young Working Class (1931) 78
 Contents  vii

4. Lotte Radermacher, On the Social Psychology of the Popular Education

Centers’ Students (A Survey of 21,749 Course Participants) (1932) 80

5. Marie Jahoda, Life Fulfillment (from Anamneses from the Poorhouse) (1932) 83

6. Marie Jahoda, Meal Plan and Budget (from Marienthal: The Sociography of
an Unemployed Community) (1933) 85

Chapter 5: Logical Empiricism 91

Gernot Waldner

1. Anonymous, Magic and Technology (1931) 93

2. Philipp Frank, On the Intuitive Nature of Physical Theories (1928) 95

3. Rudolf Carnap, Hans Hahn, and Otto Neurath, The Vienna Circle’s
Scientific Conception of the World (1929) 97

4. Rudolf Carnap, Overcoming Metaphysics through the Logical Analysis of

Language (1931) 99

5. Edgar Zilsel, The Intellectual State of our Time? (1932) 102

6. Otto Neurath, Ideology and Marxism (1931) 106

7. Otto Neurath, Protocol Statements (1932–33) 108

Chapter 6: Austro-Marxism 113

Vrääth Öhner

1. Max Adler, Bourgeois or Social Democracy (1919) 115

2. Karl Renner, What Is Class Struggle? (1919) 117

3. Otto Bauer, The Austrian Revolution (1923) 119

4. Hans Kelsen, Otto Bauer’s Political Theories (1924) 122

5. The Struggle for State Power (from Program of the Social Democratic
Workers’ Party of German Austria, Enacted at the Party Convention at
Linz on November 3, 1926) (1926)  124

6. Leon Trotsky, The Austrian Crisis and Communism (1930) 126

7. Käthe Leichter, The Best Defense (1933) 128

viii  Contents

Chapter 7: Freudo-Marxism and Individual Psychology 133

Rob McFarland, Nicole G. Burgoyne, and Georg Vasold

1. Sigmund Freud, Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego (1922) 135

2. Wilhelm Reich, Dialectical Materialism and Psychoanalysis (1929) 137

3. Siegfried Bernfeld, Socialism and Psychoanalysis: Basic Ideas from a

Presentation Held at the Society of Socialist Doctors (1926) 139

4. Alfred Adler, The Significance of the Social Feeling for the Development
of Character (1927) 141

5. Alice Rühle-Gerstel, Marxism and Individual Psychology: The Revolutionary

Science (1927) 143

6. Sofie Lazarsfeld, Raised by a Family or Educated by a Community? (1926) 145

7. Karl Bühler, The Will to Form and the Desire for Function in Children’s
Games (1927) 147

Part III. Identities

Chapter 8: Post-Empire 153
Kristin Kopp

1. Anonymous, Inside and Outside our Borders (1918) 155

2. Directive of the Ministry of Education and the Interior and of the Ministry
of Justice in Consultation with the Involved State Ministries on April 18,
1919 Regarding the Implementation of the Law Abolishing Nobility and
Certain Titles and Honors (1919) 156

3. Julius Deutsch, The Property of the Habsburgs (1925) 157

4. Alfred Polgar, Imperial Furniture (1920) 159

5. Anonymous, German Austria: Bankruptcy Asset and Colony (1919) 161

6. Karnute, How Should Carinthia Orient Itself? (1919) 163

7. Friedrich Austerlitz, Abandon Vienna! (1919) 165

8. Anton Kuh, Vienna by the Mountains (1923) 167

9. Otto Bauer, Three Groups in the Anschluss Camp (1927) 169

 Contents  ix

Chapter 9: Demography 173

Kristin Kopp and Werner Michael Schwarz

1. Anonymous, New Guidelines for the Ranking of Apartment Applicants (1922) 175

2. Edmund W. Eichler, The Foreigners in Vienna: Of Conspirators, Emigrants,

Dreamers, and Harmless Tradesmen (1924) 177

3. Anonymous, Expulsion of Refugees (1919)  179

4. Bruno Frei, Jewish Suffering in Vienna (1920)  182

5. Anonymous, Foreigners in our Labor Market (1925) 184

6. Anonymous, Czech Provocations in Vienna (1920) 185

7. Anonymous, The Czech School System in Vienna and the German School
System in Czechoslovakia: A Speech by Otto Glöckel (1926) 186

8. Anonymous, German to the Core—with a “Háček” (1931) 187

9. Anonymous, The Persecution of Gypsies in “Red” Vienna (1932)  189

Chapter 10: Jewish Life and Culture 191

Rob McFarland, Nicole G. Burgoyne, and Gabriel Trop

1. Eugen Höflich, Bolshevism, Judaism, and the Future (1919)  194

2. Moshe Silburg, What I Have to Say to You (1920) 196

3. Melech Ravitch, Preface (from Naked Songs) (1921) 197

4. Anitta Müller-Cohen, The Return of the Jewish Woman to Judaism (1923) 200

5. J. L. Benvenisti, Arthur Schnitzler Foretells Jewish Renaissance (1924) 202

6. Felix Salten, New Humans on Ancient Ground: A Trip to Palestine (1925) 203

7. Max Eisler, On the New Spirit of Jewish Architecture (1926) 205

8. Josef Löwenherz, The Cultural Duties of the Viennese Jewish Community

(1928)  207

9. Leo Goldhammer, Weary of Life: A Warning to the Jews (1931) 209

x  Contents

Part IV. New Values

Chapter 11: Religion and Secularism 213
Gabriel Trop and Rob McFarland

1. Religion and Church (from Program of the Social Democratic Workers’

Party of German Austria, Enacted at the Party Convention at Linz on
November 3, 1926) (1926)  215

2. Jakob Reumann, Dedication Speech for Vienna’s Crematorium: “Vienna’s

Crematorium Opens, In Spite of Everything!” (1922) 216

3. Cardinal Friedrich Gustav Piffl, Shepherd’s Bulletin (1923) 218

4. Max Winter, The Living Mummy: A Look at the Year 2025 (1929) 219

5. Sigmund Freud, Future of an Illusion (1927) 222

6. Ludwig Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (1922) 225

7. Franz Werfel, Realism and Inwardness (1932) 227

8. Otto Bauer, Religious Socialism (1927) 229

Chapter 12: The New Woman and Women’s Rights 233

Marie-Noëlle Yazdanpanah and Veronika Duma

1. Therese Schlesinger, Women and the Revolution (1921) 235

2. Anonymous, Mass Protest against the Murder Clause, Article 144 (1927) 237

3. Marianne Pollak, From Crinoline Dress to Bobbed Hair: Revolution and

Fashion (1926) 240

4. Stefan Zweig, Confidence in the Future (1929) 242

5. Bettina Hirsch, The Housewife and the Single-kitchen Building: Experiences

Living on Pilgerimgasse (1927) 244

6. Liesl Zerner, The Young Working Woman (1930) 246

7. Käthe Leichter, Epilog (from This Is How We Live: 1320 Women Workers in
Industry Report about Their Lives) (1932) 248
 Contents  xi

Chapter 13: Sexuality 253

Katrin Pilz

1. Josef Karl Friedjung, Sex Education: A Guide for Parents, Teachers, and
Doctors (1924)  255

2. Karl Kautsky Jr., Marriage Counseling as a Welfare Service (1925) 256

3. Therese Schlesinger, On the Evolution of Sexuality (1923) 259

4. Marianne Pollak, Women’s Issues at the Sexual Reform Congress (1930) 261

5. Sofie Lazarsfeld, Gynophobia (from How a Woman Experiences a Man:

Thoughts from Others and My Own Observations) (1931) 263

6. Grete von Urbanitzky, The Wild Garden (1927)  264

7. Ernst Fischer, Crisis of Sexuality (from Crisis of Youth) (1931) 265

8. Wilhelm Reich, Politicizing the Sexual Problem of Youth (from The Sexual
Struggle of Youth) (1932)  268

Part V. Social Engineering

Chapter 14: Health Care and Social Hygiene 273
Birgit Nemec

1. Adele Bruckner, At the Tuberculosis Care Station (1925) 275

2. Alois Jalkotzy, The Children Accuse Us: Letters from Children on Corporal
Punishment (1925) 276

3. Philipp Frankowski and Rosa Liederer, The City of Vienna’s Kindergartens

(1932)279

4. Paul Kammerer, Organic and Social Technology (1921) 283

5. Otto Neurath, The Viennese Method of Social Enlightenment (1933) 285

6. Margarete Hilferding, Motherhood (1922) 287

7. Julius Tandler, Dangers of Inferiority (1929) 289

Chapter 15: Welfare 293

Katrin Pilz

1. Adele Bruckner, Welfare Services (1925) 295

xii  Contents

2. Heinrich Holek, The Schmelz Neighborhood (1926) 298

3. Julius Tandler, Social Democratic Welfare Services (1924) 300

4. Karl Honay, The New Vienna for Its Youth (1932) 302

5. Anonymous, Who Is Smarter, a Monkey or an Infant? 700 Children

“Tested”—Significant Advances at the Research Center for Child Psychology
in Vienna (1930) 304

6. D. R., Visiting Young Mothers (1932) 307

7. August Aichhorn, The Training School (from Wayward Youth) (1925) 309

Chapter 16: Education for Everyone 313

Marie-Noëlle Yazdanpanah

1. Gina Kaus, Sex and Character in the Nursery (1925) 315

2. Lili Roubiczek, The Kinderhaus: Montessori Principles and Architecture

(1926)317

3. Otto Felix Kanitz, Class Pedagogy Part 1 (1921) 319

4. Otto Glöckel, The Gateway to the Future (1917) 322

5. Otto Glöckel, Drill Schools, Learning Schools, Work Schools (1928) 324

6. Max Lederer, Why Do We Demand Nonselective Schools? (1919) 325

7. Joseph Buttinger, The Viennese Workers’ College (1930) 327

8. Ludo Moritz Hartmann, Democracy and Popular Education (1919) 329

Part VI. Vitality

Chapter 17: Labor and Free Time 333
Vrääth Öhner

1. Julius Braunthal, The Eight-Hour Law (1919) 335

2. Adelheid Popp, The Double Burden of Women (1922) 336

3. Ida Foges, Weekend: A New Viennese Practice (1922) 339

4. Anonymous, Time! What Do I Do in My Free Time? (1929) 340

 Contents  xiii

5. Ernst Fischer, The Work Ethos and Socialism (1931) 343

6. Marie Jahoda, Time (from Marienthal: The Sociography of an Unemployed

Community) (1933) 346

Chapter 18: Sports and Body Culture 351

Georg Spitaler

1. Willy Meisl, Sports at a Crossroads (1928) 353

2. Stephanie Endres, Rhythm and the Proletariat (1930) 355

3. Julius Deutsch, Sports and Politics (1928) 357

4. Roch, Hakoah Wins the League (1925) 360

5. Jacques Hannak, Only a Soccer Match . . .? (1932) 361

6. Marie Deutsch-Kramer, Rise (1931) 364

7. Ernst Fischer, Crisis of Ideology (from Crisis of Youth) (1931) 365

Chapter 19: Nature 369

Cara Tovey

1. Robert Winter, Socialism in Nature (1919) 371

2. Gustav Harter, Back to Nature (1923) 373

3. Gustav Müller, The Mountains and Their Significance for the Rebuilding
of the German People (1922) 375

4. Franz Kleinhans, On the Question of the Aryan Clause (1924) 377

5. Theodor Hartwig, The Political Impact of Our Apolitical Action (1929) 379

6. Karl Renner, On the Friends of Nature (1931) 380

7. Anonymous, The Sunday Fleet (1931) 382

8. Adele Jellinek, The Children’s Crusade (1931) 383

xiv  Contents

Part VII. Housing

Chapter 20: Urban Planning  389
Aleks Kudryashova and Werner Michael Schwarz

1. Otto Neurath, Urban Planning and the Proletariat (1924) 391

2. Anonymous, My Skyscraper (1924) 393

3. Franz Siegel, What Does the Municipality of Vienna Build? Sunny and
Healthy Homes (1924) 395

4. Adolf Loos, The Day of the Settlers (1921) 396

5. Anonymous, Was the Program of 25,000 Public Homes in the Form of a

Garden City Really Possible? (1926) 398

6. Werner Hegemann, Critical Remarks on the Housing Projects in the City

of Vienna (1926) 400

7. Anonymous, The Ring Road of the Proletariat (1930) 402

Chapter 21: Architecture 405

Georg Vasold and Aleks Kudryashova

1. Franz Schuster and Franz Schacherl, Proletarian Architecture (1926) 407

2. Anton Brenner, Settlement House and Tenement Building—Mutual

Influences (1928) 409

3. Ernst Toller, In an Apartment Building in Socialist Vienna (1927) 411

4. Gustav A. Fuchs, The Fuchsenfeldhof (1923) 413

5. Anonymous, A Short Guide for Tenants in People’s Apartment Buildings

(1928)416

6. Otto Neurath, Single-Kitchen Building (1923) 417

7. Adolf Loos, The Grand Babylon Hotel (1923) 420

8. Josef Frank, The Public Housing Palace: A Speech Not Delivered on the
Occasion of a Groundbreaking (1926) 421
 Contents  xv

Chapter 22: Interior Design 425

Aleks Kudryashova

1. Adolf Loos, Learning to Live (1921) 427

2. Hans Ankwicz-Kleehoven, Simple Household Goods: On the Exhibition

at the Austrian Museum of Art and Industry (1920) 429

3. Ernst Lichtblau, Aesthetics Based on a Spirit of Economy (1923) 431

4. Josef Frank, Kitsch for Fun and Kitsch as a Problem (1927) 432

5. Margarete Schütte-Lihotzky, Efficiency in the Household (1927) 434

6. Else Hofmann, A Residence and Workspace for a Professional Couple:

A Design by the Architects Liane Zimbler and Annie Herrnheiser (1929) 437

7. Franz Schuster, A Furniture Book: A Contribution to the Problem of

Contemporary Furniture (1932) 439

8. Fritz Czuczka, Ten Commandments for Furnishing a Home (1933) 441

Part VIII. Cultural Politics

Chapter 23: Fine Arts 445
Georg Vasold

1. Stella Kramrisch, Sofie Korner (1920) 447

2. Lajos Kassák, Foreword (from Book of New Artists) (1922) 448

3. Leopold W. Rochowanski, The Contemporary Will to Form in the Applied

Arts (1922) 451

4. Hans Tietze, Municipal Policy and Modern Art (1927) 453

5. Eduard Leisching, Municipal Policy and Modern Art: A Response (1927) 456

6. Josef Luitpold and Otto Rudolf Schatz, The New City (1927) 458

7. Otto Pächt, The End of Illustrative Theory (1930–31) 460

Chapter 24: New Music 465

Wolfgang Fichna

1. August Forstner, The Transport Workers at the First Workers’ Symphony

Concert (1928) 467
xvi  Contents

2. David Josef Bach, Why Do We Not Have a Social Democratic Art Policy
(1929)468

3. Paul A. Pisk, Can the Worker Find a Close Relationship to Contemporary

Music? (1927) 471

4. Anton Webern, The Path to New Music, II. Lecture (1933) 473

5. Elsa Bienenfeld, Schönberg’s Pierrot lunaire (1922) 475

6. Theodor W. Adorno, On the Anbruch: Exposé (1928) 476

7. Anonymous, The Young, the Old, and Us: The Bourgeois Youth of the
Postwar Period (1928) 478

Chapter 25: Literature 483

Richard Lambert and Gernot Waldner

1. Rudolf Brunngraber, The Greatest Possible Order (from Karl and the
Twentieth Century) (1933) 485

2. Hermynia zur Mühlen, The Ally (1924) 486

3. Else Feldmann, Dandelion—A Childhood (1921) 488

4. Anton Kuh, Bettauer (1925) 489

5. Joe Lederer, Type-moiselle (1925) 491

6. Josef Luitpold, The Return of Prometheus (1927) 492

7. Josef Weinheber, The Crowd (1935) 494

8. Stefan Zweig, Trip to Russia (1928) 495

9. Ernst Fischer, The Man without Qualities: A Novel by Robert Musil (1930) 497

10. Hermann Broch, The Unknown Quantity (1933) 498

Chapter 26: Theater 503

Richard Lambert

1. David Josef Bach, The Arts Council (1923) 505

2. Ingenieure der Werkstatt für Massenform, Theater of the Future (1924) 507

3. Gina Kaus, Toni: A Schoolgirl Comedy in Ten Snapshots (1927) 509

 Contents  xvii

4. Elisa Karau, On the Speaking Choir Movement (1927) 510

5. Ernst Fischer, Red Requiem (1927) 512

6. Oscar Pollak, Why Do We Not Have a Social Democratic Art Policy (1929) 515

7. Jura Soyfer, Political Theater (1932) 518

8. Neon, Agitation Theater (1929) 519

9. Rudolf Holzer, The Rejuvenated Theater in der Josefstadt (1924) 520

10. Ödön von Horváth, Tales from the Vienna Woods (1931) 521

Part IX. Mass Media

Chapter 27: Film and Photography 527
Joachim Schätz

1. Siegfried Weyr, The Photo as a Weapon (1931) 529

2. Fritz Rosenfeld, Social Democratic Film Politics (1929) 531

3. Hugo Huppert, Kulturfilm, Revisited (1927) 534

4. Béla Balázs, The Masses (1926) 536

5. Max Frankenstein, The Market of the Masses … (1925) 538

6. Wolfgang Born, Photographic World View (1929) 540

7. Lothar Rübelt, The Work of the Sports Photographer (1926) 542

Chapter 28: Newspapers and Radio 547

Erik Born and Richard Lambert

1. Alfred Polgar, Intellectual Life in Vienna (1920) 548

2. Karl Kraus, A Belated Celebration of the Republic (1926) 551

3. Friedrich Austerlitz, The Real Kraus (1926) 553

4. Oscar Pollak, The Problems in the Calm (1929) 555

5. Anonymous, How Der Kuckuck Is Made (1930) 557

6. Anonymous, Freedom of the Airwaves! (1924) 558

xviii  Contents

7. Fritz Rosenfeld, Radio in Good Conscience (1932) 560

8. Anonymous, The RAVAG Listener Survey (1932) 562

9. Eugenie Schwarzwald, The Prophesied RAVAG (1934) 564

Part X. Exchange
Chapter 29: Americanism 569
Rob McFarland

1. Helene Scheu-Riesz, A Culture in the Making (1925) 571

2. Stefan Zweig, The Monotonization of the World (1925) 573

3. Felix Salten, Monotonization of the World? (1925) 576

4. Ann Tizia Leitich, A Word in Defense of America: One More Response to

“The Monotonization of the World” (1925) 578

5. Otto Bauer, Failed Rationalization (1931) 581

6. Anna Nußbaum, Introduction to Africa Sings: A Collection of Recent

African American Poetry (1929) 583

Chapter 30: Global Resonances 587

Werner Michael Schwarz

1. Erwin Zucker, Vienna—Moscow: Two Cities—Two Worlds (1932) 588

2. Günter Hirschel-Protsch, The Municipal Housing Complexes of the City

of Vienna (1926) 590

3. Heinrich Peter, The 1926 International Residential Building and City Planning
Congress in Vienna (1927) 591

4. Hermann Tobler, Learning School or Helping School? A Presentation Given

to the Vienna Teachers Assembly on October 4, 1923 (1924) 592

5. Solita Solano, Vienna—A Capital Without a Nation (1923) 594

6. J. Alexander Mahan, Dark Hours and the Dawn of Today (1928) 596

7. Louis H. Pink, Vienna Excels (1928) 598

8. Anonymous, Europe Revisited. III.—Vienna: The Dawn (1929) 599

 Contents  xix

9. Edward L. Schaub, Vienna’s Socialistic Housing Experiment (1930) 601

10. Charles O. Hardy, The Housing Program of the City of Vienna (1934) 603

11. John Gunther, Danube Blues (from Inside Europe) (1936) 604

Part XI. Reaction

Chapter 31: Anti-Semitism 609
Nicole G. Burgoyne and Vrääth Öhner

1. Joseph Eberle, The Jewish Question (1919) 610

2. Jacques Hannak, Jewry at a Crossroads (1919) 612

3. Anonymous, The Jewish Question in the National Assembly (1920) 614

4. Hugo Bettauer, Have You Already Read? The City Without Jews: A Novel of
the Day After Tomorrow. The Author on His Book (1922) 617

5. Joseph Roth, Ghettos in the West: Vienna (1927) 618

6. Felix Salten, Impossible Choice! Letter to our Editor in Chief (1927) 621

7. Irene Harand, Party or Fatherland? (1933) 623

Chapter 32: Black Vienna 627

Wolfgang Fichna and Azadeh Yamini-Hamedani

1. Karl Renner, The Christian Social Party and How Its Character Has
Changed (1923) 629

2. Ignaz Seipel, The Great Trajectory of Spiritual Development in Our

Time (1926) 631

3. Joseph Eberle, De Profundis: The Paris Peace from the Perspective of Culture
and History; An Appeal to the Christian Conscience Worldwide (1921) 634

4. Othmar Spann, A Summary of Observations of the Inward Direction of

Our Time and Its Political Ideology (from The True State) (1931) 636

5. Max Adler, In Critique of the Sociology of Othmar Spann (1927) 638

6. Alfred Missong, The World of the Proletariat: Psychological Reflections

(1931)640
xx  Contents

7. Heinrich Srbik, The Historical Content of the Austrian Portrait Exhibition

(1927)642

8. Anton Kuh, Petty Heroism (1922) 644

Chapter 33: Brown Vienna 649

Vrääth Öhner

1. Walter Riehl, National or International Socialism? (1923) 651

2. Anonymous, Remarque Forbidden Once and For All in Austria! A Victory

for German Ideology! (1931) 653

3. Fritz Brügel, National Socialist Ideology (1931) 655

4. Alfred Eduard Frauenfeld, The People Want It! (1932) 659

5. Otto Bauer, April 24 (1932) 662

6. Dr. Otto, The Psychopathology of National Socialism (1933) 664

Part XII. Power

Chapter 34: Campaigns and Elections 671
Werner Michael Schwarz

1. Anonymous, The Picture Gallery on the Street (1919) 673

2. Rallying Cry of Vienna’s Intellectuals (1927) 674

3. Anonymous, To All Working Jews! Jewish Voters! (1927) 676

4. Robert Danneberg, The Party (1928) 678

5. Joh. H., Who Should We Vote For? The Social Democratic Campaign Has
Begun (1930) 680

6. Anonymous, An Election Appeal in Stone! (1930) 682

7. Alois Jalkotzy, Women Matter! (1932) 684

8. Anonymous, Wear Three Arrows! The New Fighting Symbol (1932) 685

9. Anonymous, Wear the Blue Shirt of the Socialist Youth Front! (1932) 686

10. Stal, Three out of a Thousand Pioneers: A Report from the World of Wall
Newspapers (1932) 686
 Contents  xxi

Chapter 35: Communication and Propaganda 689

Alicia Roy

1. Anonymous, Ten Years of the New Vienna (1929) 691

2. Leopold Thaller, Educational Resources and Propaganda in Campaigns

(1930)693

3. Otto Neurath, Youth Front Agitation and the Task of Education (1932) 695

4. Paula Nowotny, Mail Correspondence between City and Country (1931) 697

5. Anton Kuh, The Mass Mobilization of Work (1923) 698

6. Otto Felix Kanitz and Stephanie Endres, Educational Tasks of the Workers
Federations of Sports (1932) 699

7. M. N., Cinema for the Tens of Thousands (1923) 703

8. Anonymous, Social-Fascist Deception Films (1930) 704

Chapter 36: Political Violence 707

Ingo Zechner

1. Anonymous, Republic Day: Bloody Disruption of the Mass Demonstration

(1918)709

2. Georg Lukács, The State as a Weapon (from Lenin: A Study on the Unity of
His Thought) (1924) 711

3. Zsigmond Kunfi, Lessons of July 15 (1927) 713

4. Walter Heinrich, Korneuburg Oath (1930) 717

5. Otto Bauer, The Rebellion of the Austrian Workers: Its Causes and Its Effects
(1934)718

6. Hans Kelsen, Defense of Democracy (1932) 722

Chronology725

References739

Contributors749

Index of Subjects  753

Index of Persons 765

 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

T he editors of The Red Vienna Sourcebook wish to emphasize the vast group effort
that has culminated in the publication of this volume. The initial impulse for our
project came from the Viennese historian and public intellectual Siegfried Mattl, who
brought his passion and expertise for the Red Vienna period to various venues and incor-
porated them into his discussions with students and colleagues. Over the years, Mattl’s
careful and generous mentoring influenced a generation of scholars. We dedicate this
volume to his memory.
One of the venues where Siegfried Mattl encouraged discussions of the Red Vienna
period were the conferences and group discussions of the International Research Network
BTWH (Berkeley/Tübingen/Vienna/Harvard). Most of the editors, chapter editors, and
translators of this sourcebook are active members of this international collaboration. We
would like to thank all BTWH members from across the globe who helped us to imagine
and to develop this project from a fanciful idea into a real collection of historic texts. This
process would not have been possible without the guidance and expertise of Anton Kaes,
professor of German and Film and Media at the University of California at Berkeley, who
shared with us his insights into historiography and archival research. He also enlightened
us about the political, aesthetic, and ethical tasks of the sourcebook editor.
We would also like to thank the many different institutions and individuals who gen-
erously provided us with the necessary funding for the planning, research, organization,
translation, editing, and publication of The Red Vienna Sourcebook.
Michael Häupl, long-term mayor of the city of Vienna, convinced other city officials
and the Vienna Municipal Council that our endeavor of recovering and exploring the dis-
courses of an era would provide a worthy honor for the 100th anniversary of the found-
ing of Red Vienna. His deep appreciation of independent scholarship is quite rare today.
We owe a debt of gratitude to him, to his office staff, to the Cultural Department of the
City of Vienna (MA 7), and especially to the Office of Scientific and Research Funding.
Personal thanks go to Franz Oberndorfer, Elisabeth Mayerhofer, and Daniel Löcker. The
Vienna Municipal Council unanimously approved the funding of this project. We con-
sider that act as a late acknowledgment of Red Vienna, which had been bitterly embattled
during the 1920s and 1930s.
Logistical support for this project was provided by the Ludwig Boltzmann Institute
for History and Society (LBIGG), which in 2019 was transformed into the Ludwig
Boltzmann Institute for Digital History (LBIDH). Joachim Schätz and Heinz Berger
deserve special thanks for their contribution in this regard. Much of the actual work of
gathering, selecting, and arguing about the texts and chapters happened at the Austrian
Labor History Society (Verein für Geschichte der ArbeiterInnenbewegung, VGA) in the
spectacular historical Vorwärts-Haus in Vienna’s Fifth District, Margareten. The edi-
tors owe a debt of gratitude to the staff of the VGA, especially to the managing direc-
tor Michaela Maier, who fought with great commitment for the financing of the project
and provided many staff hours. The University of California at Berkeley’s Doreen B.
xxiv  Acknowledgments

Townsend Center for the Humanities provided generous funding for travel and meetings.
Michelle Stott James of the Sophie Digital Library and the Brigham Young University
College of Humanities provided a team of student researchers for the project, includ-
ing Christopher Taylor, Jacob Benfell, Kemery Dunn Anderson, Gina Fowler, Madeline
McFarland, Brock Mildon, Joshua Savage, Elisabeth Allred, and Blake Taylor.
Publishing this book in the United States would not have been possible without the
constant advice and support of Edward Dimendberg and Anton Kaes. Our special thanks
go to Jim Walker, Julia Cook, and Michael Koch of Camden House for their invaluable
editing and advice. Jim Walker believed in this project right from the beginning and
encouraged us to proceed despite all logistical challenges and a very tight schedule. Big
thanks go to Julia Teresa Friehs for her efforts to coordinate the English and the German
versions of this sourcebook and for her work on the index.
Finally, we thank the IFK International Research Center for Cultural Studies in
Vienna for hosting a conference of international experts on Red Vienna in 2016 that
helped us to conceptualize and aim our project. Malachi Hacohen helped us to shape
our understanding of Red Vienna as a revolutionary model for a “Vienna Republic” in a
workshop series on “Empire, Socialism, and Jews,” jointly hosted by the Duke University,
the IFK, the VGA, and the LBIGG. Michael Loebenstein and the Austrian Film Museum
provided rare opportunities for screenings and discussions of films from and about Red
Vienna.
We would also like to thank the following for their valuable suggestions: Lilli and
Werner T. Bauer, Eve Blau, Tatjana Buklijas, Matti Bunzl, Christopher Burke, Ann
Cotten, Christian Dewald, Gudrun Exner, Karl Fallend, Walter Famler, Alys X. George,
Marcus Gräser, Sonja Maria Gruber, Bernhard Hachleitner, Gerhard Halusa, Gabriella
Hauch, Deborah Holmes, Jenna Ingalls, Helmut Konrad, Marion Krammer, Sabine
Lichtenberger, Wolfgang Maderthaner, Matthias Marschik, Alfred Pfoser, Barbara Philipp,
Sabrina Rahman, Christian Reder, Günther Sandner, Karin Schaden, Walter Schübler,
Lisa Silverman, Thomas Soxberger, Friedrich Stadler, Christian H. Stifter, Margarethe
Szeless, Klaus Taschwer, Andreas Weigl, Helmut Weihsmann, Paul Weindling, and Susana
Zapke.
 PERMISSIONS AND CREDITS

T he editors have made every possible effort to determine the copyright status all of
the source texts that appear in this book. The majority of these texts are in the public
domain. We put great time and effort into contacting those people and entities who hold
the rights to all of the other texts. That was not always possible. If we have inadvertently
missed any copyright holders, we ask for your assistance: please contact the publisher.

The texts are printed with the kind permission of:

Theodor W. Adorno: Suhrkamp Verlag

August Aichhorn: Thomas Aichhorn
Otto Bauer (1897–1986): Bob Bauer and the Bauer Family
Siegfried Bernfeld: Peter Paret
Julius Braunthal: Julia Barry-Braunthal
Hermann Broch: Suhrkamp Verlag
Fritz Brügel: Dan Kuper
Rudolf Brunngraber: Milena Verlag
Karl Bühler: Velbrück Wissenschaft
Fritz Czuczka: George Czuczka
Marie Deutsch-Kramer: Ellie Horwitz
Stephanie Endres: Karin-Birgit Molinari
Ernst Fischer: Marina Fischer-Kowalski
Josef Frank: Susanne Eisenkolb, Tano Bojankin
Bruno Frei: Stephan Pröll
Bettina Hirsch: Anni Rehin and Donald Hirsch
Eugen Höflich: National Library of Israel
Hugo Huppert: Helmut Pawlik
Marie Jahoda (dissertation): StudienVerlag
Marie Jahoda (Marienthal study): Allensbach Institute
Gina Kaus: Mickey and Stephan Kaus
Karl Kautsky, Jr: Juliet Calabi
Hans Kelsen: Hans Kelsen-Institut, Vienna
Franz Kleinhans: ÖTK
Stella Kramrich: Archives of the Philadelphia Museum of Art
Paul F. Lazarsfeld: Suhrkamp Verlag
Josef Löwenherz: Annette Jacobs, Dan Jacobs, David Jacobs, Janet Smarr
xxvi  Permissions and Credits

Willy Meisl: Dorrit Coch, Andreas Hafer, Wolfgang Hafer

Hermynia zur Mühlen: Patrick von zur Mühlen
Otto Pächt: Micheal Pächt and Viola Pächt Dávila
Paul Amadeus Pisk: Camille Donoghue
Melech Ravitch: Thomas Soxberger
Wilhelm Reich: Wilhelm Reich Infant Trust
Lothar Rübelt: Christian Rübelt
Helene Scheu-Riesz: Veronica Kothbauer
Franz Schuster: University of Applied Arts Vienna
Margarete Schütte-Lihotzky: Luzie Lahtinen-Stransky
Moshe Silburg: Thomas Soxberger
Hans Tietze: Ben Tietze, Filiz Tietze
Ludwig Wittgenstein: Suhrkamp Verlag

We would also like to thank the following people and institutions for their patient support and
their friendly assistance as we worked our way through the very complex process of copyright status
research and obtaining permissions:

AKM
Evelyn Adunka
Elisabeth Attlmayr
Marcel Atze (Wienbibliothek im Rathaus)
Michael Baiculescu (Mandelbaum Verlag)
Bestattung Wien
Mark Blazis
Alexandra Caruso
Heidi Chewning (Harold B. Lee Library, Brigham Young University)
Felix Dahm (Suhrkamp Verlag)
Peter Deutsch
Droschl-Verlag
Reinhold Eckhardt
Anita Eichinger (Wienbibliothek im Rathaus)
Ulrike Eilers (Seemann Henschel Verlagsgruppe)
Alexander Emanuely (Theodor-Kramer-Gesellschaft)
Anke Engelhardt (Allensbach Institute)
Alice Essenpreis (Springer-Verlag)
Christian Fastl
Nathalie Feitsch (University of Applied Arts Vienna)
Ralph Fishkin (Psychoanalytic Center of Philadelphia)
Christian Fleck
Christian Flierl (Psychosozial-Verlag)
Rainald Franz (MAK)
 Permissions and Credits  xxvii

Janette Friedrich
Eva Ganzer (StudienVerlag)
Lionel Gossmann
Richard Hacken (Harold B. Lee Library, Brigham Young University)
Andreas Handler (Austrian National Library, ÖNB, Literaturarchiv)
Michael Hansel (Austrian National Library, ÖNB)
Dieter Hecht (Austrian Academy of Sciences)
Sylvia Herkt (University of Applied Arts Vienna)
Gerald Holton (Harvard University)
International Institute of Social History (IISG), Amsterdam
Alexander Jalkotzy
Sigrid Jalkotzy-Deger
Birgit Johler
Toni Kaus
Peter Kautsky
Brigitte Kreitmeyr (VG Wort)
Sabine Lichtenberger (Institut für AK und ÖGB Geschichte)
Literar Mechana
Literaturhaus Wien
Herwig Mackinger (Heeresgeschichtliches Museum, Vienna)
Christine Möller (Akademie der Künste, Berlin)
Manfred Mugrauer (Alfred Klahr Gesellschaft)
Reinhard Müller (Archiv für die Geschichte der Soziologie in Österreich)
Thomas Olechowski (Hans Kelsen-Institut, Vienna)
Wolfgang Pallaver
Michaela Pfundner (Austrian National Library, ÖNB, Bildarchiv)
Friedrich Polleross (Archiv des Instituts für Kunstgeschichte, University of Vienna)
Herbert Posch
Katharina Prager (Ludwig Boltzmann Institute for Digital History)
Manfried Rauchensteiner
Franz Richard Reiter
Philipp Rohrbach (Vienna Wiesenthal Institute for Holocaust Studies)
Michael Rosecker (Karl-Renner-Institut)
Stephan Roth (Documentation Centre of Austrian Resistance, DÖW)
Christine Schindler (Documentation Centre of Austrian Resistance, DÖW)
Gerhard Schirmer (ÖTK Bibliothek)
Susanne Schönwiese
Rivka Shveiky (National Library of Israel)
Friedrich Stadler
Hildegard Steger-Mauerhofer
Julius Stieber
Markus Stumpf (Institut für Zeitgeschichte, University of Vienna)
xxviii  Permissions and Credits

Edith Stumpf-Fischer
Manuel Swatek (Municipal and Provincial Archives of Vienna)
Marietta Thien (Velbrück Verlag)
Katharina Walser
Heinz Weiss
Vanessa Wieser (Milena Verlag)
 A NOTE ON THE STRUCTURE
OF THIS BOOK

T his book is organized into chapters on a wide variety of topics, as can be seen from
the table of contents. The bulk of the book is of course made up of contemporary
texts from the Red Vienna period: the sources. In addition to the overall editing by the
volume editors, each chapter was edited by one (or more than one) chapter editor, who
also wrote the introduction to the chapter as well as the shorter introductions to each
text. These chapter editors are acknowledged in the bylines at the beginning of each
chapter. The translations of texts originally in German (i.e., the great majority of them)
were done by a pool of translators, each of whom is also acknowledged at the end of the
publication information that precedes each text.
The chapter editors have carefully shortened longer texts and excerpted passages
from book-length treatises. In the process of shortening, we oriented ourselves around
several principles: first and foremost, we did not want to cut content that would turn texts
against their original spirit and intent. We only left out passages that were not immedi-
ately relevant, and we indicated omissions with bracketed ellipses: [. . .]. Also, the original
texts often used typographic conventions that we have simplified and homogenized in
the book. We replaced the occurrences of Sperrschrift (letter spacing within a word for
emphasis) and bold lettering in the original documents with italic script (at the expense
of rare uses of italics in the originals that no longer stand out). In addition, several texts
are annotated with notes to facilitate comprehension of people, organizations, events,
concepts, and historical references.
In our translations of the many different kinds of original texts collected here, we
have tried to maintain a sense of the original flavor and register of the text without making
the translation draw undue attention to itself. We have opted to use colloquial American
English, which does not have the same capacity as Austrian German to keep track of
multiple clauses in long and complex sentences. Therefore, we have taken the liberty of
breaking down complex constructions into shorter and simpler sentences and phrases
that are more accessible to readers of English. We have tried to include the German origi-
nal titles of as many texts and organizations as possible, and to provide original German
terms in passages that demand special scrutiny. Our hope is that the translated texts will
not only build a case for the importance of Red Vienna as a cultural, historical, and sci-
entific phenomenon but also convey the fresh, lively, and spirited language used by the
authors of the texts.
Film still from the Social Democratic election film Die vom 17er Haus (The people from house no. 17,
1932, dir. Artur Berger), a utopian vision of Vienna in 2032. (Courtesy of Filmarchiv Austria/
Allianz Film-Fabrikations- und Vertriebsgesellschaft mbH i.L.)
 INTRODUCTION

Rob McFarland, Georg Spitaler, and Ingo Zechner

O n the front page of the April 20, 1927, morning edition of the Social Democratic
Arbeiter-Zeitung (Worker’s newspaper), underneath a reminder to vote in the
upcoming election, was a proclamation titled “A Rallying Cry of Vienna’s Intellectuals:
A Testimony to the Great Social and Cultural Achievements of the Municipality of
Vienna.”1 Even though the authors agree that intellectually engaged people cannot bow
to a particular political dogma, the declaration states: “It would be true neglect if, in the
battle against tax burdens, we were to overlook the great social and cultural achievements
of Vienna’s leaders. It is this great and prolific achievement that cares for the needy, edu-
cates and develops young people on the basis of the best possible principles. [. . .] [W] e
want to be assured that this achievement transcending political considerations will be
maintained and promoted.” The declaration is followed by a long alphabetical list of sup-
porters, including great Viennese names from the fields of psychology (Sigmund Freud,
Karl Bühler, Alfred Adler), law (Hans Kelsen), literature (Robert Musil, Franz Werfel,
Alfred Polgar), music (Alma Mahler, Anton Webern), art (Franz Čižek, Anton Hanak),
and architecture (Ernst Lichtblau, Oskar Strnad), as well as economists, theater directors,
professors, leaders of the women’s movement, and other luminaries in the Viennese intel-
lectual and artistic firmament.
When this declaration of Vienna’s intellectuals appeared in 1927 congratulating the
Vienna city administration (Stadtverwaltung) and calling for people of many different
political persuasions to overlook their differences and to support such “great achieve-
ments,” the city’s Social Democratic leadership was nearly a decade into a one-of-a-kind
experiment in democratic socialism. While other German-speaking cities and states man-
aged to elect social democratic leaders for short periods during the 1920s and 1930s, the
Social Democratic Workers’ Party (SDAP) held constant control of the city that came to
be known—derisively at first, and then with pride—as “Red Vienna.”
After Germany’s and Austria’s defeat at the end of World War I, the Entente’s Allied
powers oversaw the creation of a democratic German nation. Many Austrians of all politi-
cal stripes hoped that the German-speaking “rump state” left over from the dismembered
Habsburg empire would be allowed to join the new German Republic as a southeastern
state, “German Austria” (Deutsch-Österreich). The Allies forbade the so-called Anschluss,
however, fearing the power of such a unified pan-German state. Instead, they only accepted
a tiny country made up of small cities, rural districts, and the huge, polyglot imperial capi-
tal Vienna, now severed from its Hungarian, Czech, Galician, and Italian provinces. The
Republic of German Austria even had to drop the German in its name.

1 “EineKundgebung des geistigen Wien: Ein Zeugnis für die große soziale und kulturelle Leistung
der Wiener Gemeinde,” Arbeiter-Zeitung, April 20, 1927, 1. See chapter 34.
2  Introduction

The official history of Red Vienna begins with the municipal election of May
4, 1919. It brought the SDAP an absolute majority in the Vienna Municipal Council
(Gemeinderat) in the first election to have been held with universal male and female suf-
frage.2 The unofficial history of Red Vienna began with the declaration of the Republic
of German Austria on November 12, 1918. During the ceremony on the ramp in front
of the Parliament, revolutionary Marxists forced their way up, took down the Austrian
flag and tore the white middle stripe out of it, leaving only the two red stripes. Filmed
footage—created by the Federal Film Office on assignment from the State Council
(Staatsrat)—shows a flag flattering high above the heads of the parliamentarians, a flag
made up of two torn fabric pieces that had been knotted together. In the middle of the
assembled crowds, a banner reads: “Long Live the Socialist Republic!” This slogan cel-
ebrated a republic that was never declared.
The torn and hastily knotted flag simultaneously represents two revolutions that
would determine the history of Austrian Social Democracy until its defeat in the civil
war of 1934: the accomplished revolution and the deferred revolution. The first revolu-
tion had taken place within the Parliament building, even before the ceremony, as the
Provisional National Assembly (Provisorische Nationalversammlung) adopted the laws
that outlined the new government and state of German Austria. Justifiably, the Social
Democrats never tired of emphasizing that this legal accomplishment should be consid-
ered as a revolutionary act, a radical break with the constitution of the monarchy. The
never-realized second revolution would have consisted of a socialist seizure of power, a
fact that was pointed out by the sorely disappointed revolutionary Marxists and by mem-
bers of the reactionary opposition, who lived in constant dread of a full-fledged dictator-
ship of the proletariat. The Social Democrats tried repeatedly to reassure their critics from
the Right and from the Left that the revolution either had already happened or had only
been delayed. However, they made it unmistakably clear to both sides that any revolution
had to be, above all else, a democratic revolution, and that violence was to be considered
as a last resort, only to be used when the democratic process was truly in danger.
In terms of its form and its content, the revolution of 1918 was a genuinely bour-
geois revolution, borne by an alliance of convenience between the workers and the Social
Democratic intellectual elites. In his foundational study of the history of Social Democracy
in Red Vienna, Anson Rabinbach rightfully categorizes the Austrian SDAP—with its ideals
of education and its struggle to form a constitutional state even in the time of the mon-
archy—as the realization of a long-overdue Enlightenment and as the final catalyst of
Austrian liberalism (Rabinbach 1983, 7). Since the events of 1776, 1789, 1830, and 1848
had left the old imperial order intact, the architects of the November 1918 revolution had
much catching up to do. Resisting violence from the Left and from the Right, the Social
Democratic proponents imagined an exceptionalist version of Marxism, a dedicated social-
ist movement based firmly within the democratic institutions of the bourgeois state. The
leading Austro-Marxist theorist Otto Bauer did not rely on a soviet republic (Räterepublik)
like the one that had enjoyed temporary success in postwar Munich or Hungary. Instead, in
order to overcome the “balance of class forces” that he had diagnosed, Bauer relied upon
a victory at the ballot box to garner the “three hundred thousand votes that we must pry
away from the bourgeoisie” and thus to take control of the institutions of the state.3

2 The Vienna Municipal Council (Gemeinderat) is an elected legislative body. The executive power
was with the Vienna City Council (Stadtrat, until 1920) and City Senate (Stadtsenat, from 1920)
and consisted of the mayor and a number of elected city councillors (Stadträte).
3 Protokoll des Parteitages 1923, in Otto Bauer, Werkausgabe, vol. 5 (Vienna: Europaverlag 1978), 304.
 Introduction  3

The Social Democrats all too quickly lost their majority on the federal level of
the new country of German Austria. After 1920, the rest of the country was ruled by
Christian conservative forces, but the SDAP held on to a firm majority in the old imperial
capital of Vienna, buoyed up by the burgeoning working class. Thus, Red Vienna became
the model of a republic which stood for the ultimate completion of both revolutions of
the year 1918. In spite of runaway inflation, harsh austerity measures from the League
of Nations, and fierce opposition by their political adversaries, the Social Democrats
crystallized their political vision and took control of the city of Vienna, relying on an
urban constituency that made up a large part of the total population of Austria. The
high point of the Viennese voting public’s support for the SDAP came in 1927, when
the party won 60.3 percent of the votes in the state and municipal election. In this elec-
tion, the political opponents had unified themselves into an anti-Marxist coalition led by
the Christian Socials and also including National Socialist candidates. At that moment,
Vienna’s intellectuals wrote their “rallying cry.” The intellectuals were not bound by their
unconditional support of the Social Democrats but by their rejection of their opponents’
reactionary politics, which were buoyed up by anti-Semitism, aggression, and resentment.
The Social Democrats maintained a high level of voter support right up to the last
free state and municipal election in 1932, when the party held 59 percent of the vote in
spite of disruptive gains by the National Socialists. The Social Democrats also enjoyed
an enormously broad party base. In 1930, when the population of Vienna was about
1,900,000, the party bragged about having 400,000 members (Holtmann 1996, 150).
The SDAP also could rely on many educational and recreational party organizations
such as the Friends of Nature (Naturfreunde) or the Workers’ Association for Sports and
Physical Culture (Arbeiterbund für Sport und Körperkultur in Österreich, ASKÖ). The
SDAP never actually lost its majority while democracy remained intact. It was the anti-
democratic chicanery and the violent tactics of the reactionary opposition that brought
Social Democratic rule to an end in 1933 and 1934.
As a political project, Red Vienna stands at the intersection of models of enlight-
enment, on the one hand, with discursive strategies that manifest themselves through
the kinds of political emotions and political-cultural aesthetics that accompany a political
mass movement (Maderthaner 2006, 24–25).4 The articulation of political antagonisms
tended toward a left-wing populist flavor. A good example of this tendency is the creation
of the tax laws, which were made possible by Vienna’s change in status from mere capital
city to its own state, a change that was introduced in 1920 and went into effect in 1922.
Ironically, Red Vienna’s legal and financial foundation was made possible by Austria’s fed-
eralist structure and not by the Social Democrats’ preferred model of a centralized state.
The “Breitnersteuern,” a new bundle of municipal taxes named after the city councillor
of finance Hugo Breitner, aimed for a “redistribution of tax burdens from taxation of the
masses to the taxation of property” (Eigner 2019, 47–48). These taxes were important
not only in their symbolic significance but also as real sources of income. This is especially
true of Red Vienna’s luxury and entertainment taxes that were levied on patrons of the-
aters, concerts, the cinema, and sporting events. It is also true for the dedicated progres-
sive housing construction tax (Wohnbausteuer), introduced in 1923, which was collected
from the tenants. This tax covered about 40 percent of the costs of the housing construc-
tion projects of the city (45). The decisive factor of the housing construction tax was its

4 For a recent history of emotions and the German labor movement, see Hake (2017); for a reading

of Red Vienna’s Social Democratic women’s magazine Die Unzufriedene (The dissatisfied woman)
informed by a theory of affect, see Bargetz (2019).
4  Introduction

progressive nature: whereas smaller apartments had a low tax rate, the most expensive 5
percent of rental properties made up nearly half of the entire tax revenue. Both luxury
and housing construction taxes became political points of contention in the city’s bit-
terly fought election battles. For the Social Democrats, the taxes also served as proof of
Red Vienna’s fight against the forces of big capital and the old imperial order. In spite
of the ways opponents portrayed the Breitner taxes in polemical debates, the tax burden
in Vienna was not higher than it had been before the war. Thus, where the taxation of
the landowning classes was concerned, “radical rhetoric obscured a milder reality” (48).
The innovative economic approach of Red Vienna consisted of the deliberate taxation of
luxury items rather than the destruction of luxury as prescribed by orthodox Marxism.
Wealth thus became the source of welfare for the masses. The city lost much of its finan-
cial margin of error after the world economic crisis of 1929 and after the passage of a
federally mandated financial adjustment law that curtailed Red Vienna’s access to federal
funds in 1931. The economic depression underscored the interdependence of the Social
Democratic model and the very financial and economic systems of capitalism which it
publicly opposed. Contemporary leftist criticism made much of the SDAP’s dependence
upon the dominant means of production, seeing it as a manifestation of a revolution that
had not been carried through to its necessary end.
In addition to their absolute insistence on democracy as the basis for the new social-
ist order, the leaders of Red Vienna were convinced that all policy should be based upon
carefully documented scientific fact. To this end, the Social Democrats fostered institu-
tions that connected political engagement to cutting-edge scientific achievements, from
Käthe Leichter’s Female Labor Unit of the Chamber of Labor (Referat für Frauenarbeit
der Arbeiterkammer) and Paul F. Lazarsfeld’s Austrian Research Center for Economic
Psychology (Österreichische Wirtschaftspsychologische Forschungsstelle) to Otto
Neurath’s Social and Economic Museum and its Vienna Method of Pictorial Statistics—
later known as Isotype. Otto Glöckel worked to apply democratizing educational reforms
in Vienna, while Käthe Leichter, Marie Jahoda, and Paul F. Lazarsfeld expanded the
methodology of sociological studies. These efforts made for a productive intellectual cli-
mate driven by a common interest in different forms of modern rationality. This common
interest was shared by many different political, scientific, and cultural arbiters, bound in
groups and movements that were unified by much more than their geographic proximity
in Vienna.

Red Vienna as the Second Wiener Moderne

When Vienna’s intellectuals declared their support of the city government of Red Vienna
in 1927, it was not because they were outspoken Austro-Marxists. Most of the names
on that list represent the quintessence of Vienna’s Bürgertum. In fact, many of these
same people—Sigmund Freud, Alma Mahler, Alfred Adler, and architect Otto Wagner’s
student Ernst Lichtblau—had once been at the center of Vienna’s bourgeois heyday, the
often-mythologized and much-commercialized Viennese fin de siècle (to use Carl E.
Schorske’s [1980] now-ubiquitous name for the era). This era has also been dubbed as
the “Wiener Moderne,” a prolific, creative confluence that rose with the buildings of the
Ringstrasse in the late 1800s and came to an apocalyptic close with the end of the mon-
archy (see Wunberg and Braakenburg 1981). Even though Otto Wagner passed away
before the official end of the monarchy, along with Emperor Franz Joseph, and although
others—including the feuilletonist Peter Altenberg and the painters Gustav Klimt and
Egon Schiele—died before the actual beginning of Red Vienna, many of the driving
 Introduction  5

forces of the classic Wiener Moderne continued to create, disrupt, experiment, and imag-
ine under entirely new conditions. As the postwar era unfolded into the twenties and
early thirties, the philosophers of the Vienna Circle coalesced into a movement. Sigmund
Freud published some of his most influential work, including The Uncanny, Beyond the
Pleasure Principle, Mass Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego, The Ego and the Id, The
Future of an Illusion, and Civilization and Its Discontents. Arthur Schnitzler published
Fräulein Else and Traumnovelle in 1924 and 1925, respectively. Red Vienna’s scientific
milestones were not lost on the old guard from the first Wiener Moderne. Although
Schnitzler’s iconic Traumnovelle—with it carriages and fetishes for nobility and clerical
order—is often counted as a late outpost of fin-de-siècle culture, the protagonist is a doc-
tor in a modern hospital that very much resonates with the hygiene and welfare projects
of the Social Democrats, the same projects touted in the 1927 Rallying Cry of Vienna’s
Intellectuals.
In The Red Vienna Sourcebook we demonstrate that these transformative ideas that
came about in Vienna from 1919 to 1934 were not just the echo of an earlier golden
age but new answers to new questions in a world that had been radically changed. These
new ideas, methods, and works were all part of a new intellectual, political, and aesthetic
laboratory that was created and safeguarded by the politics of Red Vienna. Thus, Red
Vienna is much more than a synonym for the Social Democratic city government; it is an
epoch in which an entire intellectual system reoriented itself, shifting its focus from the
individual to society, from the individual psyche to the psychology of the masses, from
the individual body to the social body, from desires to needs, from a vertical hierarchical
order to a horizontal egalitarian order. It is in this sense that we refer to Red Vienna as
the epoch of the second Wiener Moderne.5
This second Wiener Moderne, we argue, is more than a list of aesthetic masterpieces
and scientific breakthroughs. Because of the unique political and humanist underpinnings
of the era, Red Vienna also has the potential to be considered a model for strategies of
urban economic crisis management, the re-democratization of urban space, or the poli-
tics of housing construction and urban planning. It ponders how to build a city without
slums and ghettos, how to ensure health care for all, and how to create a socially trans-
parent system of education. These questions remain pertinent today, although they are
audible as distant echoes from a time when the political will to change and the forces of
enlightenment entered into a fragile alliance with one another.
Otto Wagner’s architectural heirs turned the power of their craft toward the problem
of healthy public housing. In the visual arts, Franz Čižek led his school of artists to develop
the movement of Viennese Kineticism, but his passion and resources focused mainly on
developing an art education movement that could transform working-class children into
talented, creative artists who could change the world around them. Anton Webern still
worked to create the basis for avant-garde music in the twentieth century, but he spent
many of his evenings conducting the Workers’ Symphony Concerts (Arbeiter-Sinfonie-
Konzerte), making the music of Mahler and Schoenberg accessible to the masses. Alfred
Adler turned psychology’s interest toward the power of the community. Alice Rühle-
Gerstel and Siegfried Bernfeld turned Freudian psychology into an instrument of Marxist
philosophy. Wilhelm Reich was one of many other acolytes who first flocked to Freud in
Vienna and then went on to found their own schools of psychological thought.

5 The subtitle of the German edition of the Red Vienna Sourcebook —Das Rote Wien: Schlüsseltexte

der zweiten Wiener Moderne, or “Red Vienna: Key texts of the second Wiener Moderne” (Berlin:
De Gruyter, 2020)—reflects our claim.
6  Introduction

Thus, in the cultural paradigm of Red Vienna, it was not the exceptional painting,
daring piece of literature, or extravagant avant-garde ballet that was meant to serve as
the measure of artistic or intellectual greatness. Instead, the highest goal became access
to education and culture for everyone. Yes, Red Vienna saw some manifestations of the
dreary dogmatism that can be brought about by socialist cultural politics (Kulturpolitik).
But there was a profound difference in the wider effect of Red Vienna—beyond the stilted
agitprop speaking choruses, mosaics of factory workers, and pedagogic films—because art
was no longer considered to be a specific form of expression but an integral part of social
life. A perpetual conflict arose between adherence to bourgeois ideals of education, the
promises of a rising consumer culture, and the avant-garde break from both of these other
forces. The ultimate goal of Social Democratic Kulturpolitik—to conquer bourgeois cul-
tural institutions for the working class—ran up against the power of the cinema, the dance
hall, and other spaces of popular culture that had long conquered the hearts of the masses.
Because Red Vienna—often to its own detriment—defended and promoted a vigor-
ous democratic pluralism, funded a wide variety of experimental projects, and supported
the genius of so many fascinating people, the city succeeded in attracting a milling crowd
of interesting personalities that came and went throughout the period: young Theodor
Adorno came to study composition with Alban Berg; Max Reinhardt and his ensemble
relocated from Berlin to Vienna’s Theater in der Josefstadt in 1924, where he stayed until
1933; Marlene Dietrich and Hedy Lamarr got their breakthrough roles in films made in
Viennese studios; Fritz Lang, who originally was from Vienna, made an appearance at the
Cinema Reform Conference (Kinoreformtagung) to give a talk on the artistic structure
of film drama.
As a result, Red Vienna is not an era without landmark masterpieces, going beyond
the old guard of the first Wiener Moderne: Robert Musil’s Mann ohne Eigenschaften (The
Man without Qualities) changed the landscape of modern literature; Oskar Kokoschka
created a monument to the iconic educational and health institutions of Red Vienna in
his 1931 painting Wien, vom Wilhelminenberg gesehen; Ödön von Horváth’s 1931 drama
Geschichten aus dem Wiener Wald (Tales from the Vienna Woods) serves as a sobering real-
ity check for any hopes of social progress; the film Die vom 17er Haus (The people from
house no. 17; 1932) provides a utopian counterbalance to the dystopian skyscrapers at
the heart of Fritz Lang’s Metropolis (1927), and the famous Moloch scenes in Lang’s
film, filmed on Rehberge in Berlin’s Wedding District, owe much to the teeming throngs
in Sodom and Gomorrha filmed on the Laaer Berg in the south of Vienna; Gina Kaus’s
drama Toni: Eine Schulmädchenkomödie (1927) explores women’s limited choices with
modern, wicked humor; and in particular, as Eve Blau (1999) has so convincingly argued,
the vast municipal housing complexes of Red Vienna deserve to be counted among the
greatest works of twentieth-century architecture, fascinating in their multitude of differ-
ent forms. Often criticized for their use of traditional materials and forms, the complexes
remain to be discovered as expressions of a radical functionalism that does not limit itself
to symbolic forms.
And one more aspect of Red Vienna differentiates its masterpieces from other eras—
many of the greatest works of art, science, journalism, literature, ethnography, psychology,
and political theory were created by women. Indeed, many of the era’s greatest impulses
emanate from active women inside and outside of the SDAP, from politician Therese
Schlesinger to artist Erika Giovanna Klien to educational reformer Eugenie Schwarzwald
to psychological researcher Charlotte Bühler. As a continuation of the Wiener Moderne
of the fin de siècle, shot through the prism of Social Democratic ideals, Red Vienna
stands as a uniquely productive and compelling moment in history.
 Introduction  7

Red Vienna’s Political and Scholarly Reception

Although the efforts of institutions such as the Austrian Studies Association have long
supported and facilitated the study of Red Vienna, English-speaking Germanists are
often unaware of the important legacy of the era and the different ways that the Social
Democratic experiments of the early twentieth century have influenced Austria’s image
of itself. In spite of its apparent electoral strength and despite (or perhaps because of)
its devotion to democracy, Red Vienna’s vibrant creative community was cut short,
leaving its potential unrealized. Red Vienna ended with the failed 1934 Worker’s Revolt
against the authoritarian Dollfuß government that had dissolved the Austrian Parliament
in 1933. After the traumatic ruptures of Austrofascism and—above all else—after the
National Socialist terror of 1938–1945, the Socialist Party of Austria (Sozialistische
Partei Österreichs, SPÖ) took over the city and state governments of Vienna as the heir
of the old SDAP. Although the concept of Red Vienna remained anchored inside the
party circles (see Berg 2014), it did not surface in broader discussions until the 1970s.
Red Vienna was rediscovered by a new generation of Austrian researchers, driven by
members and sympathizers of the New Left movement (see, for example, Hautmann
and Hautmann 1980; Maimann 1981; Maimann and Mattl 1984; Novy and Förster
1985; Weihsmann 2019 [1985]).
The historic legacy of Red Vienna from 1919 to 1934 served as a foil for contempo-
rary realities during the administration of the Socialist chancellor Bruno Kreisky (1970–
1983) and the “red” city administration of that era. When left-wing critics decried the
disconnect between the promise of revolutionary ideals and the realities of bureaucratic
paternalism and half-hearted reforms, they were describing the past but aiming toward
the present. Well-versed in the writings of Michel Foucault, these critics considered Red
Vienna’s housing and welfare policies in the context of public discipline and biopolitical
population control (see Sieder 2019). At the same time, international interest in Red
Vienna had been developing since the 1980s, and a number of foundational works were
published about the era’s political and cultural landscapes (see Tafuri 1980; Rabinbach
1983; Gruber 1991; Lewis 1991; Blau 1999). In the new millennium, we have witnessed
a renewed interest in Red Vienna and its broader parameters, including studies about its
political opponents (Wasserman 2014). The one-hundredth anniversary of the municipal
election of 1919 brought with it a series of publications and events that addressed Red
Vienna (see Konrad and Hauch 2019; Schwarz, Spitaler, and Wikidal 2019; Weihsmann
2019).
A large array of scholars have reminded readers that the Vienna of the interwar
period served as the springboard for a series of intellectual projects whose relevance is still
felt today. Red Vienna also serves as the locus of controversies that reach into our own
present context. In the field of political economics, for example, the young Karl Polanyi
argued with Otto Neurath and Ludwig von Mises about questions of centrally planned
economies and socialization (see Peck 2008). While Mises and his pupil Friedrich A.
Hayek—the latter an outspoken critic of Red Vienna—swore by the self-regulatory power
of the market even in the heyday of democratic socialism, Polanyi (with his guild-socialist
models) remained close to Otto Bauer’s theoretical ideas about the socialization of indus-
tries and services (Dale 2016, 101–5; Bockman, Fischer, and Woodruff 2016). Whereas
Polanyi, looking back in The Great Transformation, claimed that “Vienna achieved one of
the most spectacular cultural triumphs of Western history,”6 Hayek wrote articles in the

6 Karl Polanyi, The Great Transformation (Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 1944), 298.
8  Introduction

1920s criticizing the Social Democrats’ bitterly defended achievement of rent control,
considering it economically counterproductive to let cheap rents affect the amount of
privately offered housing.7
The core works of Austro-Marxism, which form the intellectual basis of Red Vienna,
are currently being rediscovered internationally as a “golden age” (Krätke 2015, 31)
in the development of Marxist theory, and have again been made available in English-
language editions (Blum and Smaldone 2016, 2017; Bauer 2020). This applies to early
classic texts from the time of the Habsburg monarchy which intervened in political con-
flicts that seem like trial laboratories for current populist ethnopolitics (Beneš 2017),
and is also the case for many works from the Red Vienna period, such as Otto Bauer’s
concept of the “balance of class forces” which provides many connections to critical theo-
ries of hegemony, resonating productively with the internationally much better-known
texts written by Antonio Gramsci.8 In addition, the experiences of Red Vienna have been
memorialized in the works of many thinkers who continued their careers after 1934 in
other countries: Hungarian emigrants such as Georg Lukács or Béla Balázs, Freudo-
Marxists such as Wilhelm Reich, or pioneers of social science such as Marie Jahoda and
Paul F. Lazarsfeld. Even Karl Popper’s antitotalitarian polemic The Open Society and Its
Enemies can be understood as an attempt to process the trauma of the downfall of Red
Vienna and the victory of fascism (Hacohen 2000).
Precisely in these times, when it is hard to imagine a future that exists beyond capi-
talism and neoliberalism, the lost future of Red Vienna has a strong appeal for critical
thinkers of many different theoretical directions. Axel Honneth (2017), for one, cel-
ebrates the policies of Vienna’s city government in the years between 1919 and 1934 as
an example of the kind of “spirit of socialist experimentation” that he would like to see
implemented, an experimentation that looks for starting points for societal change in the
here-and-now, using pragmatic and innovative possibilities that exist in real space: “every
opportunity that presents itself, be it through previously existing laws, instruments of
taxation, skilled professionals who are ready to act, currently existing but easily sub-
verted social facilities or intellectual allies” (180). From another perspective, Red Vienna
can function as a critical point of orientation for cutting-edge emancipatory municipal
policies, especially considering the possibilities of communal action as it runs up against
questions of housing policies, international austerity politics, the “right to the city,”
and strategies against right-wing populist movements (Duma and Lichtenberger 2016;
Holm 2019).
If we succeed in bringing Red Vienna some of the attention that has been show-
ered on Weimar Berlin over the last decades,9 we hope to avoid some of the traps that
have befallen the studies of that fascinating period of German history. As recent popular
television series, detective novels, comics, and movies have shown, the downfall of the
Weimar Republic has become bogged down in a particular historical fatalism that is also
prevalent in some contemporary scholarship, a melodramatic and tired interplay between

7 Friedrich A. Hayek, Das Mieterschutzproblem: Nationalökonomische Betrachtungen (Vienna:

Steyrermühl-Verlag, 1928).
8 Otto Bauer, Die österreichische Revolution (Vienna: Wiener Volksbuchhandlung, 1923), 196–213.

For a current international reception of Bauer, see Baier (2008); for a discussion of Austro-Marxist
state theory, see Fisahn, Scholle, and Ciftci (2018).
9 See, for example, the Weimar Republic Sourcebook (Kaes, Jay, and Dimendberg 1994), a fas-
cinating monument of cultural historiography that has informed our own approach to the Red
Vienna Sourcebook.
 Introduction  9

glamour (Glanz) and demise (Untergang). Red Vienna was also brought to a violent end
in the civil war of February 1934. Instead of considering all of the era’s breakthroughs
as doomed from the beginning, it is important to look at the many different possibilities
that Red Vienna opened up.

Why a Sourcebook?
There are many productive ways to approach the historical periods and political and
aesthetic movements that make up the Red Vienna era. The choice to create a large
sourcebook of primary texts arose from a unique international collaboration between
researchers, philosophers, and historians that has come to be known as the International
Research Network BTWH (Berkeley/Tübingen/Vienna/Harvard). For the past twenty-
three years, students, alumni, and professors from these four institutions (and several
others) have met to discuss the possibilities of cultural history as methods to analyze
and understand the emergence of modernity in German-speaking countries. The theo-
retical project and methodology of The Red Vienna Sourcebook evolved over the span
of a decade in discussions among members of BTWH in collaboration with the his-
torian Siegfried Mattl and the film historian Anton Kaes. Whereas narrative histories
and case studies provide specific linear analyses of people, texts, events, and practices, a
sourcebook eschews the central narrative analysis, providing instead a carefully curated
series of texts, each analyzed and introduced in their own right and in their relation to
other texts. The texts in the Red Vienna Sourcebook are arranged in thirty-six chapters
corresponding to as many discursive fields. All texts were part of a discourse that took
place in, around, or about Red Vienna. Even though these texts have been curated
and introduced in a way that recreates specific discourses, the form of the sourcebook
also allows the texts—even excerpted, translated texts—to retain some of the odd,
excessive, resistant elements that make them hard to categorize and to instrumentalize
in the service of a neat, teleological history.
As it turns out, many of the texts in The Red Vienna Sourcebook do not easily fit
into the discourses and chapters in which they are embedded. These texts often invite
counter-readings and unprescribed connections to different discursive fields. A source-
book can thus be more than just a well-ordered mini archive. It can also function as a
provocative collection of compelling texts that invites debates, controversies, and unset-
tling discoveries. A sourcebook can also demonstrate how different social and political
milieus are crisscrossed by specific key debates and experimental approaches: discussions
of the right way to approach housing for the masses, for example, are not only found in
the three chapters of our sourcebook dedicated to urban planning, architecture, and inte-
rior design, but also in the chapters about finances and taxes, empirical social research,
post-empire, demography, the New Woman and women’s rights, sexuality, health care
and social hygiene, welfare, labor and free time, nature, Americanism, global resonances,
and campaigns and elections. The same can be said for Red Vienna’s discourses of gender
roles and the concept of the New Woman, which can be found in many of the chapters of
our sourcebook. And the many Jewish voices and ideas in Red Vienna cannot possibly be
contained in our chapter about Jewish life and culture.
The question of Jewish identity plays an implicit role in every chapter of our source-
book. A large percentage of the authors of the texts share Jewish heritage in its widest
sense, including many political and intellectual figureheads. Many of them were with-
out religious confession, some had converted to Protestantism and some to Catholicism,
sometimes further switching between all three or converting back to Judaism. Regardless
10  Introduction

of their own beliefs, one thing became increasingly certain: in an era when Jewishness
became increasingly identified as a nationality, then as an ethnicity, and finally as a race,
it was no longer enough to claim or to refuse a religious confession in order to establish
your own identity. These citizens of Red Vienna also shared the experience of enduring
increasingly obsessive attacks by anti-Semitic forces as “Jews.” In 1938 and the following
years of the National Socialist regime and the Holocaust, many of them became victims
of National Socialist persecution, losing their property, their homes, and their lives. A
book about Red Vienna is, by definition, a book about Jewish Vienna.
In order to create a sourcebook, it is first necessary to make fundamental decisions
about the scope of the project and the kinds of texts to be included. For The Red Vienna
Sourcebook, we decided to only include texts that had been a part of contemporary dis-
cussions in Vienna between 1919 and 1934, meaning texts that had been published and
reached a broad audience of readers. We thus have omitted secondary literature, as well
as personal letters and other unpublished archivalia. In terms of geographic scope, the
sourcebook includes texts that were written in Vienna or texts that participated in discus-
sions about the specific events and ideas that were happening in the city or in the wider
Austrian context. Early on, we decided that in addition to texts by SDAP functionar-
ies, intellectuals, and Austro-Marxist leaders such as Otto Bauer, Julius Tandler, Käthe
Leichter, Julius Deutsch, and Otto Neurath, we would also include a wide range of other
authors and the voices of the clerical-conservative and fascist opposition movements in
Red Vienna.
As a result, The Red Vienna Sourcebook contains texts that represent many differ-
ent facets of the First Austrian Republic, including ethnographic sketches of unemployed
textile workers, lesbian erotica from a pro-Nazi novelist, a behind-the-scenes visit to an
illustrated magazine, and travel reports from Zionist settlements in Palestine. Readers
of the sourcebook will find texts written by familiar Viennese authors such as Sigmund
Freud, Arthur Schnitzler, Joseph Roth, Karl Kraus, Robert Musil, and Gina Kaus, as well
as texts by famous visitors to the city. Besides these texts from the pantheon of Viennese
history, readers of the Red Vienna Sourcebook will also become acquainted with fascinat-
ing texts by an intriguing group of lesser-known authors: Austro-Marxist science fiction
by Max Winter; a fascinating essay on the “Psychopathology of National Socialism” by a
Freudo-Marxist hiding behind the pseudonym “Dr. Otto”; thoughts about the athletic
socialist body by Stephanie Endres; and the original text of the decree abolishing nobility
and aristocratic titles.
Above all, as Anton Kaes has passionately argued, a sourcebook has the oppor-
tunity to break out of the idea that history had no choice but to develop along the
lines that we have come to know. The bold social experiments and ideas that came
out of Red Vienna cannot be reduced to “the interwar years,” an inevitable progres-
sion that marches hopelessly from the disaster of the post–World War I years through
a moment of brilliance and hope and into the inevitable dark rise of fascism, World
War II, and the Holocaust. Things did not necessarily have to turn out the way they
did. Many decisions were made along the way. The further a reader goes back, the
more potentialities there were for combatting violence, for eradicating poverty, for
revolutionizing urban planning, science, art, or music. As ideas mature, like a child,
the potentialities are narrowed. People create a form of thinking (Denkform), and
then it is slowly filled with reality, squeezing out the potential. A sourcebook is a
snapshot of this process, showing an alternative history, presenting texts in which
writers are proposing alternatives that have been thought, are thinkable, but have not
been fulfilled (Kaes 2015).
 Introduction  11

In fact, Walter Benjamin (1991, 701) teaches us that a sourcebook—like any col-
lection of rubble from the past, is filled with the Jetztzeit, the present moment. The
texts of Red Vienna—coping as they do with refugees, poverty, wealth inequality, the
threats of a globalizing economy, and craven populist strongmen—form an alternative
history that speaks to the present moment. They should not only be regarded as failed
ideas from a distant time, but as possibly viable ideas that did not have a chance to be
fully implemented. Having the documents collected and annotated in a sourcebook
allows readers to see what was possible but did not happen. It also allows readers to
see that even though the emerging threats were recognized by farsighted observers,
they still could not be stopped. The threats seemed to be beyond all reason, and yet
they still came to pass. Rather than simply forgetting the promises of the past, The Red
Vienna Sourcebook investigates the meaning of these promises in the past and present:
What do they tell us about historical possibilities, political struggles, and the continu-
ities and discontinuities of history, as well as its fulfilled or unfulfilled emancipatory
hopes?
We hope that like those intellectuals who signed the Rallying Cry of Vienna’s
Intellectuals in 1927, twenty-first-century historians, philosophers, scientists, and cultural
critics will be provoked by the fascinating texts that the chapter editors have gathered in
The Red Vienna Sourcebook. Above all else, we hope that these texts will not only warp
and refine the way we think about the history, art, and literature of the early twenti-
eth century but also reanimate discourses of equality, health, and prosperity that were
once possible in the era of Red Vienna—and may once again find new possibilities of
expression.
 Part I

Foundations
Crowds in front of the Parliament building in Vienna at the proclamation of the Republic on
November 12, 1918. Photo by Richard Hauffe. (Courtesy of VGA.)
 CHAPTER ONE

CONSTITUTION, LEGISLATION,
AND JURISDICTION

Vrääth Öhner

I n the first issue of Der Kampf (The struggle), the monthly journal of the Austrian
Social Democratic Workers’ Party (Sozialdemokratische Arbeiterpartei, SDAP), one of
its founders, Otto Bauer, outlined the particular task of the Social Democrats in response
to the 1907 electoral law reform, a task—as Victor Adler noted in the same issue—that
consisted in the formation of a state rather than its preservation:

We Austrians are faced with national chaos: Constitutional laws that persist, state
institutions that cannot live, a confederation of states (between Austria and Hungary)
that cannot stay together yet cannot find a way to sunder, medieval-feudal-like
autonomous crown lands that want to tear apart nations, as well as unorganized,
legally nonconstituted nations that want to dissolve the crown lands. A community
of states, government, crown land, nation—none of them fully constituted or finally
dissolved, all mixtures of birth and death, ghosts that we must confront in broad day-
light, every day, because our opponents are obsessed by them! . . . This predicament
demands that we consider the somewhat tedious questions of state constitution and
government, obliges us to deal with legal quibbles and tactical theatrics, and forces
us against our will and inclination perhaps to become the experts in constitutional law
for the Internationale.1

Bauer’s outline shows how seriously the party considered constitutional questions,
even early on in the process. The demands the party made, as early as 1907, for “recog-
nition of national autonomy and democracy as the basis for a future constitution” were
aimed at “destroying the historical structure of the state” and dismantling its constric-
tive “bureaucratic framework.”2 These demands could not be met under the conditions
of the constitutional monarchy but exerted a strong influence, after its collapse, on the
Social Democratic ideology.
In view of both the symbolic and the material significance that Red Vienna was to
achieve as the revolutionary center of the Social Democratic movement, it is important
to consider, on the one hand, the intended union with the German Republic and, on the
other hand, the demand for a centralized national state. The law of November 12, 1918,

1 Anonymous [Otto Bauer], “Der Kampf,” Der Kampf 1, no. 1 (1907): 4.

2 Viktor Adler, “Neue Aufgaben,” Der Kampf 1, no. 1 (1907): 6.
16  Constitution, Legislation, and Jurisdiction

regarding the form of state and government of German Austria promulgated by the
Provisional National Assembly (Provisorische Nationalversammlung) defined the demo-
cratic republic as the state form and declared German Austria to be part of the German
Republic.3 The declaration of union was no doubt a result of the conviction shared by all
parties that the German-speaking parts of the old Austrian monarchy could not survive
economically if left to their own devices.4 Furthermore, for the Social Democrats, the
union was not only a logical consequence of the “right of the people to self-determina-
tion” but also had its origins in ideas about the relationship between state and nation
which Karl Renner and Otto Bauer had already formulated before World War I.5
The declaration of union by the Provisional National Assembly suggested the estab-
lishment of a unified, centrally governed state as the state system, to be laid down in a
future definitive constitution. As Hans Kelsen noted in a commentary on the position of
the states, German Austria could choose to become part of the national community of
states of the German Republic “either as an integral German-Austrian state or as a small
group of minor member states,” the second option entailing the “risk of excessive fragmen-
tation” because of the size of states such as Bavaria or Prussia.6 While the demand for a
centralized national state was initially nothing more than a logical consequence of the
declaration of union, it had unforeseeable political consequences: in a centralized national
state, the Social Democrats could hope for relative but never absolute majorities, as in the
election of the Constituent National Assembly (Konstituierende Nationalversammlung) in
February 1919. The sociopolitical experiment of Red Vienna based on an absolute Social
Democratic majority would never have been possible.
The demand for a centralized national state was in any case unable to prevail
in German Austria against the power of the states (Länder). Although Hans Kelsen
devised a whole series of draft constitutions for the Constituent National Assembly,
most of the drafts were based on a federal construct. After the Treaty of Saint-
Germain-en-Laye, the peace treaty between German Austria and the Allied powers,
had ruled out any political union between Germany and Austria, the only conten-
tious issues remaining were the separation of Vienna from Lower Austria which was a
crucial question for Red Vienna; the establishment of a Federal Council (Bundesrat),
that is, a body alongside the National Council (Nationalrat) representing the states
(Länder); and the nature of the office of the federal president based on the model
of either a parliamentary or a presidential democracy. In all three of these issues, the
Social Democrats prevailed: Vienna became an independent federal state; even though
a Federal Council was set up, it had the same proportional distribution of seats as the
National Council, and the office of the federal president was designed following the
model of a parliamentary democracy. However, these issues resurfaced, in modified
form, in 1929 in the draft constitution proposed by the Schober government,7 which

3 StGBl. no. 1–7, November 15, 1918, 4.

4 These parts included Vienna, Lower Austria, Upper Austria, Salzburg, Styria, Carinthia, Tyrol,
Vorarlberg, and, after 1921, also Burgenland.
5 See Karl Renner, Staat und Nation (Vienna: Dietl, 1899); Otto Bauer, Die Nationalitätenfrage

und die Sozialdemokratie (Vienna: Wiener Volksbuchhandlung Ignaz Brand, 1907).

6 Hans Kelsen, “Die Stellung der Länder in der künftigen Verfassung Deutschösterreichs,” in

Zeitschrift für öffentliches Recht 1 (1919/20): 118.

7 The government—which consisted of nonaligned ministers and representatives of the Christian

Social Party, Pan-German People’s Party, and Rural League (Landbund) and was headed by former
police commissioner Johann Schober—ruled from September 26, 1929 to September 30, 1930.
 Constitution, Legislation, and Jurisdiction  17

was rightly judged to be an “offensive by Austrian fascism” and thus opposed by the
Social Democrats.8
Apart from their state-building influence in the drafting of the Federal Constitutional
Law of October 1, 1920, and with the exception of welfare legislation adopted dur-
ing the coalition government with the Christian Socials,9 the Austrian Social Democrats
were no longer able to shape legislation at the federal level after they left the government
in July 1920. The Social Democrats never made up for this loss, not even with the leg-
islative power that they acquired when Vienna gained independence as a separate state.

Further reading
Olechowski 2009
Seliger 1980
Stadler 1986

1.
Hans Kelsen
The Constitution of German Austria
First published as “Die Verfassung Deutschösterreichs, I. Die Revolution,” in Jahrbuch
des öffentlichen Rechts der Gegenwart, no. 9 (1920), 245–49. Translated by Nick Somers.

As Hans Kelsen (1881–1973), one of the most renowned Austrian scholars on constitutional
law at the time and coauthor of the first republican constitution of German Austria, points
out in his commentary on the same, the “Decision on the Basic Organs of State Authority”
adopted by the Provisional National Assembly on October 30, 1918, represented a “break in
legal continuity” and hence a revolution. As a result of this step, the monarchy was formally
and effectively dissolved. Kelsen’s argumentation refers to the legal entitlements not only of
the monarch, however, but also of the states (Länder), which had convened state assemblies at
the same time. The idea of a break in legal continuity put a stop to the claim of the states that
they should determine for themselves their status with respect to the nation.

I. The revolution
The collapse of the Austrian imperial state in the autumn of 1918 did not leave any of its
constituent nations unprepared. All of them were ready to establish themselves sooner
or later as independent states. No serious resistance was expected, not least because the
complete military defeat had removed the last possibility of preventing the process of
dissolution.
In view of the Czechs’ and South Slavs’ rapid progress toward independence, the
Germans in Austria too were forced to secure their future as soon as possible and to build a
home [Haus] of their own, even if only a makeshift one. In early October the pan-German
parties within the Austrian House of Deputies proposed to convene all German members

8 SeeJulius Braunthal, “Die gescheiterte Offensive,” Der Kampf 23, no. 1 (1930): 1–7.
9The coalition government of Social Democrats and Christian Socials had been formed after the
national elections of February 16, 1919, and remained in office until July 7, 1920.
18  Constitution, Legislation, and Jurisdiction

of the Austrian Imperial Council [Reichsrat] to a German national assembly. On October

10, 1918, all of the German parties in the Austrian House of Deputies reached an agree-
ment based on a resolution by the Social Democratic Party, which advocated the forma-
tion of a German-Austrian state comprising all the German regions of Austria. The parties
also expressed a willingness to negotiate with representatives of the Czech and South Slav
peoples on the transformation of Austria into a federation of independent national enti-
ties. It is worth mentioning that the Germans did not intend to dissolve Austria, they only
considered its restructuring. The same or a similar thought was expressed in the imperial
manifesto of October 16, in which the monarch announced his decision to transform Austria,
in accordance with the will of its peoples, into a federal state in which every nation would
form a state entity of its own within its territories. Today it is clear that the manifesto came
too late, for only the Germans were still interested in this program at the time. On the day
of its promulgation it must already have been seen by all thinking people as an unavailing
attempt to bring together the diverging forces in the state.
[. . .]
A few years earlier, a manifesto of this nature might have marked the start of a positive
development that could have averted the World War and consolidated Austria. Under the
present circumstances, however, it was now merely a sign of general dissolution sent from
the highest level.
On the same day the manifesto was announced, the German parties in the Austrian
House of Deputies decided to convene a plenary assembly of all German deputies. This ple-
nary assembly took place on October 21 as a “national assembly.” The members elected three
presidents with equal rights and obligations in accordance with its three major participating
parties (Pan-Germans, Christian Social, and Social Democratic). The assembly adopted a
decision to constitute itself as a “Provisional National Assembly of German Austria” and
elected an executive committee of twenty members, who were to submit motions to the
National Assembly on the constitution of the German-Austrian state. In other words, the
assembly adopted a decision to form the independent state of German Austria. This state for-
mation was completed in the next meeting of the Provisional National Assembly on October
30 through the adoption of a “decision on the basic organs of state authority.” With this first
constitution, which was implemented immediately and without opposition, the new state of
German Austria was established not only de jure but also de facto.
On November 11, Emperor Karl issued an (undated) announcement, counter-
signed by his last minister-president, [Heinrich] Lammasch,10 in which he recognized
in advance whatever form of state German Austria chooses to adopt and renounced any
involvement in the affairs of state. This statement, which referred only to German Austria
and not to the Czecho-Slovak and South Slav states being formed at the same time, was
not an unconditional abdication of the throne. It was formulated deliberately as merely
a renunciation of involvement in the affairs of state. This is irrelevant in legal terms,
however, since the old Austrian constitution would not have allowed either this lim-
ited renunciation or an unconditional abdication. According to that constitution, only
death can end the monarch’s right or executive authority—the mere abdication of the
throne does not. As the constitution does not explicitly mention abdication as grounds
for termination [of the monarch’s authority], such termination, based on the actual state
of affairs, cannot be inferred. Moreover, only the new German-Austrian constitution,

10 Heinrich Lammasch (1853–1920) was an internationally respected expert in criminal, constitu-

tional, and international law and, from October 27 to 30, 1918, the last minister-president in the
Austrian monarchy.
 Constitution, Legislation, and Jurisdiction  19

not the former Austrian constitution, has the authority to interpret the statement of
renunciation. But a statement of intent of this kind is also meaningless under the new
constitution, which does not recognize the monarch as a state authority. There is no
legal continuity between the old Austrian and new German-Austrian constitution. In
particular, the Provisional National Assembly of German Austria cannot be regarded as
one of the national councils mentioned in the imperial manifesto of October 16 since, as
a national council, the German-Austrian National Assembly would not have been autho-
rized to constitute German Austria as an independent state.11 Because and to the extent
that it did this, it deliberately placed itself on a revolutionary basis. From a legal point of
view, however, revolution is nothing more than a break in legal continuity. Such a break
is still a revolution even if it takes place, as in the case of German Austria, without an
external struggle or bloodshed, in particular even if the entire apparatus of the old state
is willing to submit to the new constitution without resistance.
The idea that the revolution created an unbridgeable schism between the old
Austrian and the German-Austrian constitution, that Old Austria and German Austria
are two completely different states that are not connected by a regular legal succession, is
the necessary consequence of a point of view that understands the state as a supreme,
irreducible, and hence sovereign order and, in legal terms, as a sovereign legal system.
It is a hypothesis based on the primacy of a state legal system, which, applied in this case
to the constitution of German Austria, necessarily implies a break with the political order
of Austria. It is understandable that this point of view would be immediately adopted in
theory and practice, in particular in the German-Austrian legislation—not only for psy-
chological reasons, on account of the strong need to bring down the curtain on the sad
and in recent decades painful history of old Austria and to turn over a new leaf in history
with German Austria, but also above all because in view of the monarchy’s unnaturally
great financial burden, an identification of German Austria with the old state would have
meant that the new state would be economically ruined from the outset. It was not that
the men who led German Austria wished to ignore all the commitments of their political
legacy. From the beginning, German Austria was open to a fair distribution of the old
state’s assets and liabilities among all of the new states created on its territory. However,
the other nation-states energetically refused from the outset to accept any legal succession
and in some cases even managed, under the aegis of the Entente, to put forward the view
that they were to be counted among Austria’s victorious opponents. Because interna-
tional law had decided to divide Austria into several new states, and because the pro rata
parte apportionment of the national debt was not possible, German Austria—if it was
not to be forced into the position of being considered the old Austria—was obliged to
claim recognition as a new independent state with as little connection to the old Austria
as had been recognized in the case of the Czecho-Slovakian and South Slav states. A legal
construct of this nature—and this is the only one under consideration—is only possible,
however, if the legal hypothesis of the primacy of the state’s own legal system is taken
to its logical conclusion. If one takes into account international law in the sense that the
international legal system is seen as having precedence over and delimiting the individual
state legal systems, making the states part of a legal order in the form of a community

11Original note: This opinion is affirmed by many others, for example, in the letter by the State
Marshal [Landmarschall] of Lower Austria to the Provisional National Assembly (in the run-up to
the second meeting of October 30, 1918, published in the Sammlung der von der Provisorischen
Nationalversammlung für den Staat Deutschösterreich erlassenen Gesetze, ed. Dr. Ferd Kadečka and
Dr. Hugo Suchomel, no. 1 [Vienna: F. Tempsky, 1918], 26).
20  Constitution, Legislation, and Jurisdiction

of coordinated subjects, in other words, if one assumes the primacy of international law,
then there must necessarily be a legal continuity between German Austria and the old
Austria, and one has to decide, as mentioned earlier, whether German Austria is to be
regarded as identical with old Austria or only—together with the other nation-states cre-
ated on its territory—as a legal successor to Austria.
Regardless of the formal discontinuity with old Austria, which was fixed in the con-
stitution of German Austria and in those of the other nation-states, for obvious reasons
the substantive continuity of the law prevailed to a large extent in German Austria as in all
of the states established on the territory of Austria. Paragraph 16 of the decision on the
constitution, adopted on October 30, 1918, stated that all valid laws and institutions in
Austria would remain in force until further notice, unless they were repealed or amended
by that decision. This means that the vast majority of the laws in force in Austria are
applicable to German Austria. It should merely be pointed out that the wording of this
applicability clause is not very felicitous in terms of the argument of formal discontinuity.
According to this argument, the norms of Austrian law do not remain in force—insofar
as they are compatible with the decision on the constitution—but enter into force as new
formal legislation.

2.
Karl Kautsky
Democracy and Democracy
First published as “Demokratie und Demokratie,” Der Kampf 13, no. 6 (1920): 209–14.
Translated by Nick Somers.

Although democracy as a state form was never seriously questioned by the Provisional
National Assembly, the communist idea of a soviet republic or dictatorship presented an abid-
ing ideological challenge for the Social Democrats. The Communists reproached the Social
Democrats for not going far enough with the overthrow of the monarchy, saying that democ-
racy as a state form would not remove bourgeois rule but, on the contrary, would consolidate
it. Karl Kautsky (1854–1938), a leading thinker of the German Social Democrats with close
ties to Austro-Marxism, replied to this reproach—as did Max Adler and Otto Bauer12—with
the argument that “bourgeois” democracy most strongly highlighted the class antagonism and
was therefore the ideal basis for the transition to socialism.

In the Berlin Freiheit of April 24 this year, comrade Crispien wrote at the end of his
article:13 “After the start of the class struggle for political power, the class-conscious pro-
letariat espoused bourgeois democracy, not to identify with this democracy but to use it as
a weapon.”
A few years ago this sentence would still have been very strange, since we generally
assumed that when the proletariat entered into the struggle for political power it aban-
doned bourgeois democracy in favor of proletarian, socialist democracy. Today Crispien’s

12 See Max Adler, Demokratie und Rätesystem (Vienna: Wiener Volksbuchhandlung Ignaz Brand,

1919); and Otto Bauer, Die österreichische Revolution (Vienna: Wiener Volksbuchhandlung, 1923).
13 Arthur Crispien (1875–1946) was chairman from 1919 to 1922 of the Independent Social

Democratic Party of Germany (USPD), a left-wing opposition splinter group of the German Social
Democrats.
 Constitution, Legislation, and Jurisdiction  21

sentence is no longer surprising, for since the appearance of the communist idea of a
soviet dictatorship, the term “bourgeois democracy” has taken on a meaning that it did
not have before.
Since then, democracy has become a highly volatile and at the same time extremely
disputed concept. At the risk of stating the obvious, it is perhaps worth clarifying the
concept once again, since however familiar this idea is [to us], it is unfortunately still
completely unfamiliar to too many proletarians.
[. . .]
Those who reject democracy must strive for a different political constitution. Apart
from democracy, only two other key forms of government can be taken into consideration:
autocracy and aristocracy. Autocracy is to be found where the various social classes, includ-
ing the higher ones, are so weak and the apparatus of state, military, and bureaucracy so
strong that they rise above and dominate all classes. As bureaucracy and the military are
always hierarchically organized with a person at their head, this person becomes the sole
ruler, an autocrat, with all political power and political rights concentrated in his person.
He can decide as he pleases whether and how much he is willing to share with his favorites.
With aristocracy, by contrast, one single class is so strong that it is able to monopolize
all political rights and to establish this monopoly as a political constitution. Aristocracy
differs from democracy not only in that the former is a kind of class rule and the latter
is not but also because in an aristocracy this class rule is established constitutionally and
protected by the state, whereas in a democracy it is not. Neither of these two conditions
apply in the latter, where the ruling classes change as a function of the balance of power
in society, whereas in aristocracy it is always one and the same class that possesses the
authority of state. It would be nonsensical to ascribe a specific class character to democ-
racy as a political form, whereas it is the very essence of an aristocracy.
Democracy is not by any means in a position to overcome class antagonisms on its
own. On the contrary, they are expressed most strongly through it, because they are not
concealed by any other circumstance. In an aristocracy, the class antagonisms within the
nonprivileged classes are suppressed through their common struggle against the aristo-
cratic class. This struggle is above all a struggle to overthrow the constitution, whereas
in a democracy, class struggle takes place within the framework of the constitution.
[. . .]
A perfect democracy does not exist anywhere. But it is wrong to point to the short-
comings in individual democratic states and to infer from them that democracy has no
value. These shortcomings merely create the need for the proletariat everywhere to strive
for full democracy. The proletariat has this task more than any other class, because more
than any other class it has an interest in full democracy.
Of course a nation’s constitution on its own, however perfect it might be, cannot
satisfy the needs of the proletariat. The damage caused by capitalist exploitation cannot
be overcome constitutionally. We strive for democracy not because it appears idyllic to us
but because it provides the best foundation for resolving the class antagonism between
capital and the proletariat.
Nor do we believe that democracy alone can solve all the problems of state policy
present today in the age of socialization which, briefly put, arise from the task of trans-
forming the state from a ruling apparatus into an administrative apparatus for social
purposes. Apart from the entities that have been created as a result of general suffrage,
groups of experts, professional organizations such as unions, workers’ councils, and
guilds will play an important role. We still have a lot to learn in this area and will be able
to derive some useful lessons from the experience of the Russian soviets.
22  Constitution, Legislation, and Jurisdiction

In other words, democracy alone is not sufficient for organizing socialist production.
But in terms of the issue of equal entitlement for all or sole entitlement of a single class,
democracy or aristocracy, we must decide in favor of democracy even in preference to a
proletarian aristocracy.

3.
Karl Renner
The Free State on the Danube
First published as “Der Freistaat an der Donau,” Arbeiter-Zeitung, January 1, 1922, 1–2.
Translated by Nick Somers.

On January 1, 1922, the State Constitution Act regarding the separation of Vienna and
Lower Austria as two states entered into force just three days after it had been adopted. From
that day, the city of Vienna was an independent state on a par with the other states in the
republic. The separation of Vienna and Lower Austria had previously been one of the main
bones of contention in the Constituent National Assembly. The Social Democrats had made
their agreement to the establishment of a federal republic contingent on this separation and
on the city of Vienna having the same autonomy and representational rights as the other
states. Although the separation was the result of a compromise, Karl Renner (1870–1950),
one of the leading figures of the SDAP at the time and Austria’s chancellor until 1920, wel-
comed it with an enthusiasm that revealed the political significance of the new independence.
He said that for the “working people,” Vienna was not merely a state like the others but a
“free state,” a “republic,” and a (Paris) “commune.”

The first day of January 1922 is a historic day of the highest order for the city of Vienna.
To the casual observer it might appear merely to be the moment at which identical laws
come into force on the separation of the old crown land of the Archduchy of Austria
below the Enns River into two independent states in the republic, putting an end to the
lamentable situation of their unsustainable administrative union; merely the moment at
which each state achieves its long-sought autonomy and can from now on administer its
own territory and citizens, its own taxes and institutions. But behind this momentary
view is a historic event that marks the end of a long development and the promising start
of a new era.
The city of Vienna is today a free member state of the free Republic of Austria and hence
itself a republic with all the attributes of a state. At the same time, it is a leading member
state within the federation.
[. . .]
If Vienna had a politically minded bourgeoisie, it would assume this new role with
courage and consciously act it out. But it allows itself to be represented by the advocates
of the court, the church, and the aristocracy, the Seipels and Czernins, the champions of
the imperial generals and bureaucrats, the Vaugoins and Schmitzes, the abdicated candi-
dates for the Habsburg Black Hundreds, the Jerzabeks and Kunschaks.14 Thus it was left

14 Renner lists the prominent reactionary members of the Christian Social Party: Ignaz Seipel

(1876–1932), a Catholic prelate, was chairman of the Christian Social Party from 1921 to 1930,
and chancellor from 1922 to 1924 and 1926 to 1929; Ottokar Czernin (1872–1932) was minister
of foreign affairs from 1916 to 1918 and a declared opponent of parliamentarianism; Carl Vaugoin
 Constitution, Legislation, and Jurisdiction  23

to us Social Democrats to bring about not only bourgeois democracy as a whole but also
the bourgeois independence of Vienna as the final break with the past.
But the Vienna of the future belongs first and foremost to the working people. For
them, the Republic of Vienna is at the same time the Vienna Commune. It still struggles
for its very survival, and it still lacks all the material resources it needs for creative social
work. But the boldness with which its administrators, particularly its city councillor of
finance, have conducted and continue to conduct the bitter struggle for economic sur-
vival is not only a guarantee of success—Vienna will survive the economic crisis—but also
promises rich yields, as soon as the struggle for existence sets free minds and resources
for reform. [. . .] Vienna today is the largest municipal authority in the world to be admin-
istered by workers! And it is being administered in the face of unparalleled and previ-
ously unseen difficulties with the most complete success that a party has ever achieved
in such a short time. The city, which according to enemy prophecies was supposed to
be stagnating, the city that shortsighted fellow countrymen compared to a bloated head
[Wasserkopf ], this city is not only financially and economically viable. Thanks to the
prowess of its administrators it has also risen in constitutional and political terms and
been guided to complete independence.
The republic and commune of Vienna is a great inheritance, a powerful new creation,
a precious jewel for the future. Workers of Vienna, it has been handed to you—treasure it,
protect it, secure it for those who come after you as a most valuable legacy.

4.
Robert Danneberg
The German-Austrian Financial Constitution
First published as “Die deutschösterreichische Finanzverfassung,” Der Kampf 15, no. 7
(1922): 198–212. Translated by Nick Somers.

In the introduction to his commentary on the Financial Constitution Act, which regu-
lated the division of tax revenue between the federal state and the individual states, Robert
Danneberg (1885–1942), party secretary of the Social Democrats and one of the party’s key
legal experts, once again speaks of the conflicting political points of view of the parties in
the Constituent National Assembly. He mentions the advocacy by the Social Democrats of a
centralized national state, Vienna’s newly acquired autonomy, and the dispute over the com-
position of the Federal Council (Bundesrat). Several drafts of the constitution by Christian
Socials had foreseen a fixed number of representatives of the states in the Federal Council
(between three and five) that in no way corresponded to the difference in size of the states in
terms of population or tax revenues. In Danneberg’s words, this would have made it a veri-
table “Christian Social house of peers.” The law ultimately adopted called for proportional
representation as proposed by Hans Kelsen.

(1873–1949) was minister of defense from 1921 to 1933; Richard Schmitz (1885–1954) was min-
ister of social affairs, minister of education, vice-chancellor and, from 1934 to 1938, mayor of
Vienna; Anton Jerzabek (1867–1939) was a member of the National Council from 1920 to 1930
and in 1919 founded the Anti-Semites League (Antisemitenbund); Leopold Kunschak (1871–
1953), a rabid anti-Semite like Jerzabek, was a member of the National Council from 1920 to
1934 and chairman of the Christian Social Workers’ Association (Christlichsozialer Arbeiterverein).
“Black Hundreds” were nationalist/monarchist organizations in czarist Russia.
24  Constitution, Legislation, and Jurisdiction

The great questions of principle that dominated the discussions on the constitution in
1918 and 1920 are once again on the agenda. They were not completely resolved in the
consultations on the federal constitution. The constitution is a compromise. In this coun-
try neither the Christian Socials nor the Social Democrats are strong enough to shape the
state entirely as they would like. The republican state system was not disputed. Among
the monarchists, the reluctant supporters of the republic have the upper hand. They do
not think the time is right for monarchist propaganda and accept the fact that the repub-
lic exists. But they want it at least to be as reactionary as possible. A centralized national
state would give Vienna a stronger position. Federalism, which favors the autonomy of
the states, would loosen the republican structure and weaken Vienna as a revolutionary
center. It is true that the stupid talk of Vienna as a “bloated head” has long ceased. The
fools who try to persuade us that German Austria will be viable only if Vienna is not part
of it now understand that the states would have no chance of survival without Vienna.
The headstrong farmers cannot even feed themselves, let alone the industrial population.
According to official estimates, imports to German Austria in 1920 cost 1,761 million
gold kronen, of which no less than 740 million were for foodstuffs. They have to be paid
for with industrial products. Of the 969 million gold kronen earned by Austrian exports,
820 million came from industrial products, compared with 67 million from wood, min-
erals, and magnesite. We cannot live without exports, and it is above all in Vienna and
the adjacent industrial region served by the Austrian Southern Railway [Südbahn] that
these export goods are manufactured. Be that as it may, they still hate Red Vienna and
set themselves in opposition as the black states.15 These states are changing their politi-
cal stripes, and once the rural workers acquire a class consciousness, the power of the
Christian Socials will be deeply shaken. For the time being, however, most of the rural
population are still under their sway and therefore support federal politics. Apart from
Vienna and Carinthia, the Christian Socials are in a stronger position in all states than
they could ever attain in the National Council. Their political ideal is therefore a federal
state with autonomous member states.
They have won formally. Austria has become a federal state. But the supporters of
the federalist ideas do not tire of admitting that this federal state is not one in reality.
The states are hanging in the air. However much they would like to act like grand mas-
ters, the federal constitution itself restricts their authority, and the federal government
has sole control over the printing of banknotes, an indispensable requisite today for gov-
ernance. The unity of the economic area has been generally maintained. The rejoicing of
the reactionary federalists at the autonomy of the states is spoiled as well by the fact that
Vienna has also become a state in its own right, and the most populated and economi-
cally powerful one at that. Whatever power they manage to wrest for the states always
applies to Vienna as well, however painful that might be for the Christian Social state
leaders.
Then they thought they could make democracy disappear through the construct of
a federal state. But they have failed there as well. They wanted to create a second cham-
ber alongside the National Council to represent the states, with every state having equal
representation. This would have created a Christian Social house of peers. But they were
unable to get their way. They have a Federal Council, but one in which the states are rep-
resented within certain limits according to their population, and its political composition
is no different from that of the National Council. It is good that the work of the Federal

15In the chromatic scheme of Austrian politics, the color red stands for the Social Democratic
movement and the color black stands for the Christian Social Party.
 Constitution, Legislation, and Jurisdiction  25

Council is ignored and that it is regarded generally as a superfluous body. It shows that
we have in fact managed to parry the attack on democracy. A Federal Council that is
merely a political copy of the National Council cannot become dangerous but is merely
boring.
If the states are weak in comparison with the federal state, they are also not independent
and completely autonomous with regard to the municipalities in them. The federal consti-
tution grants these communities a minimum number of inalienable rights. The absence of
a proper local administration is one of the most serious shortcomings of our state system.
Ensuring that the possibility for development in this direction was not completely lost was
one of our concerns when the constitution was created. The federal constitution contains
less than we wanted, but much more than the Christian Socials ever imagined.

5.
Oskar Trebitsch
Jurisdiction and Class Struggle
First published as “Rechtsprechung und Klassenkampf,” Der Kampf 16, no. 8 (1923):
258–64. Translated by Nick Somers.

No catchword was more prominent in the Social Democrats’ criticism of the criminal justice
system than the concept of “class justice.” Historically the result of relevant experience with a
justice system that despite the December Constitution of 1867 had been used as an instrument
to suppress the labor movement, the term “class justice” in a democracy was, however, the
subject of increasing criticism. As a blanket judgment of the administration of justice it ran
the risk within the proletariat, as the Social Democratic lawyer Oskar Trebitsch (1886–1958)
discusses elsewhere, of “destroying respect for the idea of justice.”16 To counter this danger,
Trebitsch presents a cautious analysis of the term.

Class justice? The accusation that class justice is real is rejected with loud and no doubt
mostly genuine indignation every time parliamentary and journalistic representatives of
organized labor raise the issue. The administrators of justice and the judiciary hasten to
emphasize that the only aspiration of all judicial bodies is to promote justice and only jus-
tice and that they will continue, undeterred by unprincipled and demagogic reproaches,
etc., etc.
I believe we have the duty and also the right to point out that we have here one
of those misunderstandings that can become highly dangerous, namely a terminological
one. When we talk about class justice, we use the term to mean both more and—given
that we always already challenge the ethics of those responsible for this class justice—less
than the indignant defenders, mostly official ones, of “nonpartisan administration of jus-
tice.” And thus, we continue to speak even more at cross-purposes than is perhaps avoid-
able in discourse between Marxists and fundamental representatives of the capitalist legal
system.
It is true that we talk of class justice in reference to blatant examples of bad faith,
perversion, delaying, or denial of justice that are not excusable solely on the grounds of a
judge’s intellectual shortcomings. And we also talk of class justice when the most heinous
of all crimes against the spirit of humanity is committed, namely when pronouncements

16 Oskar Trebitsch, “Die Rechtsidee und der Sozialismus,” Der Kampf 12, no. 31 (1919): 717.
26  Constitution, Legislation, and Jurisdiction

that conflict with the wording and evident spirit of “justice” are made by appointed and
paid scoundrels in judge’s robes under the cover of legal proceedings in a deliberate
attempt to pervert the law. [. . .]
The villainy of the judge is not usually evident, and we therefore also dismiss, with an
undertone of moral indignation, verdicts as class justice that, albeit reasoned with such
a degree of intellectual mediocrity, are nevertheless couched in subtle sophistry—there’s
method in this madness; we have good reason to suspect that this strange judicial stupid-
ity is merely simulated in order to obtain the desired wrong judgment. Obviously, the
formation of a judicial opinion based on free consideration of the evidence is an internal
process, and the dirty tricks by the court cannot be proven, even if there is a credible
suspicion that they exist—to use the fine distinction in the Code of Civil Procedure.
Although it is difficult to prove that a judge is a villain if that judge declares that villain is
not a slanderous term, the probability is high that he is one.
We also speak of class justice with the same feeling of moral reprobation with refer-
ence to a further, very common category of verdicts, when the letter and the spirit of
the law are observed but the sentence is cruel and inhuman, designed and intended to
serve the idea of persecution rather than legal prosecution in a moral sense. We speak
in this regard of class justice in Horthy’s Hungary,17 where judges usually apply the
law in force objectively and also in the spirit of that young nation. And yet, what kind
of examples of humanity are people who sit down calmly to dinner after sentencing a
sixteen-year-old girl to fifteen years’ imprisonment for distributing communist leaflets?
[. . .]
But with all these groups of verdicts—the rare instances of breaches of the law that
can be formally demonstrated, the more frequent instances of objectively evident breaches
of the law that cannot be formally demonstrated, and finally the very frequent formally
correct verdicts stigmatized by their inherent inhuman or subhuman component—we
always associate class justice with a negative value judgment of the judge concerned, and
it is only in that sense that judges understand our general criticism of class justice. Hinc
illae lacrimae!18
But we understand class justice as something else that is not so easily understand-
able and familiar to minds unschooled in social criticism, namely all of the effects in
judicial consciousness of the prejudice connected with the general ideology of a par-
ticular class. Gustav Radbruch aptly pointed this out in his explanation of the Görlitz
program:19

We define class justice as the interpretation and application of the law according to
the assumed opinions of a certain class of people. This means that class justice is not
equivalent to perversion of the law. Its essence is to be found not in twisting the law
but in prejudices associated with class, exercised for that reason in good faith. Class
justice is not a moral reproach delivered or rebuffed with indignation, but a socio-
logical observation. It is an inevitable consequence of class rule and can be fully over-
come only if this is also overcome; it can nevertheless be fought and limited within
that framework.

17 After the defeat of the short-lived Hungarian Soviet Republic under Béla Kun in 1919, Miklós

Horthy (1868–1957) served as the regent of the Kingdom of Hungary, which had been restored
as an authoritarian state.
18 “Hence the tears!”
19 Original note: Gustav Radbruch, Rechtspflege: Erläuterungen zum Görlitzer Programm (Berlin:

Vorwärts, 1922).
 Constitution, Legislation, and Jurisdiction  27

[. . .]
I have already attempted to discuss how important it is in the formation of a con-
sciousness favorable to a socialist culture for us to develop the proletariat’s notion of
justice.20 In spite of all antagonism toward existing objective justice, it is important for
us to diligently guard against discarding moral respect for the idea of justice, which is
also the essential basis of every socialist system of justice. The more determined we are
to use the proletariat’s ideal of justice—that of justice in a classless society—as a motor
for a major reform in awareness in the direction of socialism, the more zealously we
must work at the same time to debunk the myth that in a class-bound society, the
objective administration of justice—completely divorced from the procedural conflict
between class interests—is possible at all. This belief in the possibility of completely
class-neutral jurisprudence is already the foundation of all judicial ethics. It is the truly
great tragedy of the judiciary that, while it readily sees the need to uphold this belief,
every socially critical analysis of its function confronts the well-intentioned judge once
again with the subjectivity of his actions and hence the class-bound nature of his
verdicts. As a way of revealing this tragedy of the judiciary not as an inescapable law
of nature but as a resolvable result of history—of showing up bona-fide class justice
not so as to cast aspersion on the profession but to draw attention to it—the often-
attempted casuistic exposure of wrongful convictions will be less useful than a Marxist
critique of justice, a critique that reduces all judicial institutions and their members to
their conscience-forming basic essence and thus shows how they are determined by
class.

6.
Friedrich Austerlitz
The Murderers of Schattendorf Acquitted!
First published as “Die Mörder von Schattendorf freigesprochen!,” Arbeiter-Zeitung,
July 15, 1927, 1–2. Translated by Nick Somers.

The acquittal of the three defendants in the Schattendorf trial was the immediate reason
for the bloody riots on July 15, 1927, when the Palace of Justice burned after spontane-
ous mass demonstrations by Vienna’s workers, and eighty-four protesters were shot by the
police.21 Historians generally agree that the events that July marked the turning point in
the history of the First Republic. Friedrich Austerlitz’s (1862–1931) passionate editorial
front-page commentary on that day not only reflects the workers’ violated sense of justice
but was also intended to serve as an outlet for it. This sense of violation was amplified by
the failure of the Social Democratic Party leaders to call for official protest actions once
the verdict became known, and for good reason. The acquittal was decided by a jury court,

20 Original note: “Die Rechtsidee und der Sozialismus,” Der Kampf 12, no. 31 (1919).
21 During a violent confrontation between members of the Front-line Soldiers’ Union
(Frontkämpfervereinigung Deutsch-Österreichs), a paramilitary organization of the political
right, and the Republican Protection League (Republikanischer Schutzbund) in the small market
town of Schattendorf, Burgenland, on January 30, 1927, two people were shot and killed and
five were wounded. The public prosecutor’s office in Vienna brought charges under section 87
of the Criminal Code of “public violence through malicious actions under particularly dangerous
circumstances.”
28  Constitution, Legislation, and Jurisdiction

an institution that had long been defended by Social Democrats as a means of countering
bourgeois class justice.

Nothing will happen to the three defendants who on January 30 deliberately fired
deadly shots into a crowd of people in Schattendorf, killing two and wounding five
others. Nothing will happen to them, not a hair on their heads will be touched. The
perjured members of the jury acquitted them of all guilt, and to the jubilation of the
World War front-line veterans’ groups [Frontkämpfer] gathered there, these men, who
had two lives on their conscience, were immediately set free. This acquittal is a scan-
dal, the like of which has rarely if ever been seen in the annals of justice. It cannot be
said that the verdict was lenient because the jury, uncertain of their guilt, preferred to
acquit rather than to condemn them. Nor is it any excuse that a jury recently acquitted
a woman who had killed her husband. The jury might hesitate in condemning a murder
if there is a possibility that the murderer was not in command of his or her senses when
the act was committed. In this case, involving the inhuman shooting into a crowd of
people, there can be no doubt that the act was deliberate and planned. These three vet-
erans took their weapons with them in the morning. As the public prosecutor pointed
out, they had built a stronghold where they could hide and aim their hunting rifles
at the assembled Protection League [Schutzbund] members. Nor were they acting in
self-defense but simply gave vent to their thirst for revenge. And this unspeakable deed
remains unpunished!
It should also not be overlooked that the presentation of the case by the court made
it possible for the jury to recognize diminished responsibility and hence allow the most
lenient punishment. The jury was simply asked whether the defendants, by shooting into
a crowd of people, were guilty “of committing an act in the awareness—given the eas-
ily and generally knowable consequences—that it represented a danger to life or physical
safety.” The three veterans shot into a crowd of people, shot blindly into the assembled
group. And yet they are supposed not to have been aware that they posed a danger to the
life and limb of the people they pointed their weapons at? And yet, this conclusion was
acceptable to some members of the jury, to enough of them to bring about an acquittal.
According to the jury, therefore, it means nothing to shoot at people; if the perpetrators
are veterans, then it is a permissible pleasure of the hunt. These people who trampled so
disdainfully on the oath they had taken, who ignored right and justice so brazenly, are not
jurors but dishonorable lawbreakers who deserve the loathing and contempt of all right-
thinking people for their shameless acquittal. They will receive this condemnation as well.
The truth to be inferred so shockingly and annoyingly from this acquittal, which is
a disgrace to jurisprudence as a whole, is that when Hakenkreuzler and veterans shoot at
workers and kill Social Democrats, they can always be sure of acquittal. The murder of
Birnecker, the murder of Still, the murder of Kovarik, all of these remain unpunished.22
And so the veterans in Schattendorf could also assume that nothing would happen to
them if they added a few people to the list of Social Democrats already murdered, with
the apparent result that they felt no inhibitions in shooting. And why should they?

22 The three cases cited by Austerlitz had left a deep impression in the popular memory of the
Social Democrats and are cited as examples of offenses committed by radical right-wing organiza-
tions that were not adequately punished by the courts: Franz Birnecker was murdered on February
18, 1923, by members of the monarchist Ostara group; Karl Still on May 4, 1923, by two Nazis;
and Franz Kovarik also by Nazis on September 23, 1923, at the age of just sixteen during a work-
ers’ festival. In all three cases, the perpetrators merely received lenient sentences or fines.
 Constitution, Legislation, and Jurisdiction  29

[. . .]
But to all those who have once again tried the patience of the working people by
acquitting the murderers who shot the people’s fellow workers: let it be said that they are
playing a reckless and dangerous game. If the workers are forced to recognize that there
is no justice for them in this capitalist system, then that justice is reduced to a joke when
it comes to punishing a wrong committed against the working man, and their belief in
this justice will be destroyed and their confidence in it undermined. The denial of justice
is the worst thing that can be done to working men and women, and if they recognize
and become aware of this depressing fact, the legal system will be finished. The bourgeois
world warns continuously of the possibility of civil war; but is this plain and annoying
acquittal of people who have killed workers—because it is workers they have killed—not
already civil war? We warn them all, because the seeds of injustice planted yesterday can
only produce a disastrous harvest.

7.
Therese Schlesinger
Criminal Justice and Psychoanalysis
First published as “Strafjustiz und Psychoanalyse,” Der Kampf 23, no. 1 (1930): 34–40.
Translated by Nick Somers.

Therese Schlesinger’s (1863–1940) article is typical of a series of essays in Der Kampf apply-
ing psychoanalytical or sociological theories to the practical interpretation of the law.23 Her
considerations as a women’s right activist and Social Democratic representative are to be seen
in the context of one of the two main trends in criminal justice at the time, namely social
criminal law reform. This reform called for the transformation of punishment as retribu-
tion into punishment serving social aims, and the extension of the general deterrent purpose
of punishment to include special deterrent measures based on the specific threat posed by the
criminal.

In the last few years we have seen repeatedly how two young sciences that originated
from two completely opposing points of view have converged to support and comple-
ment one another. While sociology, the older of the two, studies the laws of the devel-
opment of society, the younger, psychoanalysis, reveals the mechanisms by which the
individual adapts to the needs of society and civilization.
It has always been known that social integration involves a difficult adaptation pro-
cess from birth, and that education offers only pointers to this process but does not
replace the child’s own learning process. It was Sigmund Freud, however, who made
the great discovery that the basic asocial instincts that control everyone are not extin-
guished in civilized persons by education and traditions but merely suppressed in the
unconscious. They continue to act there, and many of our thoughts and actions can be
seen as an unconscious rebellion against suppressed instinctive desires and as an escape
from the recognition and enactment of these desires. These drives are adapted in civilized
society by sublimating some of the suppressed antisocial instincts and transforming them

23 See Robert Pollak, “Vom Strafrecht zum Schutzrecht,” Der Kampf 25, no. 3 (1932): 125–33;

Therese Schlesinger, “Strafjustiz und Strafvollzug,” Der Kampf 24, no. 4 (1931): 183–86; and
Oskar Trebitsch, “Das Problem der Richterbestellung,” Der Kampf 18, no. 11 (1925): 425–31.
30  Constitution, Legislation, and Jurisdiction

into permissible and even socially acceptable ones. The infant develops its ego through
perceptions of the outside world and by gradually recognizing to what extent—if at all—
its own characteristics are compatible with its wishes. The unrestricted living-out of its
drives is physically kept in check at first by parents and educators and later by prohi-
bitions. An initial urge is transformed into a “you should” or “you must not” in the
child’s consciousness, and its desires (its ego) are constrained by codes of conduct (the
superego) or, as it is better known, the conscience. But a person’s thoughts, feelings,
and actions are only partly controlled by this conscious mentality; they are also partly
controlled by unconscious drives. These drives conflict with the rules of civilized society
so forcefully that the conscience does not only reject them but is forced to suppress them
from its consciousness.
Sometimes this adaptation remains merely incomplete, sometimes it is inhibited
either by a pathological disposition or, much more often, by unsuccessful education or
other indignities that the child’s psyche experiences through its environment. The success
or failure of the emotional adaptation process, most decisively influenced by childhood
experiences, therefore depends on constitution and environment, with the result that
imperfect suppression and sublimation should be understood as developmental defects in
the same way as a hunchback or clubfoot.
[. . .]
An educated judge normally knows very well that his verdicts cannot take the
defendant’s personality into account. As early as the 1880s, the famous criminologist
Franz von Liszt advocated concepts that made him almost seem like a forerunner of
psychoanalytical criminal theory.24 He wanted to punish not the crime but the crimi-
nal, which is tantamount to recognizing the duty of the judge to consider the per-
petrator’s psyche. According to Liszt, every criminal is a victim of his environment
and education. The professional judge has difficulty in assimilating such findings. He
flees from responsibility into the world of the written law. Academic jurisprudence is
removed from everyday life, making it incompatible with our modern sense of justice
and humanity, however imperfectly such a sense has evolved up to now. Public con-
science has increasingly demanded a kind of justice based upon individual psychology.
For this purpose, the authority of the judiciary has been expanded and lay courts have
been established to foster intuitive and sensitive judgment of even the most serious
offenses. From this point of view, however, jury courts can be seen as flawed because
they can find a defendant guilty or not guilty but have no influence on the extent of the
punishment and the way it is carried out.
Psychoanalysis can make an essential contribution to an understanding of the deci-
sions of juries, which frequently conflict with the letter of the law. As we have seen,
man comes into the world as a “criminal,” in other words as a socially maladjusted
person. The more favorable the material situation in which he lives the less he will be
required to suppress his drives. The more loving and understanding his educators the
better he will succeed in suppressing and sublimating these asocial drives. Inadequate
suppression or sublimation reveals itself later in the form of neurosis, psychosis, or cru-
elty, the latter manifested much more frequently in a form tolerated by society than in
one disdained as criminal. Various outlets are available for the usual kinds of suppressed
criminality such as dreams and fantasies, duels, boxing, bullfighting, and belligerent
patriotism.

24 See Franz von Liszt, Der Zweckgedanke im Strafrecht (Marburg: Pfeil, 1882).
 Constitution, Legislation, and Jurisdiction  31

As such, asocial ideologies are mostly formed as a function of parental authority; they
cannot be attributed to the conscious ego versus the superego. The misfortune of neurot-
ics, psychopaths, and criminals lies in the fact that they fail very early on because of their
inability to resolve their relationships with their parents and siblings in the form of social
adaptation.
The attempt to suppress drives is common to all people, but the use of the psychic
apparatus is different for each individual. In the case of the criminal disposition, censor-
ing fails to a large degree, but it almost never fails completely, and thus even in the mind
of a criminal there is a constant battle between the superego and the unconscious drives.
[. . .]
The better developed a person’s superego, the less he is threatened by the eruption
of suppressed drives and the less he feels the demand for retribution. Every person natu-
rally regards the criminal as his personal enemy, because criminal actions threaten his own
safety and that of his loved ones. This makes him demand protection but not retribution.
The retribution tendency is connected less with the perpetrator than with a person’s own
unconscious drives, and the harshness of the punishment is intended to help the person’s
own weak superego, which does not always function reliably. “An enthusiastic espousal
of the idea of retribution,” according to Alexander and Staub, “is a diagnostic feature of
strong, unprocessed asocial tendencies.”25
When criminals of any kind make contradictory statements in court, it is less a sign of
their deceitfulness than of the fact that they are not aware of the drives motivating their
acts; they are aimlessly and unsuccessfully seeking causal factors. They do not realize that
they are motivated much less by external factors than by an unconscious feeling of guilt.
They long for a punishment that will liberate them from this feeling of guilt. The fact that
the pre-crime longing for punishment is usually replaced by a post-crime fear of punish-
ment does not disprove psychoanalytic theory. On the contrary, psychoanalytic theory is
confirmed by the often outright carelessness of clever criminals who enable themselves to
be tracked down by even the most inept authorities.

25 Franz Alexander and Hugo Staub, Der Verbrecher und seine Richter: Ein psychoanalytischer
Einblick in die Welt der Paragraphen (Vienna: Internationaler Psychoanalytischer Verlag, 1929).
“How the Breitner tax is being used—‘that’s luxury,’ the Anti-Marxists scream.” Der Kuckuck, April
17, 1932. (Courtesy of VGA.)
 CHAPTER TWO

FINANCES AND TAXES

Veronika Duma

R ed Vienna built the financial basis for its comprehensive political reforms on a
broadly redistributive tax plan. This became possible after Vienna’s separation from
Lower Austria to form its own state in 1922. This separation gave the Social Democratic
city government a stronger position vis-à-vis the conservative federal government in mat-
ters of taxation policy.1 For example, Vienna possessed independent legislative authority,
its own property taxes, and a right to a portion of federal tax revenue. Even though the
Social Democrats never made it into the federal government after 1920, Vienna and its
tax laws remained under their control.
Named after the city councillor of finance Hugo Breitner, the Breitner Taxes applied
to luxury goods and consumption, as well as to automobiles, horses (and horse racing),
and domestic employees. The tax on foodstuffs, drinks, and tobacco was levied on busi-
nesses categorized as luxury establishments. The entertainment tax applied to various
public events, such as circus performances, variety theaters, cinemas, balls, and operas.
Especially important were the welfare tax paid by employers and the progressive housing
construction tax (Wohnbausteuer).2 The latter applied to all properties within the city’s
jurisdiction and was aimed at villas and private homes, while leaving working-class resi-
dences relatively untouched. The tax brackets were arranged such that small apartments
were negligibly affected, while luxury properties were taxed at extraordinarily high rates.
The purpose was to transform indirect taxes into strongly progressive direct taxes and
to avoid taking out further loans. From the beginning, the Social Democratic city gov-
ernment was subjected to fierce criticism from bourgeois, conservative, and right-wing
elements, and when it came to Breitner, the political attacks often had an anti-Semitic
character. In political opposition to the Social Democrats stood an alliance of the federal
government, the Central Federation of Industry (Hauptverband der Industrie), banks,
businessmen, as well as the church and the military.
The city used its taxation policies and the corresponding welfare policies—comprising
investments in social and public infrastructure, employment measures, and municipaliza-
tion—to intervene in the economic crisis following World War I. By 1922, as in Germany,

1 See Robert Danneberg, Der finanzielle Marsch auf Wien (Vienna: Verlag der Organisation Wien

der Sozialdemokratischen Partei, 1930), 4.

2 See Laurenz Widholz, “Die Wiener Wohungsnot und die Wohnbausteuer,” Arbeiterschutz:

Zeitschrift für soziale Gesetzgebung—Organ der Reichskommission der Krankenkassen Österreichs,

February 15, 1922, 27–29.
34  Finances and Taxes

the inflation caused by the war had grown into hyperinflation. The League of Nations took
over the guarantees for a foreign loan, which was made dependent on certain fiscal policy
conditions. The federal government, together with the finance committee of the League of
Nations, proposed a plan to “restructure” the state’s financial position, calling for a reduc-
tion in state spending and prescribed austerity measures. The next wave of economic cri-
ses, following on the heels of the 1929 stock market crash, struck Austria just as severely as
it struck Germany. The United States had previously offered credit to a number of coun-
tries running a deficit. Austrian banks also took out large lines of credit and either passed
what was often only short-term credit to industrial development projects as long-term loans
or bought shares in those interests. With the collapse of the Creditanstalt in 1931,3 the
crisis hit its peak, and the ranks of the unemployed swelled. While the Roosevelt admin-
istration responded to the crisis in the United States with the New Deal, the federal gov-
ernment of Austria’s First Republic—in parallel with Brüning’s measures in the Weimar
Republic—enacted austerity measures, which were marked by strict spending cuts. The
Austrian government once again sought loans from the League of Nations and proposed
another “restructuring” measure for the federal budget. The socialist and communist press
demanded to know who would bear the cost of the crisis. Leaders of the women’s move-
ment, in particular the movement of women workers, drew attention to the gender dimen-
sion of the crisis in numerous articles.4 The Social Democrats criticized the budget-cutting
policies, but nevertheless went along with some of the austerity measures at the federal level.
Meanwhile, the crisis was making itself seen in the finances of the Vienna city government:
decreased spending and rising unemployment meant less income. As the crisis progressed,
the federal government only increased the financial pressure on the Social Democratic gov-
ernment of Vienna to institute cost-saving measures. The city of Vienna tried, especially with
regard to housing, to continue its investment programs, if only in a more limited way. But
they also looked to save money.
The federal government enforced an ever more authoritarian policy of auster-
ity. The dismantling of the socialist infrastructure, from employment measures to
the protection of workers’ rights, was accelerated by so-called emergency measures
(Notverordnungen), which bypassed the Parliament and any other democratic decision-
making process. The government and representatives of the finance committee of the
League of Nations did not hide the fact that they saw parliamentary democracy as an
obstacle to their reworking of the state’s finances. They justified the establishment of
authoritarian structures on the grounds of economic necessity. The justice minister at
the time, Kurt Schuschnigg, declared in 1932 that parliaments were not well suited to
counteracting a crisis.
After the military put down the workers’ protests in February 1934, the Austrofascist
regime dissolved the municipal government and replaced it with a government

3 The Creditanstalt functioned as a point of transfer between the nations of the former Austro-
Hungarian Empire and those of Western Europe. As the largest bank in central Europe it played a
crucial role in the international credit system and in industrial investments.
4 See, for example, Käthe Leichter, “Frauenarbeit und Wirtschaftskrise,” Die Frau 35, no. 9

(September 1926): 2–4; E. F., “Fraueninteressen im Budgetausschuss,” Die Frau 39, no. 1
(January 1930): 9–10; Anonymous, “Die größte Sorge der Sozialdemokraten: die Arbeitslosen!
Der Finanzausschuß berät den Finanzplan der Regierung,” Arbeiter-Zeitung, June 11, 1931,
2; Adelheid Popp, “Verdrängung der Frauenarbeit,” Die Frau 43, no. 2 (February 1934): 2–4;
Käthe Leichter, “Wem nützt es?,” Die Frau 43, no. 2 (February 1934): 7–9; Emmy Freundlich,
“Wirtschaftskrise und Parlament,” Die Frau 40, no. 8 (August 1931): 2–4.
 Finances and Taxes  35

commissioner. One of the first changes from the new administration was the abolition
of the progressive taxation system. Housing construction projects were largely ended,
rents were raised, and the social safety net and the social infrastructure dismantled. The
Social Democratic Arbeiter-Zeitung (Workers’ paper), which was already banned at this
time, summed up this “reform”: “the millions given to the rich and the super-rich have
ripped a large hole in the public budget. They have plugged that hole by building no
more housing, by taking an axe to services for the poor, by letting the school system
collapse.”5

Further reading
Ausch 2013
Duma and Hajek 2015
Eigner 2019
Kernbauer 1995
Kernbauer and Weber 1985
Klingenstein 1965
Knittler 2013
Maier and Maderthaner 2012
Stiefel 1988

1.
Robert Danneberg
Finance Politics in the City of Vienna
First published as “Die Finanzpolitik der Stadt Wien,” Rote Revue: sozialistische
Monatsschrift 1, no. 8 (1921–22): 294–305. Translated by Andrew Hamilton.

The jurist and Vienna city councillor Robert Danneberg (1885–1942) designed Red
Vienna’s taxation system, together with the city councillor of finance Hugo Breitner, whom
he succeeded in 1932. In the Rote Revue, the theoretical journal of the Social Democratic
Party of Switzerland, he presented his tax policy as the answer to the post–World War I crisis.
The republic inherited the monarchy’s debts, including billions worth of war loans.6 During
the inflationary period of the 1920s, at the suggestion of the League of Nations, the budget-
ary plans prescribed increased revenue and decreased spending which were carried out to the
detriment of broad swaths of the population. Social Democratic municipal politics, however,
proposed the direct taxation of the wealthy and property owners in contrast to the indirect
taxation of the rest of the population in form of a value-added tax (“mass tax”).7 The Social
Democrats declined to take out loans or lines of credit.

5 Anonymous, “Die schwarzen Schuldenmacher. Die Folgen der Diktatur über das Volk in Wien,”

Arbeiter-Zeitung, November 3, 1935, 7–8.

6 See Robert Danneberg, Steuersadismus? Streiflichter auf die Rote Rathauswirtschaft (Vienna:

Verlag der Organisation Wien der Sozialdemokratischen Partei, 1925), 3.

7 See Hugo Breitner, Seipel-Steuern oder Breitner-Steuern? Die Wahrheit über die Steuerpolitik der

Gemeinde Wien. Rede des Stadtrates Hugo Breitner. Gehalten am 31. Jänner 1927 in der Volkshalle
des Neuen Wiener Rathauses (Vienna: Verlag der Wiener Volksbuchhandlung, 1927), 6–7, 9.
36  Finances and Taxes

In one fell swoop, the catastrophe of the World War has brought the Social Democrats,
who in German Austria had been kept out of the public office in peacetime by small-
minded restrictions on voting rights, into power in hundreds of industrial communities,
including Vienna. Here, the working class has found an abundance of tasks, but also
empty coffers. In no belligerent nation were so few tax increases imposed during the war
as in Austria, because the fragile state did not dare impose such a burden on its peoples
during wartime. Instead, it helped itself by printing more money and by postponing all
the public works that it could. This is why, when the empire dissolved, all the coffers of
every municipal authority were empty, the revenue service was neglected, and the cur-
rency’s loss of value was shockingly obvious. [. . .] Taxing an economic organism that had
been sucked dry, an industry stopped in its tracks, or the homeless, hungry, and freezing
masses was out of the question.
At that time, the Social Democrats took it upon themselves to take Vienna—which
had transformed from royal residence of an empire of fifty million to a revolutionary cen-
ter antagonized by reactionary peasants and clergy of Alpine Austria and which seemed to
have been abandoned to decay—and to make it a livable city once again.
Opposing the Social Democratic majority—100 of the 165 members of the Municipal
Council were Social Democrats—were the former rulers of the city, the Christian Social
minority, voted in by homeowners, by the overgrown portion of the petty bourgeoi-
sie, and by the reactionary elements in the public administration. Nevertheless, the new
Social Democratic council did not have complete freedom to maneuver. The old Austrian
legal code, which gave municipalities broad autonomy in other matters, imposed strict
limits on their financial accounts. The municipal budget was primarily dependent on
contingencies from the federal taxes. There was only one specifically municipal revenue
source and that was a dog tax, which produced a total of 450,000 kronen in all of 1913.
Three-quarters of all revenue in the city of Vienna came from the taxation of rent. In
other words, the terrible housing shortage in Vienna was the Christian Socials’ main
source of revenue. The consumption tax on meat, alcohol, etc. brought in about a tenth
of their revenue. Revenue from business and inheritance taxes were negligible. The city,
unsocially, extracted twice as much net profit from its monopolies—the gasworks, the
electric utilities, streetcars, etc.
To reform such a municipal budget, to replace the burden on the broader popula-
tion with property taxes, and thereby to fund the city’s colossal spending increases—
that was the goal of the Social Democratic finance policies. The task was made all the
harder when the continuing devaluation of the krone undermined the existing revenue
system. The expenditures increased. [. . .]
The Social Democratic city councillor of finance, Hugo Breitner, a keen
observer of economic life, recognized the problem early and built another system of
taxation alongside the federal system, in spite of various obstacles and the difficult
environment, one built on a completely different tax concept. The Social Democratic
majority has overcome the wailings of the bourgeoisie and passed the necessary legis-
lation, which, without excessive burdens on the population as a whole, used twenty-
two municipal taxes to generate two hundred times as much revenue in 1922 as in
1913.
To generate tax revenue from the housing shortage or from the daily bread of ordi-
nary people—that we have refused to do. On the contrary, the city of Vienna became the
most energetic champion of tenants’ rights. [. . .] The rent deferrals, which went into
effect over the course of two years, as prescribed by the rent control laws, have allowed
the municipality to do away with the excise tax on rent altogether and replace it with a
 Finances and Taxes  37

progressive housing construction tax on all homes, considered a regulatory tax that is ear-
marked for particular uses and does not constitute municipal income. Only the renter’s
tax on businesses flows directly into the city’s coffers. [. . .]
* * *
[. . .] Naturally, this taxation system was met with fierce opposition from business inter-
ests. Businessmen took to the streets in public protests, threats were levied against the
city councillor of finance, because the city coveted diversified sources of massive income
to offset its massive and growing expenditures. The taxes levied on some businesses were
so large and so complex that it was not entirely unjustified to claim that the city had to
some degree become a stakeholder in the businesses it was taxing. But Vienna can be
proud of having survived the critical period of currency devaluation, even as all her ene-
mies prophesied her demise. Today the difference between socialist Vienna and the cities
governed by the bourgeois parties is clear to see. Those cities are on the verge of collapse
under the weight of their debt and now reach for one Vienna-style tax after another,
those same taxes the members of their ruling parties had fought against so fiercely. The
Vienna system has become instructive. The successes of its finance policies have gone a
long way to build the prestige of the city and of the party.

2.
Hugo Breitner
Capitalist or Socialist Taxation?
Who Should Pay Tax? The Rich or the Poor?
First published as Kapitalistische oder sozialistische Steuerpolitik: Wer soll die Steuern
bezahlen? Die Armen oder die Reichen? (Vienna: Verlag der Organisation Wien der
Sozialdemokratischen Partei, 1926), 3–16. Translated by Andrew Hamilton.

The tax policy of Red Vienna provoked fierce protests and criticism from the Christian Socials as
well as from wealthy property owners.8 Their political offensives were often aimed at the person
of Hugo Breitner (1873–1946), after whom the progressive, graduated system of taxation was
named. As city councillor of finance (1919–1932) and as a former bank director, he led the tax-
ation policies definitively away from those of the Christian Social city government. Not all busi-
nesses in the city worked for profit. The tax revenue, which flowed into various investments, was
meant to enable the independent financing of the city. Breitner declined to take out loans that
would put the city in debt. In 1933 he accepted the honorary directorship of the Vienna Central
Savings Bank (Wiener Zentralsparkasse), before his brief arrest in 1934 ended his career. After
a short introduction, what follows is the text of a speech in which Breitner responds to the openly
anti-Semitic Christian Social member of the Vienna Municipal Council Leopold Kunschak.

The bourgeois attacks on the Vienna city government.

The capitalist press of Vienna has begun a new campaign against the socialist city govern-
ment of Vienna. The signal to attack was given by the Municipal Council member Leopold

8See, for example, Anonymous, “Wiener, rettet Wien! Auf zur Demonstration gegen die
Wohnbausteuer,” Reichspost, April 2, 1922, 7.
38  Finances and Taxes

Kunschak at the Christian Social Party convention, when he accused the Social Democratic
government of ruining Vienna with their “sadistic taxation” [. . .] by sticking to their tax
system rather than take on foreign debt. A response to this demagoguery was given by City
Councillor Breitner in his speech marking the completion of the municipal budget.

Breitner’s response.
It is neither surprising nor pleasant that we have become the object of passionate and
embittered criticism. This only goes to show that the Social Democrats are doing things dif-
ferently than ever before, and succeeding. On the day that our tax policy meets with the
approval of Herr Kunschak, we would do better to turn over the burden of government
to his party right away. From 1918 until today, the great deciding question of our times,
one being fought over in every country, has been:
Who should pay the costs of the war?
The French were until recently under the delusion that Germany should be left with
the bill and that their own country should feel no financial aftereffects whatsoever. This
dream is gone, and for months now the world has been able to see the fight over the allot-
ment of the tax burden between the grand bourgeoisie on the one hand and the petty
bourgeoisie and the working class on the other hand. In Germany the discord among the
working class has led to an erosion of the eight-hour working day and, as a result of rising
rents, an immense decrease in working-class purchasing power. In Italy the Fascists have
demolished the labor unions and largely freed the bourgeoisie from any tax burden. Here
in Austria the Social Democrats have been and remain strong enough to prevent similar
assaults. There can be no doubt that the devastation of our four-and-a-half-year war is so
terrible that every part of society must feel some pain from it.
In Vienna we have succeeded in forcing the propertied classes to pay taxes at rates never
before seen.
This is the simple reason why our opponents are simply frothing at the mouth as they rage
against Red Vienna!
Herr Kunschak’s “math.”
At the Christian Socials’ Convention, Herr Kunschak calculated that the annual tax
burden on the population of Vienna came to 1,309.093 krone per capita. His math is
correct—but everything else is wrong. This is what characterizes Vienna’s taxes, and what
distinguishes them from the Christian Socials taxes of the past: the tax obligations of each
part of society are profoundly different from one another.
Why do workers care about the domestic employee tax? Who among us, from workers to
middle class, can afford two domestic employees?9
This is a tax that must be removed from the calculation. The Viennese only pay the tax
on the subletting of rooms in exceptional circumstances. This cost has clearly only made
its way into Herr Kunschak’s calculations by mistake. Neither laborers nor office workers,
nor for that matter small business owners, own a car. So, the forty-five billion in revenue
from the motor vehicle tax should likewise be taken out of the calculation. Since proletar-
ians rarely keep horses, whether for riding or dressage, we can throw out the horse tax too.
People in working-class circles rarely go to art auctions, so they are untouched by the pub-
lic auction tax. They do not own franchised businesses and therefore pay no franchising tax.
The capital gains tax, the advertising tax, the public signage tax—they all have no bearing

9 Thedomestic staff tax applied to the second domestic employee and increased with each additional
employee. Households with a single employee were exempt from this tax.
 Finances and Taxes  39

on most of the population of Vienna. The taxes on foodstuffs, drinks, and tobacco, since
two-thirds of all businesses are legally tax-free, apply almost exclusively to the upper classes.
This is also true in large measure for the entertainment tax. This brings us to another great
advantage of the Viennese tax system: they leave the necessities of life untouched and only
affect other forms of spending. Workers and employees, not being property owners, pay no
property tax and no real estate fees. The additional fees on totalizers and bookmakers don’t
fall on the working classes of Vienna either. But everyone does have to pay the housing con-
struction tax, and that’s why it is calculated along a graduated scale, so that
it starts at a factor of three hundred for small apartments and ends at a factor of six
thousand for large home in villas and palaces.
Simply dividing numbers, as I will show later by way of an example, leads therefore
to a completely false conclusion. Herr Kunschak’s calculation is therefore not correct! Yes,
if the ideal Christian Social tax program were ever to become reality, if the special taxes
were to go away and be converted into the federal sales tax, then and only then would
simple division of this sort be appropriate.
The federal sales tax is structured this way. It affects the piece of bread the unemployed
man buys with his meager support check in the exact same amount as the piece of bread that
someone tears off during their elegant meal at the Sacher café. But the Viennese taxes paint
quite a different picture.

3.
Viktor Kienböck
Foundations of Financial Policy
First published as “Grundsätze der Finanzpolitik,” Reichspost, January 28, 1927, 2–3.
Translated by Andrew Hamilton.

The lawyer and Christian Social politician Viktor Kienböck (1873–1956) served from
1922 to 1924 and again from 1926 to 1929 as federal finance minister. In this position,
Kienböck took out loans from the League of Nations and oversaw the “restructuring” of the
state’s finances under then chancellor Ignaz Seipel. In the 1930s he became president of the
Oesterreichische Nationalbank, Austria’s central bank (1932–1938). Hugo Breitner sarcas-
tically called him the “beacon of the Christian Social Party” and Robert Danneberg under-
lined that it had been Kienböck who, as finance minister, “had preached and led the crusade
against the finances of Vienna.”10 Around 1933 Rost von Tonningen, the representative of
the finance committee of the League of Nations in Vienna, noted in his diary: “Together with
the chancellor and Kienböck we have judged it necessary to dissolve the Austrian Parliament,
since this Parliament was sabotaging the reconstruction effort.”11 In the following speech
Kienböck explains the foundations of his financial policy, which he was only able to imple-
ment as things took ever more authoritarian turns.

A presentation from Finance Minister Dr. Kienböck.

[. . .]

10 Breitner, Seipel-Steuern oder Breitner-Steuern?, 4; Danneberg, Der finanzielle Marsch auf Wien,

11.
11 Quoted in Klingenstein (1965, 98).
40  Finances and Taxes

In wishing to describe the task of creating a healthy finance policy, I would like to
emphasize four points, which I consider the
Guiding aims of finance policy
First of all frugality in spending, a frugality that leads, in countries such as ours, to
various forms of unfairness. But this unfairness cannot be avoided as long as items of state
spending are of such great importance. To this point I would like to reiterate the role
played here in Austria by the burden of pensions. We have 146,000 former public servants
receiving pensions, compared to 200,000 currently employed. The cost of these pensions
come to 204 million schillings per year, plus another 358 million schillings when you
add in the railways. The assets, on the other hand, require 732 million schillings. We ear-
marked 94.5 million schillings for unemployment assistance and 53.3 million shillings for
the war wounded. These are the burdens that fate has placed on us; nevertheless, it is nec-
essary to consider where those numbers come from and what problems arise from them.
The second point is that of coherence of spending policies at the federal level. This
coherence is of special importance because we are a small economy, and because the
cohesion of even such a small economy as this one will necessarily collapse if the spending
policies of the various parts do not align with one another.
The third point is the tax burden. In Austria it is not just a matter of the level of
taxes, but rather of how they are levied. Because it is evident that the difficulty caused by
the tax burden takes on a different character depending on how it is applied, the method
of implementation is crucial. The fourth point is the healthy and proper treatment of debt
taken on by the public body.
In order to align with these four points, finance policy must be unified and well
planned, otherwise it cannot succeed. [. . .]
And that is true as well for the third point, that of the tax burden. In this regard we are
doing quite poorly. The federal constitution gives the government certain tools for respond-
ing to new tax laws passed at the state level, but when it comes to existing taxes, we are quite
restricted. Thus a certain degree of rigidity has emerged when it comes to state taxation. To
speak frankly, the origin of the trouble is this: there is a tension between the policies of the federal
government and that of the state with the largest economy, Vienna. The ruling party in Vienna
has for various reasons refused to touch their taxes, it presides attentively and happily over
the integrity of the inventory of these taxes. The other states are put in a difficult situation.
They have far fewer opportunities when it comes to their tax policies and have in many ways
turned toward Vienna’s examples in crafting their own plans.
As long as the federal government is powerless in the face of the tax policies of the states,
no decisive step in this matter will be possible. Therefore, the drastic measures we are obliged
to call for are scarcely possible. It cannot be done from one day to the next. But if several other
steps are taken first—and I am optimistic about that—I believe that reason leads to a recog-
nition of certain facts that will break down the walls that still divide our attitudes.
The fourth point speaks to debt policies. Much has been written on the question of
whether the state should take on debt. In this question, too, I take an opportunistic per-
spective. Just recently, [Rudolf] Goldscheidt [sic] has published a handbook, in which
socialist finance policies are clearly worked out. Goldscheidt praises Breitner’s policies.
He begins with the assumption that the state must become wealthy again. He rejects a
state indebted to capitalists and calls for a reclaiming of the state. These theories are just a
series of maxim-like sentences, and I reject them.
Is it preferable for society that a great portion of the national wealth be in the hands of
individuals or in the hands of the collective? I would like to answer that question on the basis
of who would administer that wealth more productively.
 Finances and Taxes  41

[. . .]
The reason why the Social Democrats have positioned themselves against a uni-
fied finance policy is that they want to pursue the aims of their party in Vienna without
restriction. A major part of this attitude is their wish to bring to fruition their views on
housing construction.
[. . .]
We do not oppose the idea that the city government should be involved in the construction
of housing but rather that in doing so, they hinder the healthy distribution of housing; for as
long as the current structures governing the rental industry remain in place, the distribution
of housing cannot follow its natural course, and so one cannot precisely determine the need
for housing.

4.
Anonymous
On the Tax Policy of the City of Vienna
First published as “Zur Steuerpolitik der Gemeinde Wien,” Die Arbeiterin 7, no. 1
(January 1930): 6. Translated by Andrew Hamilton.

The Communist Party, which during the First Republic had no seats in either the Parliament
or in the Vienna Municipal Council, was consistently critical of the policies of Red Vienna.
The journal of Communist women in Austria, Die Arbeiterin (The woman worker), which
appeared monthly from 1924 to 1931, published articles on the topics of women’s work and
unemployment as well as labor disputes and the condition of working mothers. It held the
Social Democrats responsible for social grievances, including Breitner’s tax policy, which
it saw as insufficient. Even as Vienna took on savings measures during the crisis, the
Communist women protested. Several issues of Die Arbeiterin featured a column titled “Das
Rote Wien” (“Red Vienna”) in which the editors offered critiques from a women’s point
of view. The masthead featured the image of a pregnant woman being kicked out of the
Homeless Shelter of the City of Vienna.

Relieving the “overburdened” economy at the expense of the overburdened working

class, that is the basis of today’s Social Democratic tax policy.
In recent months the following taxes were cut by the city of Vienna:
The automobile tax
The advertising tax
The welfare contributions of credit institutes
(Further tax relief has been promised to the capitalists for the near future.)
And how does Breitner intend to replace the money lost by these reductions? By
raising:
Streetcar fares
The price of electricity
The price of gas
That is, through tremendous burdens on working-class households. Breitner takes the
last few pennies from the pocket of the working woman! Breitner is taxing the unem-
ployed to write massive checks for the capitalist millionaires.
42  Finances and Taxes

5.
Gabriele Proft
No! From the Finance and Budget
Board of the National Council
First published as G.P., “Nein! Aus dem Finanz- und Budgetausschuß des Nationalrates,”
Die Frau 40, no. 3 (March 1931): 4. Translated by Andrew Hamilton.

The women of the Social Democratic Workers’ Party between the wars discussed how the
economic crisis affected men and women to different degrees. During the years of the First
Republic, numerous articles address topics concerning the crisis as well as the restructuring
measures and their consequences for women. The critique was aimed at the response to the
crisis at the federal level, where the Christian Socials determined the government’s policies.
The women politicized the budgetary decisions and by the same token questioned the orga-
nization of state income and expenditures. “G.P.” probably refers to the initials of Gabriele
Proft (1879–1971), longtime Central Secretary of the women’s organization of the Austrian
Social Democratic Workers’ Party. She entered the Vienna Municipal Council in 1918 and
was a member of the Constituent National Assembly from 1919 and of the National Council
from 1920 to 1934. Two years after the stock market crash of 1929, she reports on the budget
debates in the National Council in the journal for Social Democratic women.

Everywhere we go we hear complaints about the state of business, stagnation of the mar-
ket, bankruptcies, and closure of businesses and shops. The crisis! Businessmen demand
tax relief, factory owners demand cuts to “social burdens,” agriculture demands help
from the state. Variations on the same theme naturally come up during the weeks of
negotiations over the federal budget in the budget committee. And rightly so, to some
degree. But has the crisis only affected trade and transport, industry, factories, property
owners, and farmers? Has it not also affected those that no one talks about, the workers,
the low-level employees, those at the bottom of the ladder? Them most of all! For it is
from them that we are trying to withhold wages, save on welfare costs. They are made to
pay more taxes, so that the system of direct taxation can be dismantled, so that agricul-
ture can get the help it needs. The industrial and rural proletariat has only one advocate:
the Social Democratic Party. Comrades of both sexes have also advocated for the particu-
lar demands of women. To make it clear from the outset:
The answer was always “no!”
It is one of our government’s great sins that it failed to ratify the Maternity Protection
Convention, 1919, which would have guaranteed support for pregnant workers and pro-
tected their jobs after they give birth. Germany did so more than two years ago. And this
year our minister of social affairs gave another “no.”
Access for all women to health insurance, which has so far been denied them? No.
Enrollment of house maids in unemployment benefits? No.
Equal support for unemployed women? No.
Continued support for unemployed youth? No. Reason? The crisis.
In times of crisis, everyone should be protected, but we are still taking from working
people, especially from women and children. The latest resolution of the Industrial District
Commission of Vienna is appalling. Beginning on March 1, all emergency support pay-
ments for men are to be reduced by 10 percent. But for women—20 percent!! Why? Because
they need less, replies the minister for social affairs. But their contribution is not in any way
reduced. They will still be robbed as a matter of right. The young jobless will no longer
 Finances and Taxes  43

get twenty-four or forty-eight weeks of support, but now only twelve weeks. Why? The crisis.
But didn’t we just have to start an entirely new program because our youth are suffering so
intensely from lack of employment? “Youth in Dire Straits,” we read in every newspaper.
Collections were taken up, centers opened, soup and bread distributed, a bit of warmth given
out. This bodily and morally suffering youth will now have their unemployment support
taken from them after only twelve weeks. Is such a thing even possible to understand? A
Christian Social speaker addressed the matter. He said the budget should include something
for the desperate young people. “The girls should stay at home, sewing and mending, get-
ting ready for their vocation as wives. But for the boys, we need to come up with something.”
The minister declined. Women and girls, take note. A woman from the Social Democrats
asked him how the girls should work at home, in a house where everything had long been
sold or repurposed. The boys also have to pay their contribution to social security. Give them
what is theirs by right, and they won’t have to go begging. Then the young generation won’t
have to accept so much “charity,” if we recognize their hard-earned rights. And the girls?
Do you think that they don’t make any contribution to social security? But when they come
looking for support, they get sent home to get ready for their wifely duties. One day that girl
will probably be the wife of an unemployed man, and that requires a very specific kind of job
training. A preparation that is unfortunately only too important in our capitalist society.
[. . .]
In other important domains, for example agriculture, trade, and finance, the female
members of the budget committee represented the interests of the buying public and of
the cooperative societies. As always, our male comrades support us in representing the
advancement of women in firm solidarity.

6.
Anonymous
In the Sign of Austerity. Meeting of
the Vienna Municipal Council
First published as “Im Zeichen der Sparsamkeit: Sitzung des Wiener Gemeinderates,”
Arbeiter-Zeitung, June 13, 1931, 5. Translated by Andrew Hamilton.

The pressure on the city government of Vienna from the federal government to institute
austerity measures in the state and city budgets grew over the course of the crisis. At the same
time the effects of the crisis were making themselves felt in the city’s finances in the form of
falling tax revenue. While the federal government pursued a course of austerity, Vienna
persisted with its infrastructure projects. In particular the investments in the domain of
housing were supposed to continue. Continued construction was, in addition to a measure
against housing shortages, a comprehensive job creation measure. A radical change only
became possible after the 1934 arrest of the Social Democratic city government and the
takeover of the city administration by Richard Schmitz, a representative of Austrofascism.

In a busy session yesterday, the Vienna Municipal Council agreed to a series of proposals
in keeping with the imperative to save during a time of financial crisis. However, at the
same time they also endorsed further spending for job-creating initiatives, primarily the
construction of new housing.
The Municipal Council endorsed without debate the new construction of streets near
the Quellenstrasse housing units in the Favoriten District, the new construction of canals
44  Finances and Taxes

in the districts of Hietzing and Brigittenau, the purchase of a plot in Ottakring, as well as
land swaps with the federal government.
Vice Mayor Emmerling spoke about cutting the cost of streetcars by putting on hold
new acquisitions, because of the city transit corporation’s finances. City Councillor
Tandler reported on the cancellation of contracts with hospitals. The city had contracts
with the hospitals Alland, Weidlingau, Strengberg and Grimmenstein which obliged it to
pay for the contractually obligated beds when they are unoccupied. In a time of cutbacks,
the city can no longer afford to do so. The cancellation should not be taken to mean that
the city is in any way itself unoccupied with the matter of hospitals, however. Objections
from the Christian Socials Motzko and Arnold were addressed in Tandler’s closing state-
ment: We must find ways to save in every nook and cranny, and I am fighting for every
last penny because I know at least as well as you do how bad it is. No one will believe
that we are taking any pleasure from making these cuts. There can be no talk of cutting
back on tuberculosis care. In 1930 we had 1,392 beds in tuberculosis wards; in 1931 we
have 1,432. This includes the 100 beds we built in just one tuberculosis pavilion in Lainz.
Here, too, we are working as hard as possible.
City Councillor Weber reports on the construction of the laundry and baths and of
two houses in Brigittenau, designed by the architect Rudolf Perco. The cost is estimated at
1.62 million schillings. According to the design, it will contain thirty-five new apartments.

7.
Otto Bauer
The Budget Restructuring Law: A Speech given
on October 9, 1931 by Dr. Otto Bauer before
the Delegates of the Postal Union
First published as Das Budgetsanierungsgesetz: Vortrag, gehalten am 9. Oktober 1931 von
Dr. Otto Bauer vor den Vertrauensmännern der Postgewerkschaft (Vienna: Verlag der
Postgewerkschaft, 1931), 2–16. Translated by Andrew Hamilton.

After the collapse of the Creditanstalt, representatives of the federal government traveled
to Geneva in 1931 to negotiate the conditions of new loans from the League of Nations.
Chancellor Karl Buresch subsequently made a proposal to the Parliament for a new restruc-
turing law, which called for hefty spending cuts in the federal budget. After their experi-
ence with inflation, the SDAP acted on the premise that maintaining a stable currency
value through a balanced budget was a necessity. There was, however, a debate as to “where
there should be cuts and how they should be implemented.”12 In this speech before some of the
affected civil servants, Otto Bauer justified why the Social Democrats supported the restruc-
turing law of 1931.

How the city of Vienna is run.

To understand our position, I must remind you what we have done in the city of Vienna
and in the other municipalities where we have governed. You know that the cities are in
just as bad a position as the state. That much is obvious. When the economy gets knocked

12 Bauer, Das Budgetsanierungsgesetz, 7.

 Finances and Taxes  45

down, then the operations of the cities feel it too. The worker who is employed rides every
day in the streetcar. The unemployed worker does not. That means that every bit that the
unemployment rate goes up is also a hit to the streetcar’s budget. And it is just the same
way in every branch of city services. For example, the electric works. When factories shut
down, then they don’t need any electricity, and the electric works record less revenue.
This is how the communities we govern got into difficulties. The city of Vienna is
approaching a crisis, after a reduction in revenue that necessitates a cut in spending by
ninety-eight million schillings. The other cities governed by Social Democrats are in a simi-
lar spot. And what have we done? First of all, we have saved, saved where we could. But
that approach has its limits. We have made appreciable savings. We could have saved ninety-
eight million schillings on material expenditures alone if the city of Vienna had simply
decided not to pay anyone’s wages. I am thinking of the ninety-eight million schillings the
city spends on housing construction. We could have said that we were suspending all con-
struction, so we don’t need any manpower. But that would have left us with another ten
thousand unemployed, condemned to bitter poverty, it would mean further constraints on
the production of consumer goods, which would mean a further loss of tax revenue. That
must not be allowed to happen, as you will agree, and so the city of Vienna was compelled
to turn to its workers and say, “negotiate with us, we have no wish to dictate!”
[. . .]
We Social Democrats do not dispute the need to balance the government’s budget
if we want to avoid another period of inflation. [. . .] We have previously demanded that
the rich pay more and that unproductive spending be cut, so that the number of victims of
the federal policies be as small as possible, so that it is smaller than the government has sug-
gested. We will not support savings taken from productive spending, such that we build
fewer roads, etc. That we cannot support, because to do so would mean creating more
joblessness.

The struggle in Parliament.

The struggle began in Parliament, and it gave rise to a chaos in Parliament such as I have
never seen in my twenty-five years in the legislature. In the famous night from Friday to
Saturday, the situation was as follows. The scene is the chamber of the finance commit-
tee, a meeting room larger than the one in which we find ourselves today, with a long,
horseshoe-shaped table in the middle. At this table sit the members of the finance com-
mittee and the members of the government and around them nearly every member of
Parliament sits listening.
The government has lost majority support for its restructuring law, and the Christian
Socials no longer agree among themselves. But most of all the Christian Socials are no
longer in agreement with their usual coalition partners, the Pan-German People’s Party
[Großdeutsche Volkspartei, GdP]. The GdP pass themselves off as the defender of civil
servants, by which they mean section chiefs and court councillors. (Laughter) They
oppose the restructuring, and the pan-German high school teacher [Hermann] Foppa
[1882–1959], their spokesman in this conflict, claimed with great passion that the GdP
could never support the measure. On the other hand, a government could be formed
from a coalition of the Christian Socials with the Rural League.13 But they had neither

13 After the dissolution of the coalition between the Social Democrats and the Christian Socials

in 1920, the Christian Social Party formed a coalition with the Pan-German People’s Party (until
1932) and the Rural League (Landbund, 1927–1934), a pan-German and anti-Semitic farmers’
party.
46  Finances and Taxes

the GdP nor the Heimatblock,14 and they did not have us either. Herr Buresch nego-
tiates. He negotiates with the GdP, he negotiates with the Heimatblock, all of which
results in ever new constellations.
When evening came it seemed that the government would win a majority made
up of Christian Socials, the Rural League, and the Heimatblock. The members of the
Heimatblock were prepared to vote for the government’s proposal. They demanded only
a single condition, namely, that Starhemberg resume the post of minister of the interi-
or.15 Doktor Buresch could not agree to that, although he really has no qualms about
working with undesirable people. If he had, the schilling would have ceased to exist the
following day. And so, after it had seemed for a few seconds that Herr Buresch would
come to terms with the Heimatblock, the whole thing collapsed. Then he tried again
with the GdP, but nothing came out of that. Around midnight it looked as though the
Parliament would not come to an agreement and the government would have to resign.
At around this time the news came from outside, the news that the foreign stock
exchanges were cutting out the schilling. This was true of almost every exchange.
Schilling notes were no long being accepted. Now the representatives of the sav-
ings banks [Sparkassen] came to the Parliament; naturally they felt threatened by a
possible currency collapse. They warned the members of every party: “We call your
attention to what is happening among the population.” We were given police reports
from the bucket shop exchanges of Leopoldstadt. This was the situation: if nothing
were settled by Saturday morning, if the Parliament failed in its task of balancing the
federal budget, if the world had seen that the Austrian Parliament was not in a posi-
tion to balance its budget, then I say to you that the catastrophe that would have hit
the schilling that Saturday morning would have been inevitable. And that is why we
decided to negotiate.

8.
Anonymous
The Financial Demands on Vienna
First published as “Die finanziellen Forderungen an Wien,” Die Frau 42, no. 10 (October
1933): 7. Translated by Andrew Hamilton.

A recurring theme for Social Democrats was the financial pressure from the federal govern-
ment, which opposed Red Vienna’s fiscal policies. The economic and political crisis enabled
the argument for strengthened cost-saving and “cost-sharing” measures. The government
also sought to undo the fiscal independence achieved by the city through the separation from
Lower Austria through the frequent revision to the taxation distribution law, which stipu-
lated the division of tax revenue between the federal and state governments. Such revisions
were fast-tracked after the suspension of parliamentary democracy in March of 1933, when it
became possible to rule through emergency declarations and decrees that bypassed democratic
decision-making processes. In June 1933 the Arbeiter-Zeitung wrote: “The government has

14 The Heimatblock was a political party in the First Republic and the political wing of the
Heimwehr.
15 Ernst Rüdiger Starhemberg (1899–1956) became leader of the armed paramilitary Heimwehr

in 1930 and served from 1933 to 1936 as vice-chancellor and head of the Fatherland Front
(Vaterländische Front), which functioned as an Austrofascist unity party.
 Finances and Taxes  47

issued a new order ‘based on’ the martial economy authorization act (Kriegswirtschaftliches
Ermächtigungsgesetz) [. . .]: by government order, the income of the city of Vienna was
slashed by twenty-two million schillings with the stroke of a pen.”16

The Austrian government has declared that the city of Vienna has an annual so-called
“cost-sharing” payment of thirty-six million schillings to pay for 1933 and 1934. What the
purpose of this payment could be, that was announced in the “Wiener Zeitung”: for bank
restructuring and for the deficit in the national railway. The “cost-equalizing” measure
therefore consists in having the Christian Social regions pay nothing for the banks and the
trains, while the red city simply pays for it all.
What the working people of Vienna have to say about the matter has been heard in
the Vienna State Assembly and at dozens of public demonstrations: the continued con-
struction of homes and care for children and the elderly are being threatened! And thirty-
six million schillings a year—that comes to twenty schillings per person per year!
Only a few days had passed before yet another cut to the city’s revenue was made: the
tax on foodstuffs, drinks, and tobacco was lifted. That means a loss of seven million schil-
lings per year for the city of Vienna. Just as we saw with the “cost-equalizing” measures,
when the other regions paid nothing for bank restructuring or to cover the railway’s defi-
cit, once again the residents of places with bourgeois government keep levying the tax on
foodstuffs, drinks, and tobacco, while in Vienna it has been lifted.
Shall the fight against Red Vienna continue like this? The best answer comes from
the Social Democratic call for the convocation of the National Council: “1,216,327 men
and women have demanded that our freedoms, that the civil rights of workers, that the
rights of our Red Vienna and our other communities not be decided by the federal govern-
ment alone, but by the freely elected representatives of the people.”

16Anonymous, “Die Regierung nimmt der Gemeinde 22 Millionen!,” Arbeiter-Zeitung, April 14,
1933, 2.
 Austrian Research Center for Economic Psychology (Österreichische
Wirtschaftspsychologische Forschungsstelle): “We Have Researched,” ca. 1934.
(Courtesy: Archiv für die Geschichte der Soziologie in Österreich,
Karl-Franzens-Universität Graz.)
 CHAPTER THREE

CONSUMPTION AND ENTERTAINMENT

Marie-Noëlle Yazdanpanah

F ood, clothes, media, and tourism—the Austrian Research Center for Economic
Psychology (Österreichische Wirtschaftspsychologische Forschungsstelle) (1931–
1935/37) surveyed consumers about their preferences, their purchasing behavior, and
the effectiveness of advertising. Its clients included Austrian and foreign companies such
as the grocery chain Julius Meinl and the Budapest Tourism Bureau. Among the organ-
isation’s staff were Paul F. Lazarsfeld, Marie Jahoda, and Hans Zeisel. Most of the cen-
ter’s staff had Social Democratic leanings and worked on projects for Red Vienna—for
example, for the Career Counseling Office of the City of Vienna and the Chamber of
Labor (Berufsberatungsamt der Stadt Wien und der Arbeiterkammer). At first glance,
it seems surprising that Social Democrats carried out consumer and market research for
money. However, in the center’s sociological studies and in those undertaken by Käthe
Leichter at the Female Labor Unit of the Chamber of Labor (Referat für Frauenarbeit
der Arbeiterkammer), research and analysis of consumer behavior, everyday practices,
and especially lifestyle choices were considered highly relevant.1
At the same time, many leftists rejected a popular mass culture that they saw as
consumerist. Communists in particular disapproved of it for papering over the realities
of class, seducing the workers and distracting them from the class struggle. But instead
of suppressing (luxury) consumerism—as in the Soviet Union for example—Red
Vienna sought to incorporate consumerism and entertainment into the financial basis
of its reform program. After Vienna was constituted as a separate state (1922) and the
governing Social Democrats gained the authority to levy their own state taxes, Hugo
Breitner, the city councillor of finance, introduced direct, progressively increasing taxes
according to living expenses. Taxes were imposed on land speculation, on ownership
of land and housing, and on luxury goods and services: hotels, cafés, restaurants, the-
aters, cinemas, domestic servants, horses, dogs, and cars. The aim was for the rich to
fund redistribution of wealth from the top down. However, the new taxes also affected
working-class people when they visited cinemas, revue theaters, or soccer matches.
This chapter focuses on the unequal opportunities for consumption and their causes,
on the way advertising and opportunities for mass-culture consumerism were differen-
tiated, and on attempts to adopt and reinterpret these concepts and opportunities for
social democracy. The structure follows the various phases of economic development in

1See, for example, Käthe Leichter, So leben wir . . . 1320 Industriearbeiterinnen berichten über ihr
Leben (Vienna: Verlag Arbeit und Wirtschaft, 1932), and chapters 4 and 12 in this volume.
50  Consumption and Entertainment

Vienna—and the associated cultural development of consumerism—from 1918 to 1934:

the first texts take as their theme the economic contradictions in the immediate post-
war period. These were characterized, on the one hand, by the awareness that inflation,
unemployment, and scarcity of food and raw materials were causing an existential crisis,
and, on the other hand, by the new—and widely regarded as illegitimate—wealth of the
“war profiteers.” The collapse of the currency, which had started during the war, contin-
ued accelerating rapidly until 1924. Despite food subsidies, which only drove up infla-
tion further, the cost of living had increased by some 90 percent by the end of 1919. In
addition to growing pauperization of large sections of the population, the consequences
were flight of capital, the sale of factories to (often foreign) investors, the black market,
and high-risk currency speculation. Those who had grown rich from war and speculation
indulged in luxury consumerism and financed and frequented venues of popular culture.
The “speculation kings” Camillo Castiglioni and Sigmund Bosel became synonymous
with this excess: both enjoyed meteoric rises and falls; both were well-connected politi-
cally and both triggered fateful financial scandals. When literary and journalistic writ-
ers discussed the changes to society caused by the speculation boom, they generally had
these two men in mind.2 Some focused on the fact that both men were Jewish, thus using
them as examples for the anti-Semitic stereotype of Jewish profiteering.
The working time restrictions accomplished at the national level by the Social
Democratic Workers’ Party (Sozialdemokratische Arbeiterpartei, SDAP), along with the
minimum annual leave for workers of one week and the new concept of the weekend
that started on Saturday afternoon, led to a growth of the culture of consumerism and
free time. For the first time, these were—to varying extents—accessible to a relatively
large group. Especially during the brief economic recovery from the mid-1920s to the
start of the Great Depression in 1929, a new urban culture flourished. This new urban
culture received and adapted to outside influences and encompassed cinema, radio,
sport, fashion, tourism, and motoring as well as new gender norms. Technological
innovations enabled new forms of visual design in advertising and fashion; taste and
demand increasingly shaped what was available for consumption. Advertising became
ever more present and was increasingly aimed at the middle and working classes: it
fueled new desires and promised future participation in the coming prosperity. Revues
and jazz conquered Vienna only slightly later than they had other major cities interna-
tionally, and a sterotypical image of America came to serve as an ambivalent symbol of
this consumerist popular culture and the (albeit somewhat muted) mood of change.
The texts in this chapter focus not just on aspects of change, innovation, and freedom
(even if the crisis, especially in later years, became increasingly relevant); they also illus-
trate the varied attitudes among Social Democrats toward consumerism and popular
culture.

Further reading
Breuss and Eder 2006
Gruber 1991
Hauch 1999
Mattl 2016

2See, for example, Karl Kraus, “Metaphysik der Haifische,” Die Fackel 25, nos. 632–39 (1923):
150–58.