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2 - Social Democracy in Austria

from Social Democratic Routes in Europe

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 November 2022

By
Helmut Konrad
Edited by
Marcel van der Linden
Marcel van der Linden
Affiliation:
International Institute of Social History, Amsterdam
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Summary

The Habsburg monarchy, which disintegrated into several individual states in 1918 as a result of the First World War, was indeed an anachronistic entity in the second half of the nineteenth century. However, it was certainly also able to point to its strengths. Keeping 53 million people who used thirteen different languages and who belonged to the most diverse religions, loyal to the monarchy at a time when strong nation-states (German or Italian unification) were emerging and at the same time facilitating a modernization process, was an amazing achievement. The cohesion of the empire was guaranteed by the person of the emperor, who ruled from 1848 to 1916, by the military, on the one hand, and by the bureaucracy, on the other hand, but also by the Catholic Church and Judaism, for the latter of which this half century had retrospectively been a ‘golden age’. Also, the young working-class movement proved to be a strong pillar of the multinational state.

Type
Chapter
Information
The Cambridge History of Socialism , pp. 69 - 89
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2022

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References

Further Reading

Bischof, Günter, and Pelinka, Anton, with Rathkolb, Oliver (eds.), The Kreisky Era in Austria (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction, 1994).Google Scholar
Blau, Eve, The Architecture of Red Vienna, 1919–1934 (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1999).Google Scholar
Buttinger, Joseph, In the Twilight of Socialism: A History of the Revolutionary Socialists of Austria, trans. E. B. Ashton (New York: Praeger, 1953).Google Scholar
Czerwińska-Schupp, Ewa, Otto Bauer (1881–1938): Thinker and Politician (Leiden: Brill, 2016).Google Scholar
Gruber, Helmut, Red Vienna: Experiment in Working-Class Culture, 1919–1934 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991).Google Scholar
Jeffery, Charlie, Social Democracy in the Austrian Provinces, 1918–1934: Beyond Red Vienna (London: Leicester University Press, 1995).Google Scholar
Knapp, Vincent J., Austrian Social Democracy, 1889–1914 (Washington, DC: University Press of America, 1980).Google Scholar
Rabinbach, Anson, The Austrian Socialist Experiment: Social Democracy and Austromarxism, 1918–1934 (Boulder: Westview Press, 1985).Google Scholar
Rabinbach, Anson, The Crisis of Austrian Socialism: From Red Vienna to Civil War, 1927–1934 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1983).Google Scholar
Schorske, Carl E., Fin-de-Siècle Vienna: Politics and Culture (New York: Random House, 1993).Google Scholar

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