Red Vienna
As Red Vienna is Austria's capital Vienna referred to in the years of 1919 and 1934, when the Social Democratic Labor Party of German Austria (SDAP) in the elections to parliament and local council reiterates the absolute majority reached. The social democratic local politics of these years was characterized by extensive social housing projects and a financial policy that was supposed to support extensive reforms in social, health and educational policy in addition to housing. The social democracy formed "through its position in Vienna a power factor that turned out to be a blockade against the unrestricted realization of a policy to the detriment of the wage earners [...]", an antipole to the politics of the Christian Social Party (CS) , which at that time in the other federal states and governed at the federal level. The "Red Vienna" ended in 1934 when Mayor Karl Seitz was removed from office and arrested as a result of the Austrian civil war and the Fatherland Front (VF), which emerged from the CS, also took power in Vienna.
Since the Social Democrats have consistently provided the mayor and the majority in the Vienna Landtag and local council since 1945, the term is sometimes used by political opponents as a polemical term for the city administration dominated by the SPÖ .
Social conditions
After the First World War and the collapse of the Danube Monarchy , Austria was declared a republic . In the municipal council elections on May 4, 1919, women and men from all walks of life were entitled to vote for the municipal council for the first time. The Social Democratic Party in Vienna won the majority. Although the elected representatives now had a free hand, they were faced with a difficult task. Officials from areas that had become foreign returned to their home countries in their thousands, refugees from Galicia, which was temporarily occupied by Russia, and former soldiers of the Austro-Hungarian Army came to Vienna, at least temporarily.
The new state and customs borders with Czechoslovakia and Hungary , from which Vienna had been supplied until then, made deliveries of food to Vienna difficult. (With the help of the nationwide existing socialist consumer associations , it was possible to secure the city's food supply.) In the new Austria, the capital was viewed as a “head of water” - much too big for the small country. In addition, there was the war-related hyperinflation , which was not followed until 1925 by the currency reform from the krone to the shilling . Until then, wages and salaries had often lost dramatically in value just a few hours after they were paid out.
Diseases such as tuberculosis (“Viennese disease”), Spanish flu and syphilis were rampant in the overcrowded rental apartments and emergency shelters with sparse sanitary facilities . In addition to the extreme housing shortage, there was the high number of unemployed.
- “If the last decades of the Habsburg power had been under the sign of 'hopeless but not serious', there were now many who diagnosed the grim seriousness of the situation, where constructive possibilities for social and political action finally appeared. For the pragmatic majority, however, the most urgent task was to use these opportunities. [...] In the new Austria there was enough positive work for the intellectuals. For people like Hans Kelsen and Karl Bühler , there was little reason to doubt the possibility of realizing values in practical social life. A constitution had to be drawn up, a parliament set up, and a functioning system of social democracy set in motion. [...] In the eyes of the pragmatists, it was a time of development and optimism. "
The dreary material starting position was thus faced with considerable intellectual resources. The later famous Sigmund Freud , Arthur Schnitzler , Karl Kraus , Friedrich gate mountain and many other scientists, artists, writers and architects who lived in Vienna, the construction work of the Social Democratic city administration were positive about and did not participate in the fundamental opposition of the Christian Social Party for Reform work.
Local politics
The federal policy of the Red-Black Coalition 1918–1920 brought the legally anchored eight-hour day and subsequently unemployment insurance just seven days after the proclamation of the republic . The Chamber of Labor as a legal representation of the interests of workers and employees came into being at this time. The social democrats' zeal for reform was, however, less and less shared by the Christian Socials as the distance to the end of the war grew. The coalition broke up in 1920, after which the Social Democrats in the state as a whole were in opposition or underground until 1945.
They tried all the more to make Vienna, where they could rule practically alone, the model city of social democratic social policy. At the time, their policies were viewed as spectacular and observed across Europe. The conservatives hated this policy to some extent, but were initially unable to counter the election successes of the Social Democrats in Vienna.
Vienna had also been the capital of what is now the federal state of Lower Austria for centuries . With its strong Social Democratic majority and the Social Democrats from the Lower Austrian industrial district around Wiener Neustadt , the “Reds” also provided the first democratic governor of Lower Austria, Albert Sever . Since the peasant country did not want to be ruled by the “Reds”, while the Viennese “Socis” did not want the conservative rural population to interfere in their local politics, the two big parties soon agreed on the “red Vienna” from the “black” Lower Austria ”.
This separation was decided in 1920 in the new federal constitution , according to which Vienna had the rights of an independent federal state since November 10, 1920 and immediately adopted its own city constitution. (The division of the institutions shared with Lower Austria was agreed in the Separation Act in 1921 ; on January 1, 1922, the old state of Lower Austria was definitely history.) In 1920 Vienna became one of the states of the republic: The mayor was now also the governor, the city senate also the state government Local council also state parliament. The new status as a federal state made it possible for the city of Vienna to raise taxes independently for the first time. This secured the independent policy of the municipality of Vienna, as the city called itself, downplaying its rank.
Local political priorities
Urban housing and transport
Because of the extreme housing shortage, the creation of new housing became the main goal of the Social Democrats. With the Federal Housing Requirement Act of 1919, better utilization of the apartments could already be achieved. Because the tenant protection (RGBl. 34 and 36/1917) decreed by the Imperial and Royal Ministry in 1917 and immediately extended to Vienna stipulated rental rates at the pre-war level, building was no longer worthwhile for private individuals. In the absence of private demand, building land and construction costs were cheap for the community.
From 1925 to 1934, over 60,000 apartments were built in this way in community buildings . Large blocks of flats were built around courtyards with wide green spaces. Famous examples are the Karl-Marx-Hof or the George-Washington-Hof . The apartments were awarded according to a point system. Families or people with a handicap received plus points. 40 percent of the new apartments were financed from the income from the housing tax introduced in the State of Vienna , the rest primarily from the welfare tax , a four percent wage tax that was largely passed on to consumers by the companies. This has made it possible to reduce the rent burden in urban apartments for a working-class household to four percent of income, while it was previously 30 percent. In the event of illness or unemployment, the rent was deferred.
Another major infrastructure project in the interwar period was the opening of the Vienna Electric Light Railroad in 1925. It was based on the infrastructure of the steam light railroad from the imperial era , which was largely taken over by the municipality of Vienna and - after years of inactivity - electrified and reactivated.
Financial policy
A key figure in the financial policy of Red Vienna was Hugo Breitner (City Councilor for Finance from 1919 to 1932). Breitner, who was strongly influenced by Rudolf Goldscheid's ideas , adopted his thesis of the “financial autarky ” of the public budget, ie he refused to become dependent on banks and financial institutions by taking out loans. A central principle of Breitner's financial policy was therefore to finance ongoing tasks, but also investments, from current tax revenues. Breitner took a fundamentally deflationary stance and pursued the principle of budget equalization. In this context, he also consistently ensured that municipal companies were able to cover their costs and that they also generated the necessary capital for their investments themselves.
The Viennese Social Democrats introduced new taxes under state law, which were levied in addition to federal taxes (called Breitner taxes by critics after Finance Councilor Hugo Breitner ). Luxury was specially taxed: a luxury tax was levied on riding horses, large private cars, servants in private households, hotel rooms, restaurants, coffee houses, dog ownership, night clubs, brothels and other luxury goods and facilities . (In order to demonstrate their practical use, the city administration calculated which social institutions were financed only from the servant tax that the Viennese branch of the Rothschild family had to pay.)
The new housing tax was also progressive. Due to the tenant protection introduced in the final phase of the First World War and the nominally frozen rent, which had been devalued by inflation, private rental housing construction, which dominated before 1914, had come to a standstill. The housing tax now served to stimulate housing construction on the part of the municipality (nevertheless, even in the top segment, the total rent plus housing tax was only 20 to 37 percent). These measures relieved the low incomes and the higher incomes. The highly progressive design of the housing tax led z. For example, 0.5 percent of the property accounted for almost 45 percent of the tax revenue from the housing tax. Despite all prophecies of doom from business circles, Vienna was able to reduce the percentage of its unemployed compared to the rest of Austria or Germany. Community investments were funded directly through tax revenues and not through loans. This kept the company independent from lenders, and the budget was not burdened with debt interest. The rent for the city apartments could also be kept low.
The Breitner taxes met with approval from wide circles of the Viennese population because, according to the prevailing opinion, they were directed against speculators and war profiteers, whose lifestyle was perceived as provocative and immoral. Thus, the municipal taxes of the Red Vienna acquired a symbolic meaning as a sign of a new morality based on work and thrift, which was contrasted with the apparently irresponsible waste by the wealthy classes.
On the other hand, Hugo Breitner, who - in contrast to the Social Democrats since 1945 - fundamentally refused to finance social benefits from loans, had to cut these benefits when the federal government began to put Red Vienna at a significant financial disadvantage through the financial equalization scheme in the early 1930s.
Social and health policy
The city's social and health policy has been improved through cheap services from the city's gas and electricity companies and waste collection. For every baby, mothers received a free linen package so that “no Viennese child had to be wrapped in newspaper anymore”. To make it easier for mothers to work and to prevent the neglect of children on the street, after-school care centers, kindergartens and children's pools were set up. Medical care for the population was free. There were offers for spa stays and holiday colonies as well as public baths and sports facilities for physical training. According to Julius Tandler , City Councilor for Social Affairs and Health , people were aware of the overall social dimension of these measures: “What we spend on after-school care centers , we will save in prisons. What we use for pregnancy and infant care, we save in institutions for the mentally ill. ”In 1925 Tandler founded the child transfer center of the municipality of Vienna . The increase in social spending to three times the pre-war period was offset by a reduction in infant mortality below the Austrian average and in tuberculosis by half.
The measures of the social democratically oriented local politics also included the construction of the fire hall Simmering as the first Austrian crematorium . The advocates of cremation , especially the workers' branch of the cremation association Die Flamme founded on April 15, 1904 , had campaigned for the construction of crematoria in Austria for decades, but the authorities always rejected such requests. In 1921 the Vienna City Council finally approved the construction of a crematorium in Vienna. Mayor Reumann opened the Simmering fire hall on December 17, 1922, although a motion brought in by the Christian Social Minister Richard Schmitz the day before was supposed to prevent this. This was followed by a lawsuit against Reumann at the Constitutional Court , which finally decided in 1924 in favor of the fire hall.
Educational policy
Despite limited competencies, since education was a federal responsibility, a school reform was tackled in Vienna. Otto Glöckel , who was social democratic education minister in Austria from 1919 to 1920, became the driving force behind the Viennese school reform as head of the Vienna City School Council . The educational reform benefited from the fact that the Vienna of Sigmund Freud and Alfred Adler was a stronghold of the still young depth psychology . On the “switchboard of upbringing”, in teacher training, in parenting counseling, etc. , teachers, doctors and social workers trained in individual psychology worked primarily . New forms of school organization ( work school ), student participation and adult education were tried out. Free school attendance and scholarships should give all classes equal educational opportunities and enable the people to participate in democratic participation. According to the theory of Austromarxism , it was necessary to first educate and cultivate children and adults so that they could then, in a later step, as “new people”, realize socialism. In this respect, social democracy saw itself first and foremost as an "educational movement". Despite resistance from church-conservative circles, religious education was separated from the church. In Schönbrunn Palace , under the direction of Otto Felix Kanitz, the Schönbrunn Educational School existed from 1919 to 1924 , a pedagogical training facility of the Austrian Kinderfreunde at the time .
Culture and leisure
The Social Democratic Party took care of the cultural, sporting and social sectors in what would be called the party's “front-line organizations” today. More than fifty social democratic associations for a wide variety of interests were funded, including sports clubs to strengthen the “body for the struggle of the labor movement”. In addition to the actual purpose of the association, there was always educational work and socializing. Although the private life of party members was organized in a socialist manner in these associations, most party members remained at home in the petty-bourgeois world. Some clubs still exist - sometimes under a different name - for example:
- Workers' abstinence union
- Auto, Motor and Cyclists Association (ARBÖ)
- Working Group for Sport and Physical Culture (ASKÖ)
- Vienna Workers Gymnastics Club (WAT)
- Arbeiter-Samariter-Bund (ASB)
- Socialist Workers' Youth (SAJ)
- Free school - friends of children
In July 1926, a flower parade for automobiles, a huge firework display on the Hohe Warte, the Workers' Gymnastics and Sports Festival (60,000 participants) and the German Gymnastics Festival (50,000 participants) were celebrated in Vienna. In September 1926, the Dr. Karl Lueger memorial (60,000 participants) was unveiled . In 1928, Vienna was the venue for the 10th German Singers' Union Festival, in which, according to the police report, over 200,000 people took part. In 1929 there was a trade parade, a Catholic day and a socialist youth meeting as major events.
1928–1931 the city administration built the (Prater) stadium. It was opened in July 1931 with the Second Workers' Olympiad . The performance of the film Nothing New in the West based on the novel by Erich Maria Remarque led to stormy counter rallies by the National Socialists that lasted for days. In September 1933 - the parliament had already been switched off - hundreds of thousands from home and abroad met at the Catholic Day, which (250 years after 1683) was combined with a large "celebration of the liberation of the Turks". Now, cultural and sporting mass events were reserved for the emerging corporate state ; the traditional May march had already been banned by the Social Democrats in 1933.
Politician
The political leadership of the "Red Vienna" lay with the city senates and state governments Reumann , Seitz I , II and III . The following mandataries stand for social democratic-oriented local politics:
- Jakob Reumann , 1919–1923 first social democratic mayor
- Karl Seitz , mayor in 1923 until he was forcibly removed from the town hall in 1934
- Hugo Breitner , City Councilor for Finance
- Robert Danneberg , President of the State Parliament
- Julius Tandler , social and health reformer
- Otto Glöckel , school reformer
Opposition and criticism
The mainstay of the rule of the SDAP in Vienna was the working class, whose electoral potential the Christian Social Party , the most important opposition party in Red Vienna, was never able to exploit. In addition, with its vehement anti-Semitism, the CSP had pissed off the business Jews as potential voters. While there were still a larger number of parliamentary groups in the municipal council after the state and municipal council elections in 1923 , they were reduced to two parties in 1927 (SDAP and CSP). The CSP, led by the moderate but anti-Semitic Leopold Kunschak , criticized the politics of the Red Vienna in some cases violently. Instead of communal buildings, the CSP preferred to expand the cooperative system (which it said was neglected by the SDAP). Ignaz Seipel feared that the general population would become dependent on the state and that architectural neglect would result. The financing policy of City Councilor for Finance Hugo Breitner was also rejected; the CSP would rather borrow than raise taxes on a wide range. (After 1945 it was exactly the other way round.) The separation of education and church was a thorn in the side of the conservatives, and there was also fear of nationalized education. With the entry of the Austrian NSDAP into the local council in 1932, the climate in the parliamentary body became increasingly harsh.
See also
literature
- Harald A. Jahn : The Miracle of Red Vienna - Volume I: Between Economic Crisis and Art Deco , Phoibos Verlag, Vienna 2014, ISBN 978-3-85161-075-8
- Harald A. Jahn: The miracle of Red Vienna - Volume II: From the funds of the housing tax , Phoibos Verlag, Vienna 2014, ISBN 978-3-85161-076-5
- Helmut Weihsmann : Das Rote Wien: Social Democratic Architecture and Local Politics 1919-1934 , Edition traces, Vienna 2019, ISBN 978-3-85371-456-0
- Werner Michael Schwarz, Georg Spitaler, Elke Wikidal: Das Rote Wien 1919–1934: Ideas, Debates, Practice , Birkhäuser, Basel 2019, ISBN 978-3-0356-1957-7
Web links
- Web lexicon of the Viennese social democracy
- Red Vienna in the Vienna History Wiki of the City of Vienna
- History of Red Vienna (1918–1934) (private homepage)
- wien.at - Municipal Housing ( Memento from November 30, 2005 in the Internet Archive )
- there! The Red Vienna An audiovisual guide for smartphones, tablets and PCs to buildings and facilities in Red Vienna
- Neue Zürcher Zeitung from June 2, 2014: Tour of the Karl-Marx-Hof in Vienna. The red fortress is still standing
Individual evidence
- ↑ Emmerich Tálos, Walter Manoschek: On the constitutional process of Austrofascism , in: Emmerich Tálos, Walter Neugebauer (ed.): "Austrofaschismus". Contributions on politics, economy and culture 1934–1938 , Verlag für Gesellschaftskritik, Vienna ²1984, ISBN 3-900351-30-9 , p. 32
- ^ Allan Janik, Stephen Toulmin: Wittgenstein's Vienna. Simon & Schuster, New York 1973. Hanser, Munich 1984. pp. 321 f.
- ↑ Wolfgang Maderthaner: From around 1860 to 1945 in: Peter Csendes / Ferdinand Opll (eds.): Vienna. History of a city from 1790 to the present day . Vol. 3. Böhlau Verlag, Vienna-Cologne-Weimar 2006 ISBN 978-3-205-99268-4 , pp. 175–545, here p. 355
- ↑ Wolfgang Maderthaner: From around 1860 to 1945 in: Peter Csendes / Ferdinand Opll (eds.): Vienna. History of a city from 1790 to the present day . Vol. 3. Böhlau Verlag, Vienna-Cologne-Weimar 2006 ISBN 978-3-205-99268-4 , pp. 175-545, here pp. 353ff.
- ↑ Wolfgang Maderthaner: From around 1860 to 1945 in: Peter Csendes / Ferdinand Opll (eds.): Vienna. History of a city from 1790 to the present day . Vol. 3. Böhlau Verlag, Vienna-Cologne-Weimar 2006 ISBN 978-3-205-99268-4 , pp. 175–545, here p. 354
- ↑ The struggle for cremation in Vienna, in: Salzburger Wacht No. 156 (June 15, 1929), p. 8 (online on ANNO , accessed on August 15, 2018)
- ↑ 80 years of the Vienna Security Guard. Edited by the Federal Police Directorate Vienna. Jugend und Volk, Vienna 1949. pp. 55–58
- ↑ 80 years of the Vienna Security Guard. Edited by the Federal Police Directorate Vienna. Jugend und Volk, Vienna 1949. pp. 59–62
- ↑ Markus Benesch: The history of the Vienna Christian Social Party between the end of the monarchy and the beginning of the corporate state. (PDF; 15.1 MB) University of Vienna , 2010, accessed on September 4, 2014 (dissertation).