Helene Bauer

Helene Bauer (born Helene Gumplowicz on March 13, 1871 in Krakow , Austria-Hungary ; died on November 20, 1942 in Berkeley , California , Landau married from 1895 to 1918) was an Austrian social scientist, journalist and socialist. She was an employee and wife of the politician Otto Bauer , who decisively shaped the Social Democratic Workers' Party in Austria .

Helene Landau (-Bauer) (around 1905)

Life

Helene was born as the daughter of the bookseller Felix Gumplowicz, the brother of Ludwig Gumplowicz , into a Galician rabbi family. As a child, she read many of the books in her father's lending library in German, Polish and French.

Helene Gumplowicz completed the teachers' seminar in Krakow and studied law and economics in Vienna and Zurich . Since a legal doctorate was not yet possible for women in Vienna, she had to move to Switzerland . In 1906 she received her doctorate from the University of Zurich with a dissertation on the development of the trade in goods in Austria, where she obtained a doctorate in political science.

In 1895 she married the law student Max Landau in Zurich, whom she had met while studying there. They had three children, two sons and a daughter. Both sons died before her, the daughter Wanda , married Lanzer (1896–1980), also became a social democratic journalist and adult educator .

Helene Landau had already joined the socialist movement in Krakow and published political contributions under the pseudonym “Lawska”. In 1905 the Landaus moved to Vienna. Max Landau opened a law office. The apartment on Laudongasse in the 8th district became a meeting place for the socialist Polish colony in Vienna, and Józef Piłsudski was a frequent guest . There she met Karl Renner and Otto Bauer .

In 1911 the family moved to Lemberg , then the capital of Galicia. In 1914 Helene Landau returned to Vienna alone and worked with Otto Bauer on the magazine Der Kampf . She became an important employee and partner in life for Bauer.

Both joined the radical left around Friedrich Adler during the First World War . In October 1918, Helene divorced Max Landau. At the beginning of 1920, Otto Bauer was married in the Vienna City Temple , because a civil marriage was not legally possible at the time. From 1926 to 1934 she taught statistics at the Vienna Workers' College Döbling and was a member of the Vienna City School Council , the main body of the Vienna school reform . In her publications she consistently criticized bourgeois economics.

Because of the February fighting of 1934 , she fled to Brno with Otto Bauer . In April 1938 the two fled to Paris , where Otto Bauer died of a heart attack in his hotel room.

In 1939, Helene Bauer followed her daughter Wanda Lanzer to Sweden , where she became friends with Bruno Kreisky . In 1941, at Friedrich Adler's insistence, she finally traveled to the United States on the Trans-Siberian Railway via Vladivostok . There she lived in Los Angeles for the time being before she moved to the small university town of Berkeley. In the last year of her life, before her cardiac death, she participated in Karl Heinz's social democratic group .

Grave slab of Otto and Helene Bauer

Their remains were in 1950 with those of Otto Bauer in one of the City Administration ehrenhalber dedicated grave on the Zentralfriedhof reburied (Group 24, row 5, number 3).

Helene Bauer has been pushed into oblivion for many reasons, “as a Marxist theorist, as a Polish revolutionary, as a key contributor to the Austrian labor movement and not least because of her Jewish descent.” In 2014, the traffic area in front of Café Sperl in Vienna- Mariahilf (6 . District) named Helene-Bauer-Platz. Otto-Bauer-Gasse was named in the same district in 1949; The Bauer couple lived in the former Kasernengasse.

Fonts (selection)

• The development of the trade in goods in Austria - a contribution to the economic history of absolutism. Braumüller, Vienna 1906.
• The development of the Polish socialist movement in Crown Congress Poland from the establishment of the Polish Socialist Party to the beginning of the 20th century. Vienna 1929.

literature

• Johann Dvorák : Helene Bauer, b. Gumplowicz. In: Brigitta Keintzel, Ilse Korotin (ed.): Scientists in and from Austria. Böhlau, Vienna / Cologne / Weimar 2002, ISBN 3-205-99467-1 , pp. 42-48.
• Annemarie Hofstadler: Helene Bauer in the mirror of her journalistic activities 1918–1940. In: Andrea M. Lauritsch (Ed.): Zions Töchter. Jewish women in literature, art and politics. Lit, Vienna 2006, ISBN 3825886662 .
• Werner Röder (Hrsg.): Biographical handbook of German-speaking emigration after 1933. Volume 1: Jan Foitzik: Politics, economy, public life. Saur, Munich 1980, ISBN 3598100876 , p. 37.

Individual evidence

1. ^ Johann Dvorák: Helene Bauer, b. Gumplowicz. In: Brigitta Keintzel, Ilse Korotin (ed.): Scientists in and from Austria. Böhlau, Vienna / Cologne / Weimar 2002, ISBN 3-205-99467-1 , pp. 42-48.
   Bauer, Helene (née Gumplowicz). In: dasrotewien.at - Web dictionary of the Viennese social democracy. SPÖ Vienna (Ed.)
2. ↑ ^{a b} Ernst Hanisch : The great illusionist. Otto Bauer (1881–1938). Böhlau, Vienna 2011, ISBN 978-3-205-78601-6 , p. 32ff.
3. ↑ ^{a b} Helene Bauer in the Vienna History Wiki of the City of Vienna
4. ^ Wanda Lanzer in the Vienna History Wiki of the City of Vienna
5. ↑ Ernst Hanisch: The great illusionist. Otto Bauer (1881–1938). Böhlau, Vienna 2011, ISBN 978-3-205-78601-6 , p. 35.
6. ↑ Peter Goller : Helene Bauer against the neoliberal bourgeois ideology by Ludwig Mises (1923). Announcements from the Alfred Klahr Society No. 4/2005.
7. ^ Helga Schultz : European socialism - always different. Karl Kautsky - George Bernard Shaw - Jean Jaurès - Józef Piłsudski - Alexander Stambolijski - Wladimir Medem - Leo Trotsky - Otto Bauer - Andreu Nin - Josip Broz Tito - Herbert Marcuse - Alva and Gunnar Myrdal. Berliner Wissenschafts-Verlag, Berlin 2014, ISBN 978-3-8305-3310-8 , pp. 332f.
8. ^ Bruno Kreisky: Memories. The legacy of the politician of the century. Edited by Oliver Rathkolb , Styria, Vienna / Graz / Klagenfurt 2014, ISBN 978-3222134326 , online .
9. ^ Bauer, Helene (1871–1942) Women in World History: A Biographical Encyclopedia.
   Ernst Winkler: Helene Bauer's last days of life. In: On the battlements of the party. Selected Writings. Gutenberg, Wiener Neustadt 1967, pp. 97-99.
10. ^ Johann Dvorák: Helene Bauer, b. Gumplowicz. In: Brigitta Keintzel, Ilse Korotin (ed.): Scientists in and from Austria. Böhlau, Vienna / Cologne / Weimar 2002, ISBN 3-205-99467-1 , pp. 42-48.
11. ^ Bauer, Helene (née Gumplowicz). In: dasrotewien.at - Web dictionary of the Viennese social democracy. SPÖ Vienna (Ed.)
12. ^ Entry by Helene Bauer in Lehmann's Vienna address book, 1931 edition
13. ↑ Evidence in the Austrian library network