January strike

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Memorial plaque in Wiener Neustadt

In the January strike in Austria-Hungary in 1918 , shortly before the January strike in the German Empire , the striking workers demanded better living and working conditions and an end to the First World War .

prehistory

Already at the beginning of 1917 there were strikes in Vienna due to the food shortage. In the winter of 1917/18 the situation came to a head. After the October Revolution in Russia, peace was proclaimed by the Bolsheviks and solidarity rallies took place across Europe. At a peace meeting in Vienna on November 11, 1917, the slogan was issued: Give us the peace again or we will stop work .

course

Between January 3 and 25, 1918, the January strike spread across large parts of the monarchy. More than 700,000 workers walked out, mainly because of the materially hardship situation, but also because of the peace expectations nurtured by the Brest-Litovsk negotiations.

The January strike culminated in social discontent and war fatigue . The strike that broke out on January 14, 1918 in the Wiener Neustädter Daimler -motorenwerke because of the halving of the flour ration developed within a few days into the largest strike action in the history of the country and soon encompassed all industrial areas of the monarchy. Soon the strikers were not only demanding better supplies, but also an immediate end to the war, and workers' councils were elected in mass events based on the model of the Russian revolution . The January strikes, the political causes of which were also the German war aims in Brest-Litovsk, which threatened peace , were used by the long-time chairman of the Social Democrats, Victor Adler , to fix the cabinet in Vienna against the annexation demands in Brest.

The government under Prime Minister Ernst Seidler therefore felt compelled to start negotiations with the social democratic party leadership, which in turn had to use all its resources in order not to lose control of its base in the election of the workers' councils. The Social Democratic party executive itself drafted a government statement containing numerous concessions to the strikers, including an assurance to improve the catastrophic food supply and to endeavor to negotiate peace, and thus enforced the resolution to end the strike on January 20. Adler also obtained approval to break off the strike because the military did not hesitate to use military force against the strike.

After the January strike ended, the strike leaders and numerous activists were arrested or drafted into the army. Egon Erwin Kisch , the first lieutenant in the war press headquarters at the time , who was probably responsible for drafting many leaflets, remained undiscovered.

The unrest subsequently spread to the army . Soldiers mutinies among troops of South Slavic origin in Judenburg and Pécs , troops with Czech soldiers in Rumburg in Bohemia and among Hungarian regiments in Budapest . On 22 January 1918, the Arsenal workers went on strike in the naval port of Pola , which the sailors of the ships in the harbor imperial navy joined. On January 29th, the workers in Mährisch-Ostrau went on strike , and on February 1st, the Cattaro sailors rebelled at the kuk cruiser flotilla anchored in the Bay of Kotor , in which 6,000 sailors on 40 ships hoisted the red flag and peace was immediately concluded demanded.

literature

  • Borislav Chernev: The Great January Strike as a Prelude to Revolution in Austria. In: Borislav Chernev: Twilight of Empire. The Brest-Litovsk Conference and the Remaking of East-Central Europe, 1917-1918. University of Toronto Press, Toronto / Buffalo / London 2017, ISBN 9781487501495 , pp. 107–152.
  • Karl Flanner : Down with the war! For instant peace! The great January strike in Wiener Neustadt in 1918. Wiener Neustadt 1997.
  • Robert Foltin : Revolution and Council Movement in Austria 1918/1919. In: Anna Leder, Mario Memoli, Andreas Pavlic (Hrsg.): The council movement in Austria. From social self-defense to concrete utopia. Mandelbaum, Vienna 2019, ISBN 9783854766803 , pp. 12–43.
  • Christian Koller : Strike culture. Performances and Discourses of the Labor Dispute in a Swiss-Austrian Comparison (1860–1950). (= Österreichische Kulturforschung , Volume 9) Lit, Wien / Münster 2009, ISBN 978-3-643-50007-6 , pp. 289-315.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d January strike 1918. In: dasrotewien.at - Weblexikon der Wiener Sozialdemokratie. SPÖ Vienna (Ed.)
  2. ↑ Wolfdieter Bihl : The way to collapse. Austria-Hungary under Charles I (IV.) . In: Erika Weinzierl , Kurt Skalnik (ed.): Austria 1918–1938. History of the First Republic . Volume 1, Verlag Styria, Graz / Vienna / Cologne 1983, ISBN 3-222-11456-0 , pp. 27-54, here p. 35f.
  3. ↑ a b Hans Mommsen: Viktor Adler and the politics of Austrian social democracy in the First World War . In: Isabella Ackerl (Hrsg.): Politics and society in old and new Austria. Festschrift for Rudolf Neck for his 60th birthday , Verlag für Geschichte u. Politics, Vienna 1981, ISBN 3-7028-0189-8 , pp. 378-408, here pp. 404f.
  4. ^ Arnold Reisberg : February 1934. Background and consequences. Globus-Verlag, Vienna 1974, ISBN 3-85364-008-7 , pp. 71-77.