Otto Bauer (politician, 1897)

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Otto Bauer (born April 14, 1897 in Vienna ; † August 10, 1986 in Prägraten am Großvenediger ) was an Austrian religious socialist .

He was co-founder and chairman of the Association of Religious Socialists during the First Republic of Austria , a member of the Social Democratic Workers 'Party of Austria (SDAPÖ) , a revolutionary socialist and a member of the Austrian Socialists' Representation Abroad (AVOES) . In order to avoid confusion with his namesake, the Austromarxist Otto Bauer , he was called the "little" Otto Bauer.

Life

Childhood and youth

Otto Bauer was born on April 14, 1897 in Vienna-Ottakring as the son of a working-class family. Since his father had not yet completed military service at the time the child was born and this was the necessary condition for a valid marriage in the Austro-Hungarian monarchy , Otto Bauer was born out of wedlock and received his mother's family name. His younger sister was born the following year. After the death of the mother, who died of breast cancer in 1900, the bereaved moved into the house of the paternal grandparents. A little later, Adolf Riedl, Otto Bauer's father, married Amalia Bauer, a sister of his late partner Maria Bauer. After attending primary and community school , Otto Bauer worked as a salesman in a women's clothing store. At the age of 15 he joined the Association of Christian Youth in Austria, an organization founded in 1905 by the publicist and social reformer Anton Orel .

Between 1915 and 1918 he was stationed in an ammunition depot in Wöllersdorf . On the occasion of an industrial workers' strike , Bauer first came into contact with social democracy. In the elections for the Workers 'and Soldiers' Council in November 1918, Bauer - although not a party member at the time - was elected to represent the civilian workers, employees and soldiers and exercised this mandate until his return to Vienna (1919). In the same year, Bauer married his fiancée Rosa Freiss, from whose marriage the children Leopoldine, Rosa-Maria, Stefanie and Otto jun. emerged.

1919–1926: post-war years

During these years Otto Bauer worked as an etcher in a chemical engraving and metalwork factory. Together with his friend, the teacher and church musician Wilhelm Frank, Bauer founded the so-called "Vogelsang-Bund", an organization for the adult members from the circle around Anton Orel. In 1923 Anton Orel began to make contacts with the Catholic youth movement in Germany . In this context Heinrich Mertens and Willi Hammelrath were invited to Vienna. Mertens and Hammelrath repeatedly reported on the situation of the workers' movement in Germany , but above all on the religious socialism movement that had existed in Germany for years. Impressed by these stories and inspired by reading the book "Sankt Sebastian vom Wedding" by Franz Herwig , Bauer decided, together with some like-minded people, to found a religious-socialist organization in Austria in October 1926, which, according to its self-image, is interdenominational and interreligious should be located within the SDAP. In the same year, during the Linz party congress , the Association of Religious Socialists (Austria) was accepted into the party as a cultural group.

1926–1934: The "Association of Religious Socialists (BRS)"

The official association registration of the BRS took place in January 1927: Otto Bauer was chairman of the federal government from 1927 until the repeal and the ban on social democracy by the Austrofascist regime in the course of the February battles . In addition, he was editor-in-chief of "Menschheitkampf", the official medium of the BRS. During these years, Bauer was committed to the interests of the workers and peasants in Austria. In "Humanity Fighters" he took a stand on various religious, social, political and economic issues of the time. Mediating between social democracy and the Catholic Church in Austria was always a matter of concern to him: On behalf of the BRS, he met the Vienna Archbishop Friedrich Cardinal Gustav Piffl and his successor Theodor Cardinal Innitzer , motivated them to comment on the social question and criticized them - also publicly various articles in "Menschheitskampf" - the amalgamation of the Catholic Church in Austria with the Christian Social Party . During these years, the BRS organized various conferences on religious and socio-political issues: From June 7th to 9th, 1930, the Whitsun conference of religious socialists took place in the Lower Austrian town of Berndorf , where the BRS program, the so-called "Berndorfer Program", was adopted.

In the following year (1931) Pope Pius XI. promulgated the social encyclical Quadragesimo anno , in which the incompatibility thesis of Christianity and socialism was confirmed. In this regard, Bauer published several articles in the "Humanity Fighters". Bauer's standpoint with regard to the encyclical can be determined to the effect that he did not see it as a condemnation of all socialism, especially not as it is understood by the BRS in the “Berndorfer Program”.

When the political situation in Austria gradually worsened, Bauer repeatedly took a position on this issue. Due to the article critical of the government, “The Austrofascism and Quadragesimo anno”, the “mankind fighter” was confiscated in October 1933; however, there was no further lawsuit. After the publication of the last issue of "Menschheitskampf" in January 1934, the BRS was repealed and banned by the fascist regime as the first cultural organization of the SDAP before the outbreak of the February fighting.

1934–1938: years underground

From 1934 to 1938 Bauer was a member of the illegal party of the Revolutionary Socialists of Austria under the code names “Weis” and “Herbst” . He was arrested twice, but released after a few days for lack of evidence. At the beginning of February 1936 he made a trip to Prague , where he informed the Czechoslovak President Edvard Beneš and Foreign Minister Kamil Krofta about the situation in Austria on behalf of the illegal party .

1938–1940: exile and emigration

A few weeks after Hitler's invasion and the annexation of Austria to the German Reich , the Bauer family fled into exile . The escape was arranged by Muriel Gardiner Buttinger and Joseph Buttinger . The family traveled by train from Vienna via Tarvisio to Venice and Milan , from where they reached friends Leonhard and his wife Clara Ragaz in Zurich . While the remaining family members lived in Zurich until 1939, Bauer moved to Paris in 1938 , where AVOES had since moved from Brno . After the German troops marched in, the AVOES and with them the Bauer family moved to Montauban . In September 1940 Otto Bauer emigrated to the USA with his family .

1940-1945

After arriving in the USA, the Bauer family initially moved to the Scattergood Hostel , a Quaker- run home for European refugees in the state of Iowa . While the children were housed with foster families, the parents worked in the hostel's fields until they finally moved into an apartment in New York City in 1941 . Otto Bauer resigned from the AVOES on December 8, 1941, the day the United States entered World War II , due to differences of opinion, and thus resigned from all his political offices.

1945-1986

Until his retirement in 1968, Bauer worked as a librarian at the Buttinger Library in Manhattan , a socio-political library that was donated by his friend Joseph Buttinger and transferred to the University of Klagenfurt in 1971 . After his exile, Otto Bauer only returned to Austria on vacation and died of heart failure on August 10, 1986 during a spa stay in East Tyrol .

His estate is partly in private hands , partly in the archive of the Association for the History of the Labor Movement in Vienna. His writings are the subject of a project funded by the Fund for the Promotion of Scientific Research (FWF) (Otto Bauer: From Religious Socialism to Apocalyptic Thinking), which is based at the Catholic Theological Faculty of the University of Innsbruck and at the Institute for Philosophy at the University of Vienna .

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personal data
SURNAME Bauer, Otto
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Austrian politician
DATE OF BIRTH April 14, 1897
PLACE OF BIRTH Vienna
DATE OF DEATH August 10, 1986
Place of death Prägraten am Großvenediger