Description
Book SynopsisJanek Wasserman traces intellectual, social, and political developments in the Austrian First Republic while highlighting intellectuals' participation in the growing worldwide conflict between socialism, conservatism, and fascism.
Trade ReviewJanek Wasserman introduces us to Black Vienna, a parallel city where disappointed monarchists, frustrated Catholic radicals, and racist German nationalists worked in consort to destroy the First Republic.... Wasserman challenges the conventionalLager model of interwar Austrian politics in which there were three distinct camps: Social Democrats, Christian radicals and German nationalists. Instead he finds a 'two-part division of interwar Austrian life' in which the lines between Catholic conservatives and German nationalists were blurred. He is not the first to propose this revision... but Wasserman adds rich detail on how the camps' personalities, publications and organizations converged.
-- Maureen Healy * Austrian Studies Newsmagazine *
The book has been extremely well researched and for those with an interest in the detailed background to Austria's political history between the wars, it provides a complex and thorough exposé of the radical right in Vienna between the wars, this being interwoven with an account of the left-wing intellectuals who were less active in promoting the ideals of Social Democracy.
-- John Warren * Austrian Studies *
Table of ContentsIntroduction: Reconsidering "Red Vienna"1. The Emergence of Black Vienna2. The Austro-Marxist Struggle for "Intellectual Workers"3. The Spannkreis and the Battle for Hegemony in Central Europe4. The Verein Ernst Mach and the Politicization of Viennese Progressive Thought5. Österreichische Aktion and the New Conservatism6. The Rise and Fall of Politically Engaged Scholarship in Red Vienna, 1927–19347. The Triumph of Radical Conservatism in the Austrofascist State, 1933–1938ConclusionBibliography
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