Vienna's Political Situation

            The political climate of fin de siecle Vienna could best be described as unstable, confused and desperate.  At a time when many European powers were beginning to colonize and develop into imperial powerhouses, the dual monarchy of the Austro-Hungarian empire was falling apart at the seems.  Once the seat of the most powerful empire in central Europe, the Hapsburg glory had faded dramatically.  First, the governmental system of “Monarchy” had fallen out of favor throughout Europe, since the French Revolution.  New ideologies such as Liberalism where the Government was run by middle and upper-middle class representatives of the people, instead of a ruling aristocracy, had gained even more popularity since the Revolution of 1848 and the accession of Franz Josef to the Hapsburg throne.  Beginning in 1860, a series of edicts designed to shore u traditional authority had the unintended cause of liberalizing the state of Austria.  In addition to this liberalism, other ideological and political movements took place at this time that challenged socio, economic and political convention. Out of the working classes sprung socialism, although it never gained widespread appeal throughout Vienna.  Two movements that did were Schonerer’s pan-Germanism and Lueger’s Christian Socialism.

Karl Lueger

            As a result of the immigrant influx into Vienna at the end of the 19^th century, the established German majority population felt pressure to secure their positions in society.  They exhibited a xenophobic attitude towards the Slavic and Hungarian peoples who at this time began to push for their own independent, national states.  Georg von Schonerer a member of Parliament, was able to unite the German discontent  his “Linz Program.”  This agenda put radical democracy, social reform and German nationalism above imperial stability.  Schonerer succeed in politics by advocating for a “greater German” orientation in its customs and relations with the German empire.  His rhetoric, similar to that of the Nazis half a century later, included longing for Austria to secede from the Hapsburgs and join a greater German nation, for the “true” German peoples. Schonerer aimed not for a break up of the “pro-Slav” Hapsburg monarchy in order that its western portion might be united with a Bismarckian monarchy.  Schonerer was a virulent anti-Semite, but never gained the notoriety of his colleague, Karl Lueger.

            Lueger’s Christian Socialists united the “forgotten” German majority not with rhetoric based in pan-Germanism, but with a reform of Austrian Catholicism.  Lueger was purely a Viennese politician who had complete allegiance to the Hapsburg monarchy.  Catholicism offered Lueger an ideology that could incorporate all of his anti-liberal elements, democracy, social reform, anti-Semitism and Hapsburg loyalty.  In 1895, Lueger gained enough popularity to be elected mayor of Vienna, and two years later Emperor Franz Josef

reluctantly ratified his election, so that Lueger could take office.  Both Karl Lueger and Georg von Schonerer are excellent examples of Vienna’s ambivalent embrace and rejection of the liberalism and modernism being ushered in at the 20th century.

• Introduction
• Anti-Semitism
• Freud's Professional Struggle
• Vienna's Political Situation
• Conclusion
• Bibliography