In the lead-up to the national elections of April 1927, the Austrian Social Democrats splashed an “Announcement of Intellectual Vienna (Kundgebung des geistigen Wien)” on the front page of their daily newspaper, Die Arbeiter-Zeitung, which endorsed the socialist cause in strong terms. “The essence of Spirit [Geist] is above all Freedom, which is now endangered and we feel obligated to protect it. The struggle for a higher humanity and the battle against indolence [Trägheit] and sclerosis [Verödung] will always find us ready. Today, it also finds us prepared for battle.”Footnote ¹ Given the fervor of the sentiments and the celebrity of the endorsers, it made perfect sense that the socialists publicized this letter so prominently. The three greatest psychologists in Austria—Sigmund Freud, Alfred Adler, and Karl Bühler—signed. The father of the Austrian constitution, Hans Kelsen, offered his support. The authors Robert Musil and Franz Werfel likewise appended their names. The modernist composers Anton Webern and Egon Wellesz added their signatures, as did Secessionist painters and architects Leo Delitz, Josef Dobrowsky, and Ernst Lichtblau. Two leading feminists, Fanina Halle and Daisy Minor, were signatories, as was Alma Mahler. The announcement read like a who's who of interwar Viennese cultural life and seemed to signify a high point in the relations between the Austro-Marxists and non-Marxist intellectuals.

Naturally the conservative press mocked the socialists for desperately pandering to “bourgeois intellectuals” and the intellectuals themselves for their naive political convictions, arguing that true intellectuals saw through the “tax bolshevism” of the Austro-Marxists. In the Reichspost, the leading paper of the Christian Social Party, the editor Friedrich Funder argued that these “intellectuals,” who professed to stand “between and above all classes” (zwischen und über den Klassen), should be classified alongside acrobats and contortionists, given their ability to occupy two distinct spatial positions at the same time. The editorial lamented the folly of those thinkers and suggested that they had offered themselves as victims to a Marxist sacrifice while true intellectuals, i.e. the Reichspost readership, saw through the lies.Footnote ²

When the socialists pulled off their most successful electoral result of the First Republic in 1927—garnering 42 percent of the vote and closing within two mandates of the Christian Socials in the national parliamentFootnote ³—both conservatives and socialists pointed to intellectuals as a key determinant. Joseph August Lux, a student of the philosopher Othmar Spann and founder of the Richard-Kralik-Gesellschaft, criticized the Christian Social Party for failing to engage the intelligentsia (Intelligenz) while commending the socialists for their outreach. Although he denied that the signers of the manifesto were “true” Austrian intellectuals—he called them “miserable refuse” (kläglicher Abhub)—he recognized that the Austro-Marxists were correct in recruiting the educated classes. Lux acknowledged that their pro-intellectual propaganda had contributed to the socialist success.Footnote ⁴ Meanwhile the socialist Robert Danneberg noted increased support from educated professionals—a key component of the intellectual class—in his statistical breakdown of the election.Footnote ⁵ There was a seeming consensus that intellectuals had been instrumental in the Marxists’ success.

A closer analysis of the discourse about intellectuals during the First Republic reveals the continued success of the conservative establishment and the shortcomings of Austro-Marxist recruitment efforts in this rivalry over intellectual support, however. If one employs the term “intellectual” or “intellectual worker” as understood by the Austro-Marxists, the evidence suggests that 1927 was really a setback. Their broad sociological classification comprised not only professors, writers, and artists, but also bureaucrats and civil servants, military officers and priests, lawyers and accountants, engineers and middle managers. By these definitions, the Austro-Marxists never approached the level of intellectual hegemony for which they hoped. This was revealed in the same 1927 electoral analyses: the number of intellectual workers who voted against the socialists actually grew by more than 10,000 from the 1923 elections.Footnote ⁶ The year 1923 proved to be the crucial moment for socialist–intellectual relations. Around that time, the socialists concluded their internal debates about the role and importance of intellectuals in their movement, yet they offered no support to the tens of thousands of them who lost their jobs because of Ignaz Seipel's austerity measures. Intellectuals felt abandoned. Although the Austro-Marxists actively recruited scientists, social reformers and modernist artists, they made almost no headway with everyone else. These “other” intellectuals possessed a middle-class suspicion of the predominantly working class (and Jewish) socialist movement and remained committed to nationalist and conservative causes. While these traditional intellectuals may not have supported the Christian Socials unequivocally in 1927, this was largely because they were moving towards more radical authoritarian solutions, like the Heimwehr and the Nazis.Footnote ⁷ What at first blush looked like a clear victory for the Austro-Marxists actually amounted to a fierce rivalry for intellectual support, which the socialists did not win.

These findings help paint a different picture of interwar Viennese intellectual life. As important as Freud, Adler or Musil were to the Viennese cultural scene and as engaged as they were in political and social affairs on behalf of the socialists, their influence did not compare to the conservatives Joseph Eberle, Richard Kralik, and Othmar Spann, who reinforced the status quo and contributed to Austria's turn toward authoritarian politics. “Black Vienna,” the shadowy Other in interwar Austria and an ever-present threat in the capital, exerted ideological hegemony during the period. In spite of its success, and likely because of it, it resisted critical engagement during the First Republic and, after World War II, contributed to the revision of the historical record that prevented a closer examination of its negative consequences.Footnote ⁸

The Austro-Marxist theoretical journal Der Kampf and the Eberle-run weeklies Das Neue Reich and Die Schönere Zukunft were at the center of this rivalry for intellectuals. Focusing on the former publication, this essay investigates the interactions between the socialist movement and intellectuals beginning in the prewar period and continuing into the First Republic, arguing that the Marxists successfully attracted and radicalized a group of progressive intellectuals. The Austro-Marxist stress on empirical scientific work and humanist social goals appealed to those scholars, playing an important role in the recruitment of Freud, Kelsen, Musil, and other signers of the “Announcement.”Footnote ⁹ Nevertheless, the rhetoric of class and cultural warfare and the inability to offer solutions to middle-class socioeconomic concerns proved less effective than conservative calls for a “true state,” “new Reich,” or “more beautiful future.”Footnote ¹⁰ “The Announcement of Intellectual Vienna” and the 1927 election ironically demonstrate the continued strength of Austrian conservatism and the overall weakness of the radical cause among intellectuals.

Scholars of interwar Austria have preferred to view this moment as the pinnacle of Austrian socialism, when Austro-Marxists exerted their greatest influence, as have interwar progressive intellectuals.Footnote ¹¹ This was ostensibly a moment of hope for Austrian radicalism since the socialists had extended their appeal beyond the working classes to other groups. A closer look at what Stefan Collini has called the “question of intellectuals” belies this characterization.Footnote ¹² In the 1910s and intensifying in the 1920s, Austrian thinkers wrestled with the concept of the intellectual and his/her role in political affairs.Footnote ¹³ Inspired by debates in European Marxist circles, the Austro-Marxists offered valuable contributions to the conceptualization of intellectuals. They broadly construed intellectual work as the labor performed by educated individuals in the bureaucracy, the academy, business, and the free professions, as well as the arts. In key respects their analysis and their proposed strategies mirrored Antonio Gramsci's, emphasizing the sociological position of intellectuals and the need for an ideological struggle to counteract conservative ideology. It was necessary that “organic,” Marxist intellectuals win the battle for ideological hegemony against “traditional” intellectuals while recruiting the educated classes for the new order.Footnote ¹⁴ Consequently, the Austro-Marxists established research institutes, expanded the people's university system, and invited practical and scholarly contributions from nonparty intellectuals. This resulted in many of the successes associated with “Red Vienna.”Footnote ¹⁵

That said, the Austro-Marxist definition of “intellectual worker” became muddled when applied in praxis. In much of their theoretical work, they broadly construed intellectuals as a sociological class; however, the category was often reduced to university-educated and bourgeois strata (gebildete Stände or Bildungsbürgertum), particularly from liberal backgrounds in practice. Elsewhere, as in “The Announcement,” an intellectual seemed to be little more than an academic, writer, or “autonomous intellectual” (selbständiger Intellektuel). This deployment of a cultural definition occluded the problems the socialists had in getting their message to the more inclusive category of intellectuals they sought. This weakened their position in the rivalry for intellectual hegemony, since they neglected the larger sociological group at crucial moments, most notably in the wake of the massive unemployment of public officials in 1923 produced by the measures of the Christian Social chancellor Ignaz Seipel. This essay will identify the varying usages the socialists employed for intellectuals—from sociological to cultural definitions, from the educated classes (gebildete Stände) down to the much narrower free professions (freie Berufe)—examining the problems that arose from these inconsistencies.Footnote ¹⁶ While there is some question how much a working-class and internationalist party grounded in the rhetoric of class struggle, secular statehood, and anti-bourgeois sentiment could have appealed to nationalist Austrian citizens, the Austro-Marxists did not do themselves any favors by failing to reach out to a broad class of individuals suffering during the postwar economic malaise.

At times, especially early in the Republic, the Austro-Marxists fought hard for intellectual support; however, conservative politicians and intellectuals doggedly countered these efforts. Despite some inroads into the academy, Austro-Marxist ideas never gained a dominant position. The Austrian academy resembled Germany's in this way, where an entrenched “mandarinate” resisted modernizing tendencies and stood against progressive reform. Fritz Ringer's concept effectively captures the nature of the Austrian intellectual class, though, unlike in the German case, Austrian mandarins maintained their status and influence into the 1930s.Footnote ¹⁷ The Catholic academic society the Leo-Gesellschaft and the nationalist student organization Die Deutsche Studentschaft maintained memberships considerably larger than those of progressive city-run institutes and affiliated discussion circles. Conservative intellectual weeklies like Das Neue Reich and Die Schönere Zukunft likewise grew massively in the 1920s, boasting readership numbers that dwarfed those of liberal and socialist publications.

The success of conservative politicians and thinkers at harnessing support from intellectuals derived from their successful deployment of ideas on nationality, ethnicity, religion, and history, yet it was also aided by Austro-Marxist ambivalence about the role of this group in the socialist struggle. Moreover, the focus on intellectuals in the capital blinded the socialist leadership to the overwhelming failures of their ideological struggle in the provinces.Footnote ¹⁸ Most important, the Austro-Marxists could not assuage the anxieties of intellectuals about their status in the postwar world. Othmar Spann's circle and Richard Kralik's coterie of Catholics, on the other hand, offered solutions that resonated with postwar and post-Habsburg Viennese. As the years advanced, the triumphant optimism of the socialists gave way to resignation: despite a vibrant intellectual community, Vienna remained a predominantly conservative, “black” culture.

DER KAMPF AND THE PREWAR INTERACTIONS BETWEEN AUSTRO-MARXISTS AND VIENNESE INTELLECTUALS

The Marxist/intellectual synthesis of the First Republic did not emerge spontaneously in the aftermath of the Great War. There were important precedents in the late nineteenth century, owing a great deal to the intellectual openness of the Austro-Marxists and ongoing debates in European Marxism about the importance of intellectuals for socialism. Shortly after the unification of the Austrian Social Democrats under Victor Adler at the party congress at Hainfeld in 1889, the party began to publish a theoretical paper, Gleichheit, in which Karl Kautsky and Carl Grünberg set the ideological tone. The socialists quickly attracted liberal democrats, who shared the socialists’ desire for electoral and educational reform.Footnote ¹⁹

When the Revisionist controversy surrounding Eduard Bernstein broke out in 1899, the Austro-Marxists formulated a distinctive position, engaging Marxists and contemporary social scientists alike. They attempted to chart a “third way” between the revolutionary stance of Lenin and Luxemburg and the mechanical, quasi-determinist materialism of orthodox Marxists. The Austro-Marxists responded not only to other Marxist critics but also to scholarly movements in their own country: the empiricism of Ernst Mach and the marginal-utility school of economics of Ernst Böhm-Bawerk. Subsequently the philosopher Max Adler and economist Rudolf Hilferding founded Marx-Studien in 1904 to provide a forum for further inquiries. This journal established Austro-Marxism as an independent current in European socialism, thanks primarily to Hilferding's seminal economic treatise Finance Capital and Otto Bauer's study on nationalism. These studies evinced the Austro-Marxist commitment to blending empirical research with Marxist theoretical concerns.Footnote ²⁰

Following the successful 1907 elections, when the Social Democrats made their first major parliamentary gains, the Austro-Marxists founded the monthly Der Kampf to discuss current events and theoretical concerns.Footnote ²¹ In the new journal's opening salvo, the editors stressed their commitment to the social struggle and to the betterment of humanity through increased scientific knowledge. The first lines to appear in Der Kampf demonstrated the debt socialism owed to classical thought and modern science:

Though Marx, Engels and Lassalle had also written about Heraclitus and Darwin, the prominence given to these thinkers (and Mach) other than Marx was significant. Empirical science would be a cornerstone of all Austro-Marxist policy going forward. This statement also signaled a willingness on the part of Austro-Marxists to cooperate with other progressive intellectuals, particularly scientists. The editors called for the use of all available intellectual forces (alle geistigen Kräfte) to help unify and advance the socialist cause.

From Der Kampf's inception, the Austro-Marxists acknowledged that the struggle for a classless society necessarily included cultural politics. They therefore devoted particular attention to the arts and sciences. Engelbert Pernerstorfer expressed the need for proletarian poetry in the first edition.Footnote ²³ In the second, an engineer offered an overview of contemporary aeronautical technology. The author stressed the redemptive and humanitarian power of science and pointed to the necessary contributions of scientists to the realization of the “social idea.”Footnote ²⁴ As early as the third edition, the book review section primarily considered essays on science and literature. The editors understood Der Kampf to be more than a political organ; it was a scientific and cultural one, too. It had to harness new developments across all scholarly disciplines to improve the lives of the masses.

The first semiofficial connections that the editors of Der Kampf established with scholarly movements were with members of Freud's “inner circle,” particularly the psychologist Alfred Adler. In December 1907, Josef Strasser published a positive essay on Adler's inferiority complex and its importance for the class struggle. Strasser lauded Adler's theory of organ inferiority, which stated that underdeveloped or inferior organs often performed better because of a compensation mechanism. He readily related Adler's work back to Marxist theory: “Thus emerges the worldview of the proletariat . . . Workers demand scientific sense, critical spirit and creative fantasy; in short, spiritual superiority [seelische Überwertigkeit], which requires in turn a successful struggle against the bourgeoisie.”Footnote ²⁵ Strasser called for the proletariat to adapt psychically to overcome their economic inferiority. Adler and his students welcomed this allegiance, foreshadowing the collaboration between the Viennese municipal government and Adler in child psychology centers during the First Republic.Footnote ²⁶

The prewar bonds forged by the Austro-Marxists with Ernst Mach's school of philosophy were even firmer than those with the psychological community, illustrating the compatibility of Austro-Marxism and empiricism. David Josef Bach, later a leading cultural figure in interwar Vienna, studied under Mach. Fritz Adler, Victor Adler's son, was also a Mach student and conducted a correspondence with Mach until the latter's death.Footnote ²⁷ He repeatedly called Mach a revolutionary because his work caused “older conceptions about science as a model centered on constant, unchanging substantial elements” to collapse.Footnote ²⁸ For Adler, The mutability of the elements inherent in Mach's theory served as the focus of scientific inquiry. This changeability was essential for any reformers—scientific, social, or political—wishing to alter the status quo.

Over the years, more than half a dozen articles appeared in the journal supporting Mach's theories. The Austro-Marxists became Mach's leading defenders in the debates about empirio-criticism instigated by Lenin. In Materialism and Empirio-Criticism, Lenin argued that Mach's empiricism amounted to a dangerous and reactionary solipsism, a subjective idealism of the basest sort. Mach's focus on the perception of sensations was viewed as part of a larger philosophical effort to refute materialism and Marxism.Footnote ²⁹ The Austro-Marxists responded to Lenin's critique with an endorsement of Mach and the empiricist's emphasis on the creative, transformative power of the individual (and the proletariat class). Der Kampf became known in Marxist circles as the journal that supported modern science and philosophy against dogmatic assaults from both the left and the right. Mach himself developed a close friendship with Victor Adler and eventually left part of his estate to the Social Democrats. This affiliation with Mach and the defense of scientific inquiry encouraged other scholars to work with the socialists, including the philosopher Wilhelm Jerusalem, the historian Ludo Hartmann, and members of the Monist League and the Ethical Society.Footnote ³⁰

The Austro-Marxists approached other progressives in the late Habsburg era as well, such as women's activists and school reformers. The Social Democrats advocated for full gender equality from an early date. Therese Schlesinger, an active socialist and feminist, exhorted women to fight for their rights. Schlesinger drew attention to inequality in educational and political opportunities and demanded immediate change.Footnote ³¹ Adelheid Popp highlighted the disgraceful treatment of female industrial workers—lower wages than their male counterparts, overwork, and gender discrimination. Popp insisted on the need for new legislation to protect female workers.Footnote ³² These feminists ensured that gender inequality was a central issue for the socialist community.Footnote ³³

The Social Democrats also lent support to Emmy Freundlich's Kinderfreunde and the “Free School” movement, which advocated for secular education and pedagogical reform. Karl Seitz, the future mayor of Vienna, passionately endorsed the efforts of the reformers, identifying education as a key front in the battle against clericalism and conservatism. He hoped to awaken intellectuals to the necessity of a new Kulturkampf. The Free Schools were “a possible fighting league [Kampfverein] of anticlerical elements drawn from all classes and parties . . . They [the intellectuals] have their place alongside us and they can only lead this century's impending Kulturkampf against clericalism if they join . . . the ranks of social democracy.”Footnote ³⁴ Through the invocation of a Kulturkampf, Seitz hoped to encourage cooperation from the educated bourgeoisie against the conservative aristocracy and church. Seitz and his fellow Austro-Marxists calculated that these intellectuals likely distrusted the Catholic establishment more than they distrusted the proletariat. Given that many leading Austro-Marxist theoreticians shared a liberal and/or Jewish background with progressive reformers, this turned out to be a reasonable strategy.Footnote ³⁵

Despite these ideological affinities and early successes, there were anxieties among Austro-Marxists about the socioeconomic backgrounds of intellectuals. Intellectuals, according to the Marxists’ sociological analysis, typically came from upper-middle-class families involved with the Austrian Blütezeit. While scientists and artists who shared similar liberal and ethnonational backgrounds seemed to be favorable recruitment targets, the socialists worried about the continued connection of many from the educated classes to either Catholic or capitalist world views. Karl Renner best captured these concerns. He offered the first comprehensive Austro-Marxist discussion of the relation of intellectuals to the proletariat. Renner's analysis also responded to ongoing debates among European socialists. His article appeared during the debates provoked by Lenin's What Is To Be Done? and Trotsky's Results and Prospects, shortly after the Bolshevik/Menshevik split on the issue of vanguard intellectuals. Renner believed that the very term “intellectual” (Intellektuell) was a bourgeois creation designed to separate the educated from the working classes and instill class enmity where brotherhood should exist: “Today students build a class stratum in bourgeois society, which is characterized as a ‘scholarly vocation’ [gelehrte Berufe]. They have been named ‘intellectual workers’ [geistige Arbeiter] in order to compare them favorably to the masses and branded ‘educated’ to contrast the two.”Footnote ³⁶ He criticized these intellectuals for their nationalist sympathies and advocated for class solidarity. While no distinction should exist theoretically between the cultural and sociological definitions of the term, Renner nevertheless linked the broader intellectual caste with the privileges of the Church and the aristocracy, questioning their inclusion in the socialist movement. Renner beseeched intellectuals to reconsider their anachronistic and self-aggrandizing ideas. He wanted to end the “subalternization of intellectuals,” yet he feared that intellectuals would be dilatory: “Intellectuals must still follow their wayward path with the bourgeois parties for a while, until they overcome their caste pride [Kastenstolz] vis-à-vis workers, until they grasp that science and the proletariat, intellectual work and wage work, belong together.”Footnote ³⁷ Renner did not call for a struggle for ideological hegemony, à la Gramsci; rather, he advocated patience. Renner aptly expressed the ambivalence that socialists felt toward the intellectual classes: they were potential allies in the class struggle because of their declining socioeconomic status, yet they were unlikely to participate because of the tenacity of their conservative cultural prejudices.

Max Adler also addressed the subject of intellectual work, expressing a more positive attitude than did Renner. He viewed this sociological group, originally drawn from the upper and middle classes, as part of an expanded proletarian class.Footnote ³⁸ His focus remained squarely on how to employ their scientific findings for socialism, thereby undercutting his analysis at the outset. As long as science was committed to solving practical problems, it remained an important tool for socialism. He did not show how intellectuals could become politically involved with socialism, nor did he suggest how nonscientist and nonsocialist intellectuals were expected to find solidarity with the socialists. Renner and Adler's positions helped account for the affiliation between the Austro-Marxists and the burgeoning social sciences in Austria, though they had not yet considered how to reach beyond a small group of liberal, often Jewish, intellectuals.Footnote ³⁹ Moreover, the Christian Socials continued to have more success among the educated classes by exploiting fears of the urban proletariat.Footnote ⁴⁰ Socialists had almost no presence within the academic community; conservative academic societies boasted impressive membership numbers. The Catholic Leo-Gesellschaft, for example, had over three thousand members, with the vast majority residing in Vienna. The rectors of the major Austrian universities were all members of the Christian Social Party, the Leo-Gesellschaft, or the Catholic clergy.Footnote ⁴¹ With the tumult of the Great War, however, intellectuals began to look more closely at the socialist movement, forcing the Austro-Marxists to reconsider not only what intellectual workers could do for them but also what they could offer in return. This involved broadening their understanding of the concept of the intellectual and searching for ways to integrate them into the socialist movement.

WHAT IS AN INTELLECTUAL? THE STRUGGLE OVER INTELLECTUAL WORK(ERS)

The aftermath of the First World War and the collapse of the Habsburg monarchy brought new opportunities for the Social Democrats. Austria had undergone a relatively peaceful revolution, becoming a democratic republic in November 1918. In the first elections the socialists became the largest party in the country.Footnote ⁴² There were myriad problems in the new Austrian state, too: food shortages, price inflation, an influenza epidemic, and economic stagnation. The socialists believed they could capitalize on the ongoing unrest to push through major reforms. As part of their cultural and educational program, they thought they could bring intellectual workers into their camp. The timing was particularly propitious since many bureaucrats and state employees were facing the prospect of unemployment because of the decrease in size of the Republic's state apparatus comparted to that of the Habsburg Empire.

Electoral gains emboldened the Austro-Marxists to confront Austrian conservatives more directly. Der Kampf served as the locus of this conflict. In May 1919, the monthly became a weekly, the better to address political and social demands. The paper's leadership also changed hands; Fritz Adler became editor-in-chief. This was a momentous choice since it showed the Austro-Marxists’ newfound confidence and their increased commitment to scientific collaboration. In 1916, Adler assassinated the Austrian minister-president Karl Graf Stürgkh as a protest against the government's war activities. He spent the remaining war years in prison. Adler was eventually pardoned and released after the Austrian Revolution. His selection as editor of Der Kampf implied a radicalization of tone. He had always stood on the left side of the Austro-Marxist spectrum—he was against the war from the beginning and opposed the reformist tendencies of Karl Renner. It was also a clear provocation of Austrian conservatives, since they viewed Adler as a murderer and terrorist.

Adler readily embraced pluralism in the realm of ideas. Despite the relative open-mindedness of prewar Austro-Marxists, they nevertheless had a dogmatism of their own. The party and its ideology were supposed to be unified and consensual; any differences were to be handled behind closed doors to avoid shows of weakness. Friedrich Adler (and, to a much lesser extent, Otto Bauer) preferred to have lively discourse and open debate.Footnote ⁴³ In his book on Ernst Mach, for example, Adler attempted a reconciliation of empiricism and Marxist historical materialism. He commended Mach's nondogmatic approach to science and advocated a similar methodology for socialism. Adler invoked the notion of a critical struggle for knowledge, arguing that good science is intersubjective and corrigible. Adler linked these Machian attitudes with Austro-Marxist demands for social and political change.Footnote ⁴⁴ This treatise can be viewed as an intellectual mission statement for the postwar Kampf: it would be a journal of open debate that would recruit individuals from diverse positions for the class struggle.

Austrian conservatives, like the Catholic writers Richard Kralik, Hermann Bahr and Sigmund Waitz, future archbishop of Salzburg, responded to the Austro-Marxist successes as a threat to the Austrian state and its people. In particular, they feared the loss of intellectual institutions to the socialists and the conversion of intellectuals to Marxism. They bemoaned the “Bolshevization” and “Jewification” of the academy and called on intellectuals to rally to the side of God, Austria, and German culture. This was a common lament among conservatives despite all evidence to the contrary—according to them, the universities were becoming bastions of moral relativism and political nihilism and true intellectuals faced persecution for their views. They therefore viewed the battle for intellectual hegemony as central to Austrian politics.Footnote ⁴⁵ Joseph Eberle, the editor of the new intellectual weekly Das Neue Reich, chided the Christian Socials for their underestimation of intellect and their inattention to the importance of intellectuals:

Eberle complained that Catholics, the “natural representatives of intellect,” foolishly condemn it, valuing honorific titles over Privatdozenten, professors, and creative writers. He urged conservatives to take up the challenge from the socialists and pursue intellectuals. He presented his journal as a counterforce to the socialist threat. As Eberle's views demonstrate, conservatives already had a clear idea of what “intellectuals” were: they were defined primarily as members of the academy, independent writers, and thinkers. An intellectual was not so much a sociological category or economic class but a subjective quality that was bound up with notions of Geist and Bildung, in a fashion similar to the way the German mandarins envisioned their group. One could employ intellect in any profession, provided one possessed the requisite commitment to German (ethnic), Austrian (national), and Catholic (religious) Kultur.Footnote ⁴⁷

This understanding differed substantially from the theoretical formulations of the Austro-Marxists, who, like Marxists across the Continent, wrestled with the categories of “intellectual” and “intellectual work” in the postwar years. In practical terms, however, the Austro-Marxists would fall into an understanding of the term similar to that of the conservatives, as we will see subsequently. In the first years of the Republic, however, Vienna served as a breeding ground for Marxist thinking on the subject.Footnote ⁴⁸ Georg Lukács developed his ideas on class consciousness as an exile in the Austrian capital. He explicitly responded to Max Adler's “bourgeois” social philosophy, Mach's atomistic empiricism, and the general complacency of Austrian and German social democrats in developing his neo-Hegelian understanding of dialectical materialism and the subjective role of the proletariat in overcoming capitalism.Footnote ⁴⁹ Karl Mannheim, who spent the period after the overthrow of the Kun regime in Vienna, responded to Lukács's formulations in Ideology and Utopia. His work was even reviewed in Der Kampf.Footnote ⁵⁰ Likewise, Antonio Gramsci spent an extended period in Austria in the early 1920s as he devised his ideas on hegemonic conflict and the position of intellectuals in the class struggle.Footnote ⁵¹ These men emphasized that “intellectuals” represented a sociological category and that, even though the conduct of all work required some intellect, certain individuals performed social functions associated with intellectual activity. They stressed the conservative character of ideology and the need to challenge the status quo through the use of critical intellect and Marxist theory. Though these men did not interact much, if at all, they all responded to central European political currents discussed in Der Kampf.

Austro-Marxist theories on intellectual work did not reach the heights of sophistication of Lukács, Gramsci or Mannheim; however, they were crucial to early 1920s Austrian political discourse. Friedrich Adler in particular felt an unease and displeasure with prewar Austro-Marxist attitudes. Like Gramsci, Adler contended that intellectual life could not be dismissed as a mere superstructural byproduct of economic conditions: ideas informed the way that the economic substructure was conceived and constructed. Intellectuals were instrumental in remaking social and economic conditions:

Adler viewed intellectuals as the technicians of society, individuals committed to applying scientific knowledge to practical social and economic problems. This predilection for the natural and social sciences characterized the postwar Austro-Marxist understanding of “intellectual work.”

Oskar Trebitsch, another theorist, argued for a reconsideration of Renner's overall suspicion about the readiness of intellectuals to become socialists, thereby advancing Adler's position. To earn intellectuals’ support, he wanted to demonstrate the socialist commitment to intellectual work by creating discrete unions within the party that would represent the interests of those in the universities, bureaucracy, and free professions. Only if intellectuals felt included in the socialist fight for better conditions would the intelligentsia abandon their traditional allegiances. For Trebitsch, intellectuals must be granted a distinct status in the movement. Their work must be encouraged and disseminated. He wanted the socialists to start small, which meant focusing on Viennese intellectuals.

This discussion highlighted a key feature of the Austro-Marxist definition of intellectuals: they were primarily urban cosmopolitans from Vienna. From a consolidated Viennese stronghold, intellectuals would eventually travel into the provinces to spread the socialist message. Trebitsch viewed education as the front line in the class struggle and demanded that the socialists fight this ideological Kulturkampf.

Not everyone agreed with Trebitsch; Alfred Engel dismissed the category of “intellectual worker” altogether. “I reject the constitution of a special group—which differentiates itself in no substantive way from any others—as the ‘intellectuals’ are . . . Intellectual work cannot be recognizably delimited from bodily labor . . . we have no organization for ‘bodily workers’ [körperlichen Arbeiter], so why one for intellectuals?”Footnote ⁵⁴ Engel employed a more traditional, cultural definition of the word, wherein “intellectual” operated more as a subjective descriptor than as a sociological category. For Engel, socialists must advance their propaganda goals without developing a special course for intellectuals. Their focus must remain the unions and party apparatus, not seeking out potential ideological allies.

These two positions defined and delimited the tensions within Austro-Marxist intellectual discourse. For Adler and Trebitsch, intellectuals were a distinct class, largely drawn from the sciences. They represented a small portion of the broader and more sociological “educated classes.” For Engel, they hardly even merited closer analysis. Overall, intellectuals could either be recruited through proactive cultural and educational policies or their role should be minimized and their inclusion made possible only through general reforms. The socialists never entirely overcame this tension, though some compromise was attempted. Richard Kassel offered a middle position, endorsing the inclusion of intellectuals in the socialist movement while downplaying their special status. Like it or not, he argued, intellectuals were now a concern for socialists and must be integrated in the future, for many had supported them in the first elections. “In their [Trebitsch's and Engel's] fundamental concept they are agreed: the intellectual worker is an inorganic outgrowth [Zuwachs] of the party. We indeed called them and they came . . . So now they are here, good—of what use can they be to the party?”Footnote ⁵⁵ Kassel cautioned fellow Marxists against underestimating the urgency of consolidating the alliance with intellectuals, for the opportunity was only the product of unique historical conditions. Intellectuals had voted socialist in surprising numbers in 1919, yet this was not necessarily because of ideological affinity but because of the disastrous effects of the war and “a bourgeois-republican revolutionary desire whose fulfillment seemed most likely with a radical party.”Footnote ⁵⁶ Kassel took a broad position on the sociological concept of the intellectual that recognized the role of contingency in their current class affiliation. He did not wish to stop with doctors, lawyers, engineers and professors; there were also bank tellers, accountants, technicians, chemists, teachers, state officials, and others.Footnote ⁵⁷ Kassel reiterated that these were not intellectuals raised in the movement, so they must be monitored and courted. Otherwise, they could just as easily turn to other political alternatives. In many ways, Kassel's views paralleled those of Gramsci, who also argued for constant vigilance of traditional intellectuals in the battle for ideological hegemony.

These discussions prompted the leading philosopher of postwar Austro-Marxism to weigh in. Max Adler offered the first fully articulated policy for the entire intellectual class. Adler manifested no distrust for intellectuals, claiming it was incumbent on socialist leaders to convince intellectuals of their rightful place in the proletarian ranks. The war should have shattered any illusions that intellectuals harbored about membership in the bourgeoisie and that they belonged, sociologically speaking, to the working class. Adler lamented that intellectuals still allowed petty vanities to cloud the truth:

This passage reveals Adler's ambivalence. He maintained that intellectuals should possess radical urges, which the Austro-Marxists must awaken, yet he was not convinced they were ready.

Nevertheless, the essay introduced an important political element into the Austro-Marxist definition of intellectuals.Footnote ⁵⁹ With a little additional education, Adler maintained, intellectuals could come to consciousness. Adler argued for a policy that focused on three subgroups of the intellectual class: white-collar employees in the private sector (Privatangestellten); public officials (öffentlichen Beamten); and free, autonomous workers (freie, selbständig Berufstätigen). Adler treated the first and third groups summarily, saying their problems did not stem from the nature of intellectual work but rather from market forces. In this time of economic crisis, the number of bankers, lawyers, and managers simply exceeded the needs of the Austrian state. Many of them would have to leave Austria in search of opportunity. The same could be said of doctors, scholars, and artists—members of the third group. Only as the country's economic fortunes recovered would the domestic situation for these strata improve.Footnote ⁶⁰ Public officials, on the other hand, served vital roles in the body politic that were difficult to quantify economically. They stood outside the capitalist system and therefore received little consideration from the exploiting classes. Adler believed that if the socialists could reorient the visions of these officials toward the future (socialism) rather than the past (patronage, or Mäzenatentum), the battle for intellectual workers could be won.Footnote ⁶¹

Early 1920s theoretical discussions of intellectuals by the socialists thus focused on sectors of the educated classes beyond the traditional group of culture carriers. This did not mean that they disregarded writers, artists, scientists, and scholars; rather, it demonstrated a new awareness about Austrian society. Teachers, lawyers, and public officials were more numerous and more vital to the future of the Austrian state; moreover, they typically possessed conservative inclinations. The Austro-Marxists recognized that they had to reach these sectors if they hoped to reshape Austrian discussions of state and society. They attempted this feat primarily through reform of higher education and new vocational opportunities for the educated classes. For example, the people's universities (Volkshochschulen) employed twice as many instructors, had three times as many regular participants, and nearly tripled their enrollment from 1913 to 1923.Footnote ⁶² Moreover, new employment opportunities in the municipal government and at new social-scientific institutes in the city helped temporarily stabilize the employment of public officials.Footnote ⁶³

Despite these efforts and apparent successes by the socialists, conservative organizations actually gained strength in the early 1920s. After coming perilously close to bankruptcy during the war, the Leo-Gesellschaft ceased publishing its major journal and saw its membership numbers cut in half. By 1923, the society's finances stabilized and it quickly grew again. According to their records, the Leo-Gesellschaft had over 2,500 members, 1,700 of them in Vienna, by 1924. By the early 1930s, this number approached 3,000.Footnote ⁶⁴ The society had also politicized and radicalized during its down years. Whereas the prewar society dealt primarily with theological and philosophical questions, the postwar society embraced a political and authoritarian tone. Characterized by the militant, nationalist and antidemocratic writings of Hans Eibl, Joseph Nadler, Richard Kralik, and Othmar Spann, the Leo-Gesellschaft offered an attractive vision of the Reich that challenged Austro-Marxists’ ideas about the classless society.Footnote ⁶⁵ Joseph Eberle's weekly Das Neue Reich, closely allied with the Leo-Gesellschaft, boasted a circulation of over ten thousand and drew contributions from Austrian professors, public officials, and businessmen.Footnote ⁶⁶ These societies and journals presented intellectuals as cultural and spiritual leaders of the people, an aristocracy of the mind that contributed to German, Catholic, and Austrian greatness. These writers complained bitterly that clerics and academics, especially young scholars and Privatdozenten, now suffered the indignity of working for the same wages as workers.Footnote ⁶⁷ They rejected modern mass democracy, where votes “are counted rather than weighed,” demanding a new oligarchy of “scholars, bishops, and entrepreneurs.”Footnote ⁶⁸ For them, “intellectual” was not a mere sociological category, it was a subjective, quasi-Romantic concept, imbued with the richness of a combined classical, medieval and national heritage. Intellectuals were the culture carriers (Kulturträger) of a society.

The Austro-Marxists had to contend with these conservative impulses even as they posited an alternative relationship between intellectuals and society. Pitted against a recalcitrant ideological foe, the Austro-Marxists provided a distinct and compelling vision that appealed to a large segment of intellectual workers. There were nonetheless some severe shortcomings to their understanding. The emphasis on the sciences and the relative neglect of history and literature posed one problem. The preference for cosmopolitanism and Viennese culture over nationalism and the Habsburg Empire contributed to this. Their apparent willingness, characterized by Max Adler's essays, to blithely sacrifice intellectuals to the dictates of economic necessity signaled to many that the socialist movement, despite its offers of patronage, did not have their interests at heart. There was also a problematic conceptual slippage between sociological and cultural understandings of intellectual work that made Austro-Marxist strategy incoherent. Even as they devised policies to reach out to Austrian scientists and modernist artists, for example, they forgot about the officials and bureaucrats who had expressed a partial willingness to work with the socialists in the early postwar years. Adler and Kassel's attempts to broaden socialist understandings of “intellectual work” foundered as the Austro-Marxists followed the conservatives in conceiving intellectuals as culture carriers.

INTELLECTUAL WORKERS OF THE WORLD UNITE?

After years of internal debates, the Austro-Marxists decided that intellectuals and their work merited special attention. Austro-Marxists adopted concrete policies, like the socialization of production and unionization of white-collar professions, as part of their new strategy. Economics, psychology, and sociology all garnered greater attention and new institutes were established to foster scientific advancement. The socialists offered intellectuals forums for research, yet they never developed an effective program that convinced intellectuals that they had a privileged place in the socialist state and society. They could not bridge the gap between their reformist social goals and internationalist commitment and conservative views of the Reich. Conservative outlets continued to offer more attractive ideological alternatives. As a result of their lack of success beyond scientists and modernist artists, their general neglect of intellectuals outside the capital, and the gradual radicalization of their opponents, the Austro-Marxists were forced into ideological retreat in the mid-1920s.

In the early 1920s, the Austro-Marxists proposed new policies to unionize doctors, lawyers, and bureaucrats in an effort to build greater class solidarity. In these proposals, the socialists showed little sympathy for the declining status of these intellectual workers, however. When they appealed to private and state employees (Privat- und Staatsangestellten), they stressed that a state of nine million people would never provide enough jobs for all former imperial officials and that these new proletarians should accept their changed status.Footnote ⁶⁹ In discussions about the socialization of the medical profession, Karl Kautsky Jr and Arnim Holitscher chided doctors to put themselves at the service of society and surrender outdated notions about house calls and private practice. Doctors were to become medical administrators in the socialist state, developing prophylactic programs rather than merely treating symptoms.Footnote ⁷⁰ While more hesitant to transform lawyers en masse into state officials, the same desire to turn them into technocrats existed.Footnote ⁷¹ Overall, the Austro-Marxists evinced a pragmatic and utilitarian attitude towards these professionals. Their program offered little to justify a conversion to socialism for intellectuals who had long been leery of the socialist movement and were more concerned about pauperization than about exploitation. Even as Seipel's austerity measures and the Geneva Protocols in 1922 led to unemployment for tens of thousands of them, the Austro-Marxists offered no succor, persisting in telling them to accept their degradation.

After the national election of 1923, the tone of discussion about intellectual workers changed markedly as the Austro-Marxists realized they were making little progress. The Social Democrats had campaigned firmly against the austerity measures enacted by the Christian Social leadership during the inflation years, arguing that the policy hurt both workers and officials. While the Social Democrats picked up votes, they still lagged nearly 5 percent behind the Christian Socials. They failed to increase their share of the educated population and lost ground in the provinces. As Joseph Eberle triumphantly claimed in an election postmortem,

Eberle recognized that intellectuals across Europe and particularly in Austria were already moving toward fascist solutions by 1923. The Austro-Marxist leadership also saw this, deciding that the key to future elections would not be intellectuals but farmers and peasants.Footnote ⁷³

As we see, the socialists’ rather callous approach encouraged many public officials to join the Christian Socials, or worse, the Austrian Nazis or the Heimwehr. These intellectuals also paid greater attention to other radical conservative intellectual outlets. It was in the early 1920s that the Leo-Gesellschaft regained its significance as a scholarly society. As Die Arbeiter-Zeitung later lamented, the Leo-Gesellschaft largely determined academic success: “One has experienced that membership in the Leo-Gesellschaft is decisive for appointment to professorships in the medical faculty and that the habilitation of Privatdozenten in physics is denied by Germanists and historians who reject the candidate's political views.”Footnote ⁷⁴ The Austro-Marxists found no means of reaching out to these men and women who controlled the corridors of knowledge and power.

This is not to deny that there was a vibrant cross-pollination at work between socialism, science, and empirical philosophy during the early 1920s. However, almost all of these intellectuals belonged to a small subset of intellectual workers. Many of them came from liberal, Jewish backgrounds and remained outside the traditional intellectual institutions of Austria—the bureaucracy, the universities, and government. Despite some tension between their own bourgeois upbringings and the working-class ideology of the socialists, ethnonational considerations trumped class ones for many of these figures.Footnote ⁷⁵ Moreover, the intellectuals who belonged to those communities and sympathized with the Austro-Marxists—Kelsen, Freud, Bühler—enjoyed a contested academic position within Austria. Other members of the educated classes proved harder to approach.

Nevertheless, the impressive accomplishments of the Marxist–progressive synthesis merit closer attention. In debates about economic socialization Der Kampf opened the discussion up to a broad array of thinkers. In addition to the positions of party members like Helene Bauer and Käthe Pick, who argued for centralized, state-run socialization, the sociologist Rudolf Goldscheid and the philosopher Otto Neurath contributed their ideas. Goldscheid, a professor in Vienna and president of the Monist League, offered his vision of corporate guild socialism. Neurath's policy was also a modified version of guild socialism with coordinating boards similar to those established during the Great War. In these years, the Austro-Marxists moreover established connections to the Monist and Freethinkers’ Leagues.Footnote ⁷⁶

The most successful outreach by the Austro-Marxists was in psychology. Following the traumas of the war era, psychologists in Vienna recognized the need for social reform. Prompted by the physicians Julius Tandler and Josef Friedjung, the municipal government invested substantial resources in social welfare programs, psychological clinics and child welfare centers. Alfred Adler was the inspiration behind the child psychology sites, which were set up in every district of the city. With the arrival of Karl and Charlotte Bühler in 1922 and the founding of the Psychological Institute, there were three major groups of psychologists in the city; all received support from the Austro-Marxists.Footnote ⁷⁷ Many of the scientists involved—Marie Jahoda, Hans Zeisel, and Paul Lazarsfeld—had socialist upbringings, so bridging science and politics was relatively straightforward.Footnote ⁷⁸ While the Adler and Bühler circles were significant for Viennese social reform efforts, the participation of the Freud circle was a major postwar coup for the Austro-Marxists. Close associates of Freud's, like Helene Deutsch, Siegfried Bernfeld, and Josef Friedjung, wrote articles in Der Kampf that prominently deployed Freudian theories. Otto Jenssen and Otto Bauer, the head of the Austrian Social Democratic party, even incorporated Freud's ideas into their respective analyses of radicalism and the psychological state of the proletariat.Footnote ⁷⁹

The connections between the Vienna circle of logical empiricism and Austro-Marxism were likewise strong. Hans Hahn, Otto Neurath, and Edgar Zilsel all wrote in Der Kampf. Austro-Marxism and logical empiricism were literally fraternal: Josef Frank was the key architect of the Vienna public housing movement and his brother Philipp was a member of the Wiener-Kreis. The Social Democrats provided the logical empiricists with places to teach (Volkshochschulen) and work (the Social and Economic Museum, founded by Neurath), while the Vienna circle provided the Austro-Marxists with broader intellectual credibility. Josef Frank and Otto Bauer used the Verein Ernst Mach, the public face of the Vienna circle in the late 1920s and early 1930s, as a forum for theoretical discussions that introduced their ideas to a broader audience.Footnote ⁸⁰

Despite all of these successful interactions, the mid-1920s were highlighted by a resurgence of conservatism, too, spurred by growing discontent with the government and the economy. In this period Das Neue Reich underwent its greatest expansion and the Othmar Spann and Richard Kralik circles came to prominence. For example, in 1923 the circulation figures of Das Neue Reich jumped from 11,000 to 15,000. Eberle's second weekly, Die Schönere Zukunft, premiered in late 1925 and quickly reached a circulation of 25,000. Its contributors came not only from the professoriate and conservative literary circles, but also from the professional classes. Articles extolling Chancellor Seipel and his economic policies, written by public officials and bureaucrats, attested to the socialists’ missed opportunity. The swelling publication numbers of conservative journals dwarfed those of Der Kampf and even those of Karl Kraus's much-lauded Die Fackel.Footnote ⁸¹ Richard Kralik's weekly events attracted over a hundred people, among whom were aristocrats, generals, ministers, and professors.Footnote ⁸² The efforts of Eberle and Kralik contributed mightily to the intellectual hegemony exerted by conservatives throughout Austria.Footnote ⁸³

Othmar Spann, appointed a professor in the law faculty in Vienna in 1919, achieved a national reputation as a conservative leader with his book Der Wahre Staat. Spann categorically rejected democracy and socialism and argued for an authoritarian, corporatist state, ruled by men of intellect. In his vision of the true state, the two highest status groups were “creative intellectuals” (schöpferische geistige Arbeiter) and “state leaders” (Staatsführer), a group that included not just state authorities but also generals, high priests (Priesterstand), educators (Erzieherstand), and other wise men (Weisen).Footnote ⁸⁴ This elaboration of Plato's political theory, combined with a denunciations of socialism, democracy, and capitalism, gained widespread support during the First Republic. His texts on economics and sociology were best sellers; his lectures attracted hundreds of students. Through his institutional influence at the university and in the Leo-Gesellschaft, he managed to place over half a dozen students in professorships across Austria while thwarting the efforts of other academics who did not share his political views. His ideas shaped the thinking of the Heimwehr and the May Constitution of the Ständestaat.Footnote ⁸⁵

With this growth in popularity of conservative ideologies, the Austro-Marxists feared that intellectuals were slipping away. Instead of seeking new solutions, however, the socialists published articles assailing them and criticizing the ringleaders of Austrian reaction. The Austro-Marxists turned away from discussions of the broader sociological class of intellectuals and toward cultural definitions. In this regard, the conservatives had already won the rhetorical battle. Instead of seeking out newly proletarianized strata, the socialists chose to attack Kralik, Seipel, and especially Spann.Footnote ⁸⁶Der Kampf devoted several articles to the critical deficiencies of Spann's work. Helene Bauer and Max Adler rejected Spann's economic and social theories, stating that his attempt to build a social science without reliance on causal laws or empirical research resulted in a purely metaphysical system.Footnote ⁸⁷

While Spann's views were initially rejected for their intellectual deficiencies, later articles concentrated on his pernicious influence on students and officials. Otto Leichter used the inclusion of a Spann article on imperialism in the Handwörterbuch der Staatswissenschaften as an opportunity to attack the conservatism of German (and Austrian) intellectuals. As the discipline's most important reference text, the inclusion of an article by a nonspecialist and conservative ideologue, when the works of Hilferding and Luxemburg were available, demonstrated how far the encyclopedists of today were from the encyclopédistes of the Enlightenment:

The selection of “our” Viennese professor, as Leichter sardonically referred to Spann, drove home the point that intellectuals, especially academics, were now reactionaries. Leichter criticized the German professoriate for its willingness to cast its lot with the capitalist classes. Intellectuals were now conservative mandarins, incapable of using their reason for social good.Footnote ⁸⁹

Although unprepared to abandon wholly their recruitment efforts, the tone of subsequent articles about intellectuals demonstrated resentment and anger. The socialists railed at the reactionary nature of the intelligentsia and ceased arguing for their inclusion in the socialist movement. In an article on the Viennese intellectual landscape, Therese Schlesinger chose to neglect the contributions of all nonparty members. She believed that the socialist movement had undergone fundamental structural changes: the educational apparatus in place within the party could now produce large numbers of “organic” intellectuals. As such, only socialists and their supporters now qualified as intellectuals.Footnote ⁹⁰ Another article focused on the cultural associations established by workers and the party's encouragement of Bildung for the masses. Intellectual work was no longer viewed as part of the struggle to reshape productive forces, as Friedrich Adler and others had argued; instead, it was a mere superstructural element that helped round out the proletarian personality.Footnote ⁹¹ The definition of intellectual had become subjective and qualitative, rather than sociological. These articles show that the Austro-Marxists had largely ceded the intellectual battlefield to conservatives by 1924 yet trumpeted their modest successes as if these were the victories they had always sought.

In many ways, 1927 represented the last stand for Austro-Marxist efforts to recruit intellectual workers. Despite myriad setbacks, the Social Democrats believed they had a real chance to take control of the national government in 1927 and marshaled all their strength in the campaign. They toned down their secular, anti-Catholic message and focused on the positive achievements of the Viennese government as evidence of their readiness to govern. They did not have much new success with intellectual workers, however. This was evident in the pages of Der Kampf and the manifesto of Viennese intellectuals, where past achievements were celebrated and future proposals eschewed. “Intellectual Vienna” was now synonymous with modernist art and liberal social science. Although they mobilized their base of progressive intellectuals, the socialists recognized that they had no supporters elsewhere in the intellectual class. In 1927 and subsequent years, conservative movements benefited more from the involvement of intellectuals. Bureaucrats and civil servants turned to the Austrian Nazis in large numbers.Footnote ⁹² The political theorist Alfred Verdross publicly endorsed the conservative constitutional amendments of 1929. Othmar Spann's pupils wrote the antidemocratic oath of the Heimwehr and his ideas helped shape the 1934 authoritarian constitution (even though he wanted nothing to do with it). Erich Voegelin, Johannes Messner, and other professors wrote encomia in favor of the authoritarian Ständestaat and rose to fill governmental posts. Thanks to the debates about intellectual work in the First Republic, initiated by the Austro-Marxists but conducted across the political spectrum, intellectuals engaged in political affairs to a degree far greater than ever before. Unfortunately for the socialists, most of these intellectuals favored antidemocratic and authoritarian solutions.Footnote ⁹³

“The Announcement of Intellectual Vienna” was thus the culmination of a lengthy rivalry over intellectuals and intellectual work. In the immediate postwar days, Austro-Marxists believed that intellectuals would join the proletariat in crafting a new order. They endeavored to incorporate these men and women by offering them freedom to conduct their own work. Some joined; however, inflexibility on economic and cultural policy led to an inability to attract public officials, university professors, and middle-class professionals. The announcement therefore highlights the ambiguity of the Viennese and Austrian intellectual landscapes: despite the apparent success of the Austro-Marxists in recruiting internationally esteemed intellectuals, they could not to stem the tide of authoritarian conservatism among “traditional” intellectuals. Their denigration of nonscientific work and lack of interest in recruiting intellectuals beyond the capital left many of the intellectuals, initially identified as crucial to the struggle, outside the socialist sphere of influence. Coupled with the resurgent popularity of the conservative ideologies of a true state and a beautiful future, the Austro-Marxists were engaged in a losing battle. This rivalry had dire consequences as intellectuals provided the ideological and political foundations for Austro-Fascism and the Anschluss.

The aim of this essay has not been to invalidate or dispute the existence of Red Viennese culture. Austro-Marxists did an impressive job reaching out to proponents of modern science, philosophy, and social reform.Footnote ⁹⁴ The socialists proved to be the rightful heirs to the Austrian liberal tradition and contributed significantly to a radical “Late Enlightenment” moment.Footnote ⁹⁵ However, much as the Austro-Marxists struggled to conceptualize intellectual work and include Austrian mandarins, this essay highlights the need to broaden our understanding of interwar Viennese culture and intellectual history. A narrow focus on a small group of progressive intellectuals distorts the image of this historical moment. As important as Freud, Adler, or Musil were to the First Republic, their impact did not compare to that of Spann, Eberle, or Kralik, who reinforced the status quo and contributed to Austria's turn toward authoritarian politics. Black Viennese ideology has escaped effective criticism despite, and likely because of, its pervasiveness during the First Republic and in the post-World War II era. This absence is particularly striking given the excellent studies on conservatism elsewhere in Europe.Footnote ⁹⁶ The ubiquity of Black Vienna is even confirmed by the very historical fact that led to the celebration of early twentieth-century Viennese intellectual life in North America and Europe in the first place: the exile of progressives from the country, which was endorsed and sometimes perpetrated by Black Viennese figures. Greater contextualization is therefore required to understand this momentous epoch.