In this thought-provoking study, Janek Wasserman argues that the mythical status of Red Vienna in international scholarship has overshadowed the strength of the city's conservative milieu. Interwar Vienna was the site of an intense ideological struggle, in which progressives of lasting renown faced stiff resistance from a broad range of cultural conservatives. These conservatives included not only radical Catholics and monarchists, but also German nationalists. Inspired by the color symbolism of Austrian politics, the author defines this conservative counterculture as Black Vienna.

Based primarily on printed sources, Wasserman traces the ideological essence of Vienna's conservative Right. Among its leading representatives was social philosopher Othmar Spann, who openly challenged the foundations of modern social science and exerted great influence at the University of Vienna. Yet, the monarchists, such as Ernst Karl Winter and Alfred Missong, and Catholic nationalists, such as Joseph Eberle, also figure prominently in this study. These individuals were embedded in such groups as the Catholic Leo Society (Leo-Gesellschaft), the Spann Circle (Spannkreis), and the Austrian Catholic Action. Together, they struggled for ideological hegemony in academia and society.

Wasserman does not examine conservative politics in isolation, but regularly contrasts it with its leftist counterpart. He shows the cooperation between progressive intellectuals and Austro-Marxism, and the ensuing tensions between philosophical radicalism and political pragmatism. Interwar Austria was a highly politicized society, and the intellectual Left was no less ideological in its scholarly approach than its conservative opponents. Organized in associations such as the Ernst Mach Society and the Vienna Circle, progressive intellectuals such as the philosopher Moritz Schlick or the psychoanalyst Wilhelm Reich hoped to transform Austrian society. The infrastructure of Vienna's Social Democratic municipal government allowed some of them to put their theories into practice.

In his core analysis of the conservative milieu, Wasserman focuses on the similarities among Vienna's right-wing intellectuals: their anti-Marxism, their anti-Semitism, and their authoritarianism. He documents how conservatives of different hues advanced authoritarian conceptions that paved the way for both Austro-Fascism and Austrian National Socialism. Yet the author's collective definition of Black Vienna fits primarily a select group of conservative bridge builders, who indeed fused an imperial Catholic tradition with German nationalism. This group produced influential thinkers, but it was far from dominant among either Christian Socials or German nationalists. Non-Socialist Austria remained divided along a cultural axis, which originated in religious attitudes and reverberated in questions of Habsburg patriotism and national allegiance.

In his conclusion, Wasserman emphasizes that interwar Vienna was not the red fortress of lore, but a hotbed of conflicting intellectual influences. A central component of its cultural environment was a radically Catholic Conservative milieu with authoritarian and Fascist sympathies. The accompanying separation of academia into hostile camps was no coincidence, since methodological choices were deeply intertwined with societal views. There was little room for detached scholarship in an era of “fighting science” (Kämpfende Wissenschaft; 77, 224).

Black Vienna highlights the rejection of democracy and pluralism among interwar conservatives and monarchists. It especially challenges the imagery of a uniquely tolerant monarchist milieu, which had supposedly served as a democratic link between feuding political camps, and documents its early integration into the radical Right. In the process, the study also demonstrates the selectivity of postwar anti-Fascism in Austria, which defined German nationalism as Austria's true problem and downplayed the significance of Conservative authoritarianism and anti-Semitism. Its Austrianist credentials returned the most reactionary wing of Catholic Conservatism to the democratic mainstream.

Wasserman's careful analysis leaves no doubt about the Fascist entanglements of interwar Austrian conservatism. The author overextends his argument, however, when he challenges the historical differentiation of Austrian politics into three major camps and proposes a straightforward Left–Right dichotomy instead. He highlights rightist commonalities, which included anti-Marxism and anti-Semitism, but underestimates the chasm between a political Catholicism with Habsburg nostalgia on the one hand and a nationalist or liberal secularism with a desire for German unification on the other. Both tendencies were increasingly swept up by the Fascist wave of interwar Europe and thus prepared the demise of democracy. Yet their cultural bases differed profoundly. Even after the ideological fading of Lager culture in the postwar decades, Austria has escaped the two-party logic of American politics. In spite of regular Center–Right majorities, the country has been predominantly ruled by grand coalitions between Catholic Conservatives and Social Democrats.

Janek Wassermann has provided an innovative perspective on interwar Austrian society. He continues the dismantling of postwar Austrian consensus historiography triggered by the Waldheim controversy, and documents the authoritarian roots of many icons of Austrian nation building. His more tenuous grasp of the cultural basis of Austrian party politics does not diminish his important contribution to an improved understanding of both interwar Austria and its postwar representation.