Civl society

2 2 The ongoing democratisation of the political life that ultimately led to universal suffrage for men in 1906 undermined the hardly resilient, precarious domination of the German-Austrian bourgeoisie even more. The nationalistic, antisemitic, and socialist mass movements threatened the bourgeois positions and contributed to “bourgeois” changing from being another word for “progressive” to a metaphor for cautious, security conscious, progress sceptical, and defensive to the demands for further political modernisation. It is possible that democratisation did not reach old-Austria too late, but too early – before the “gentrification” of society that needed to precede a modern democracy.

3 3 The bourgeoisie increasingly differentiated itself into middle classes oriented on national languages. In this way, any individual “national” bourgeois configuration became automatically involved in a war on several fronts: Against the agrarians (nobility and farmers), and their strong ability to enforce themselves in the political system, against the increasingly strengthened workers’ movement, against the specific other national movements, against the petit bourgeois – usually antisemitic – criticism from the cities, and, possibly even against the state.

However, what made all these bourgeois classes stick together until 1914/18 was that they were obviously able to participate in the economic boom and earn considerable wealth. As Roman Sandgruber put it so appropriately, the decades before 1914 were a “dreamtime for millionaires”. 18Although old-Austria had introduced a “progressive” income tax in 1896, the highest rate only lay at 5 per cent! A person who had a good hand for making money could become fabulously wealthy. This was still accompanied by a certain faith in advancement and security, and in the progress of technology and science. And the forms of propriety, civility, everyday culture, summering in the country, stays in the renowned spas – in short, a supernational bourgeois culture – remained across all of the borders separating nationalities and religions. In general, the middle classes progressed upwards economically, and it is possible that this positive material development among the non-German bourgeoisie could have made it possible to smooth the national contours and develop a new consensus at some time.

However, a global conflagration that the Habsburg monarchy would not survive was ignited in Vienna in 1914. Not only the monarchy collapsed in 1918; this was also the fate of the secure world of the bourgeoisie – the world of solid, traditional business relationships between Reichenberg, Prague, Prossnitz, Vienna, and Budapest; between Lemberg and the Balkans, Trieste and Alexandria. The common market and unified state crumbled. What happened to the middle classes at the time? The traditional security strategies of the middle classes (even the lower ones) proved to be deceptive. Neither being in possession of securities (especially government bonds) nor a tenement building and neither having a high-level position in the state administration nor in the private service sector offered protection against suddenly losing one’s wealth – going as far as putting one’s very survival in question – in the wake of the inflation that occurred during and after the war. Even those extremely cautious people of private means who did not fall for war bonds lost as much as three or four fifths of their fortunes. 19

But this rupture did not affect all bourgeois classes in the same way. Of course, almost all of those in possession of Austrian (and Hungarian) bonds suffered certain financial losses. However, just how quickly the Czechoslovakian redevelopment bonds issued immediately after the foundation of the state in 1918 were oversubscribed is astonishing – the Czech bourgeoisie obviously still had sufficient financial reserves, which they had withheld from old-Austria, that they willingly put into the hands of their own (!) new state. In words that have often been quoted, Otto Bauer – the Austrian Social Democrat who is considered one of the leading thinkers of the left-socialist Austro-Marxist faction – expressed that the main losers as a result of the change were the members of the German-Austrian, and particularly Viennese, bourgeoisie:

“… The same process of currency devaluation…has pauperised broad layers of the old bourgeoisie. At first, this fate hit the men of private means… and, with them, the house owners were expropriated… The higher civil service was also depressed by the devaluation of the currency… It was the old Viennese patriarchate, the top strata of the Austrian intelligentsia, large sections of the middle and lower classes, who had become impoverished by the devaluation of the currency. They had actually been the ruling class of the Habsburg monarchy. They were the bearers of Austrian patriotism, of old-Austrian traditions. They had provided the Habsburg monarchy with its civil servants, with its officers. For a century, they had been the bearers of a specifically Austrian culture, Viennese literature, Viennese music, and Viennese theatre. They are the ones who were really defeated in the war. It was their empire that collapsed in October 1918. And they lost their wealth together with their empire…” 20

However, rent control in particular enabled impoverished middle-class people to maintain a standard of living that would have been impossible in a completely free housing market. 21Leisure and summer holiday habits had also hardly changed. On the contrary – immediately after the war, people often sought refuge in the summer retreats in the silent hope that the farmers would still be able to find some food for them. The lack of capital also did not lead to a significant buyer’s market for summer holiday homes – this is also evidence of a quite astonishing continuity. 22

The inflation destroyed a great deal of capital, especially when investments had been made in state securities (and here once again – especially in war bonds.) There is hardly a bourgeois biography in which this fact is not mentioned, seeing that it affected almost everyone belonging to this class in any way at all. 23The rent-control legislations that, de facto, expropriated the property owners had a similar effect – Otto Bauer already provided an accurate description of this. Up until 1914, it had been a common security strategy for members of the middle classes to own an apartment building to provide for their old age. Heinrich Röttinger (1869–1952), who retired from his final position as Director of the University Library in 1933, had an annual income of more than 16,000 crowns in 1914; only 34 per cent came from his salary (which still amounted to 5400 crowns), while 36 per cent came from renting and 15 per cent from his investments. Not untypically, the last two items were reduced to zero after 1918, partly due to devaluation and partly to the systematic disposal of property and securities. This was the first time that the government official had to rely entirely on his salary. 24

Experiencing insecurity was a central shock for the highly developed desire for security felt by the members of the bourgeoisie of the late monarchy, which Stefan Zweig portrayed so lovingly in his writing. 25The inflation resulted in civil servants losing more than 85 per cent of their real income (1920: civil servants received 14 per cent of the peacetime purchasing power and, in 1925, their salaries were still only about 56 per cent of what they had been before the war). 26This material loss of position was underlined by the levelling of incomes during the inflationary period: In March 1922, a coal deliverer earned 1300 times as much as he did in 1914; for a hairdresser, this was only 400, for a university professor 214, a court councillor 124, and for an assistant doctor only 100 times as much. At the same time, a skilled worker in the metal, sugar, or electrical industry earned up to 1.8 million crowns, while the salary of a ministerial councillor was only 1.5 million crowns. 27Although the wage gap widened again after the stabilisation of the currency (autumn 1922), the relations remained completely different from traditional concepts. By no means, had the labourers become “rich” – they still earned very little compared to their counterparts in other countries. 28Nevertheless, the perception of the levelling for the affected “bourgeoisie” meant precisely the loss of the social advantages that had previously defined being “bourgeois”.