Civl society

In the first years after the war, the feeling of material deprivation became mixed with the experience of social powerlessness due to the dominance of the left wing in the streets and political process: “Supported on the streets and with the means of trade union struggle, assured of the Bundeswehr recruited from their ranks, social democracy is able to allow itself the tremendous luxury of leaving all responsibility to the bourgeois parties, seeing that, in reality, it remains dominant, even if there is a bourgeois cabinet. However, the pillars of the old regime – the citizens and farmers – are leaving the field, intimidated, uncertain of their own destiny…” 29

The experience of persistent material deprivation continued for quite a few “bourgeois” even after “bourgeois” coalitions had taken over the government. The Geneva Protocol for the Reconstruction of Austria of 1922 forced an extensive reduction in the number of civil servants. It was proclaimed that the number of public employees was to be “reduced” by the round number of 100,000. By the end of 1925, 83,386 had actually retired or been dismissed, in addition to 10,000 who had worked for the Southern Railroad Organisation. The total number reached about 50 per cent of those still active, i.e., about one third of all the people employed in public service had been affected by these measures. In the following years, there was only a slow decrease in the number of public employees. However, this was then accelerated as a result of the collapse of the Creditanstalt Bank and the enormous costs for its reorganisation that were covered by the state. In 1926, around 200,000 people were employed in government administration, federal enterprises and the railroads; this decreased to 166,000 in 1933 (this later increased slightly due to the number of soldiers and police officers hired). 30The succession of bank failures that followed after the stabilisation crisis of 1924 had a similar effect. The Association of Banking and Savings Institute Officials had 24,500 members in 1924; this reduced to 11,000 in 1926 and even further to 7,700 in 1931. 31

A high percentage of the bourgeois groups who had been hit hardest by the collapse of the monarchy, inflation, rent control legislations, budget restructuring, and bank failures lived in Vienna. The fact that “republic” lacked the positive connotation the word generally has for us today for these impoverished members of the bourgeoisie who were unsure of their status is unpleasant, but it is not incomprehensible. What is less comprehensible is that the “bourgeois” parties and governments showed so little commitment to the interests of their clientele. The radical pay cuts that the employees of the Creditanstalt were expected to accept as a result of the bank’s crisis even prompted Otto Bauer to speak in the main committee of the National Council. He stated that although he had actually nothing against such cuts, he would like to be permitted to state that, by doing this, the bourgeois parties were sawing off the branch they were sitting on. 32It seems possible that this approach was an expression of certain antisemitic currents among the Christian Socials and Greater Germans (bank directors were frequently Jews) and, in connection with this, probably also an attempt to gain popularity by attributing guilt to, and taking massive action against, bank directors and officials. 33

The memoirs of Alexander Spitzmüller (1862–1953) offer a wide range of material for this behaviour – especially on the part of the Christian Socialists: In spite of his clearly Catholic stance, the one-time state official, then bank director (of the Creditanstalt), Austrian Trade Minister, and the last joint Finance Minister of the Austro-Hungarian empire, always remained an outsider for the Christian Socialists. He never received the thanks due to him for the energy he invested as governor of the Austro-Hungarian Bank (until its liquidation at the beginning of 1923) and as head of the Creditanstalt during the crisis of 1931/32; quite the contrary, everything possible was undertaken to hinder him in carrying out these arduous tasks. 34Spitzmüller’s memoirs are not the only case. Those of Hans von Loewenfeld-Russ, who, as a highly respected nutritionist, not only served the monarchy but also the young republic with unwavering loyalty, described the blockade of any further public career by the Christian Social Party as the result of a statement he made in the cabinet that seemed to expose him as sympathising with the Social Democrats. 35

Entrepreneurial circles, therefore, started looking for alternatives early on. They supported the Heimwehr as a military force against the Republican Schutzbund of the Social Democrats. The management of the “Alpine” conglomerate in Styria, in particular, promoted the various Heimwehr organisations. Here, the management attempted to weaken the social democratic unions by supporting a “yellow” Heimwehr union. Bourgeois frustration became particularly evident in the results of the Vienna municipal and province election of 1932, when the Christian Socialists suffered severe losses to the National Socialists.

Despite the often-invoked losses and cuts – that occur in every memoir – the end of the monarchy did not (yet) mean the end of the bourgeois world. This did not happen until 1938, when the Jewish bourgeoisie (or, more precisely, the bourgeoisie of Jewish descent, because this had nothing to do with religious beliefs) were robbed of all their assets. 36As Peter Melichar once expressed in a conversation, the “aryanisation” files contained the most complete material on the cultural history of the (so-called Jewish) middle classes of the interwar period. The “aryanisations” undoubtedly created a much more profound break in the continuity of the bourgeois world that could be followed up to this point and now came to an end, destroyed by flight and, in the worst cases, by deportation to Theresienstadt and Auschwitz.

The major ruptures that took place in 1918, 1938, and 1945 can therefore be interpreted as three stages on the path to the post-bourgeois era – in the first, the Austrian bourgeoisie lost much of its economic power, and then – in the second starting 1938 – large sections of this bourgeoisie (the large Jewish portion) lost their property, homeland, and – all too often – their lives. In the third, after 1945, the former Great German-Liberal bourgeoisie experienced a similar – albeit nowhere near as catastrophic – deprivation.

Let us therefore assume that those classes that dominated “bourgeois” society in the 19 thcentury largely lost their livelihoods in 1918, 1938, and 1945. Did the end of fascism, national socialism, and communism bring about a renaissance of the bourgeoisie? There are continuities in quite a few families, as well as enterprises, but family companies in particular tend to be unable to continue operating as such after a few generations. The bourgeoisie cannot be reconstructed as an economically, intellectually, and culturally dominating class in the style of the German-liberal bourgeoisie of the second half of the 19 thcentury.

I return to the statements about the civil society made at the beginning of this essay. Put in a nutshell, the question is: How many traditional bourgeoisie does a democratic, civil society of free “citizens” need if it is to function successfully? Was the great crisis of 1914–1918 so catastrophic because it hit the bourgeoisie so severely? And was the inability of the new states to offer the “old” bourgeoisie of the monarchy a suitable new home one of the (several) reasons for the relatively rapid downfall of the order in 1918/19? And: Is a democratic “civil society” possible without social groups that – whether they consider themselves “bourgeois” or not – still represent the canon of values that were characteristic of the “classical” bourgeoisie: a high level of esteem for the self-determined individual, as well as personal achievement and efficiency, combined with the belief in the proficiency of free associations and participation in the self-administration of the community, an optimistic, science-based concept of human development, coupled with a deep distrust of all ready-made solutions prescribed “from above”?