Vienna was the heart and soul of the Austro-Hungarian empire before its dissolution at the end of World War I. It was an epicenter of high culture, playing host to composers such as Johannes Brahms, Josef Bruckner, Gustav Mahler and Richard Strauss. The city’s cultural contributions before the war included the artistic movement of the Vienna Secession, Sigmund Freud’s psychoanalysis, the Second Viennese School, the architecture of Adolf Loos, the philosophy of Ludwig Wittgenstein and the Vienna Circle. But the empire’s crown jewel was not without its cracks. A strong undercurrent of antisemitism and increasingly rigid social class boundaries could not be covered up no matter how progressive the metropolis appeared on first glance.

Industrialization in the late 19th century brought people from all over eastern Europe to Vienna. By 1910, Vienna had over 2 million inhabitants, making it the third largest city in Europe at the time, behind London and Paris. While the city provided an extent of social mobility, the classes of Austro-Hungarian society remained about the same. It consisted of a very small upper class composed of an old aristocracy, known as “blue bloods”, new aristocracy, that acquired their wealth as a byproduct of industrialization, a small middle and entrepreneurial class, which encompassed approximately 15 percent of the empire, a growing working class, about 25 percent, and a class of peasant-farmers approximately 55 to 60 percent. Peasant farmers lived rurally, and not within the city of Vienna. Documentation of poverty within the city of Vienna is not extensive, as part of a government plan to build the reputation of the city, but scholars do have some surviving evidence of its extent. The work of journalist Emil Kläger and photographer Hermann Drawe survives today, chronicling the lives of the homeless men, women, and children who lived in the sewers, under staircases, and on the streets of Vienna. They started their work in 1904, eventually publishing their interviews and photographs in the book, Durch die Wiener Quartiere des Elends und Verbrechens (Journey through the Viennese quarters of crime and despair) in 1908.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Another dark spot on the glittering city was the strong sense of antisemitism that permeated Viennese society. A sense of nationalism was growing in countries all over Europe, along with the distinct notion of ‘race’. Jewish people were seen as outsiders and mistrusted in most European countries, because they were a distinct, tight-knit community with no country of origin, which often led to the misguided belief that they could not be trusted because they had no loyalty to anyone but themselves. Antisemitism was perpetuated especially in Vienna by the Austrian Christian Social Party, and its leader and founder Karl Lueger. Lueger found popularity early on in his career by raising the “Jewish Question”. He was mayor of Vienna from 1897 to 1910, and was well liked by Vienna’s citizens for expanding city municipalities and creating social welfare programs. His mayor-ship only ended due to his early death from illness. His legacy is complicated. He prevented Jewish people from working in municipal administrative positions, and his party’s politics towards Jewish people are commonly regarded as the model for Adolf Hitler’s Nazism of the 1930s. Hitler witnessed Luger’s treatment of the Jewish community in Vienna first hand, as he lived there from 1908 to 1913. 

 

Vienna was considered a pinnacle of progress at the time, for its extensive public transportation, high tap-water quality, and forward-thinking geniuses of art, music, philosophy and architecture. But whole segments of the community were kept out of the narrative, for fear of shedding a bad light on the city of dreams. Pre-World War I Vienna was complicated, and problems surrounding the Jewish community and class division did not go away after the war ended.

 

 

 

An important industrial location – Vienna before the First World War. (n.d.). The World of the Habsburgs. Retrieved January 31, 2022, from https://ww1.habsburger.net/en/chapters/important-industrial-location-vienna-first-world-war

Gallagher, P. (2015, December 29). The forgotten mole men of Vienna’s sewers. DangerousMinds. Retrieved January 31, 2022, from https://dangerousminds.net/comments/the_forgotten_mole_men_of_viennas_sewers

Llewellyn, J., & Thompson, S. (2017, August 9). Austria-Hungary before World War I. Alpha History. Retrieved January 31, 2022, from https://alphahistory.com/worldwar1/austria-hungary/

Solsten, E. (1994). Austria: A Country Study. Http://Countrystudies.Us/Austria/72.Htm. Retrieved January 31, 2022, from http://countrystudies.us/austria/72.htm