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Interwar Vienna was considered a bastion of radical socialist thought, and its reputation as "Red Vienna" has loomed large in both the popular imagination and the historiography of Central Europe. However, as Janek Wasserman shows in this book, a "Black Vienna" existed as well; its members voiced critiques of the postwar democratic order, Jewish inclusion, and Enlightenment values, providing a theoretical foundation for Austrian and Central European fascist movements. Looking at the complex interplay between intellectuals, the public, and the state, he argues that seemingly apolitical Viennese intellectuals, especially conservative ones, dramatically affected the course of Austrian history. While Red Viennese intellectuals mounted an impressive challenge in cultural and intellectual forums throughout the city, radical conservatism carried the day. Black Viennese intellectuals hastened the destruction of the First Republic, facilitating the establishment of the Austrofascist state and paving the way for Anschluss with Nazi Germany.Closely observing the works and actions of Viennese reformers, journalists, philosophers, and scientists, Wasserman traces intellectual, social, and political developments in the Austrian First Republic while highlighting intellectuals' participation in the growing worldwide conflict between socialism, conservatism, and fascism. Vienna was a microcosm of larger developments in Europe—the rise of the radical right and the struggle between competing ideological visions. By focusing on the evolution of Austrian conservatism, Wasserman complicates post–World War II narratives about Austrian anti-fascism and Austrian victimhood.
Janek Wasserman is Assistant Professor of Modern German/Central European History at the University of Alabama.
"Janek Wasserman introduces us to Black Vienna, a parallel city where disappointed monarchists, frustrated Catholic radicals, and racist German nationalists worked in consort to destroy the First Republic.... Wasserman challenges the conventionalLager model of interwar Austrian politics in which there were three distinct camps: Social Democrats, Christian radicals and German nationalists. Instead he finds a 'two-part division of interwar Austrian life' in which the lines between Catholic conservatives and German nationalists were blurred. He is not the first to propose this revision... but Wasserman adds rich detail on how the camps' personalities, publications and organizations converged."
Paul A. Hanebrink, Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, author of In Defense of Christian Hungary:
"In the compelling and important Black Vienna, Janek Wasserman identifies the central actors, journals, and intellectual circles in the city's interwar 'culture war.’ Vienna was both the site and the target of an ideological struggle. Wasserman’s attention to this struggle offers significant new insight into the history of the First Austrian Republic."
David Luft, Horning Professor in the Humanities and Professor of History, Oregon State University, David Luft Horning Professor, author of Eros and Inwardness in Vienna:
"Black Vienna provides a more complex, more nuanced understanding of the Radical Right in Vienna than we have had before, but Janek Wasserman also describes the many connections among left-wing intellectuals, including Marxists, psychoanalysts, and logical positivists, emphasizing the weakness of Red Vienna in the intellectual and political world of the interwar years. Wasserman's book helps us to understand the polarization of politics in the First Austrian Republic by studying the intellectuals of the far Right, who were more radical than either of the main conservative parties and who found common ground between German nationalism and Catholicism and in their shared commitments to authoritarianism and anti-Semitism. This is a book about the dynamics of polarization and mutual perception between Left and Right in the intellectual and ideological camps of interwar Vienna. Wasserman emphasizes the importance and influence of Black Vienna, especially of understudied radical conservative thinkers such as Othmar Spann."
Lisa Silverman, University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee, author of Becoming Austrians: Jews and Culture between the World Wars:
"Black Vienna is an excellent book that adds original and necessary insight into the intellectual history of interwar Austria. In bringing to light overlooked conservative elements of interwar Austrian history, Wasserman provides an important corrective that helps us better understand the development of ideologies on both the right and the left."
John Warren:
"The book has been extremely well researched and for those with an interest in the detailed background to Austria's political history between the wars, it provides a complex and thorough exposé of the radical right in Vienna between the wars, this being interwoven with an account of the left-wing intellectuals who were less active in promoting the ideals of Social Democracy."
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