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Otto Bauer (1881–1938) was one of Austria’s most prominent twentieth-century social-democratic statesmen. Born in Vienna, Austria-Hungary, he was expected to take over his father’s textile business but instead dedicated himself to the cause of Marxism.

Bauer was both a brilliant theoretician and a man deeply engaged in real-world politics. He earned a doctorate in law from the University of Vienna in January 1906 and in the following year became secretary of the social-democratic faction in parliament. He was editor of the social-democratic Arbeiterzeitung (Workers’ Newspaper), for which he also regularly wrote articles, and helped found the influential Austro-Marxist journal Der Kampf (The Struggle). His first major work, The Nationalities Question and Social Democracy (1907), is considered a classic Marxist study of the dual forces of socialism and nationalism. He viewed modern nations as communities of character (Charaktergemeinschaften) that emerged out of communities of fate (Schicksalsgemeinschaften) and argued that conflict among the dozen nations comprising the Austro-Hungarian Empire was due primarily to class struggle.

Bauer fought in World War I (1914–1918), was captured on the eastern front by the Russians, and survived three years as a prisoner of war. Upon his return to Austria after the war, he resumed activity in the Social Democratic Party and served from 1918 to 1919 as foreign minister in the first revolutionary Austrian government. In this official capacity, he advocated Austrian unification with Germany and even signed a secret annexation agreement because, like many socialists at the time, he believed it would lead to greater solidarity among the proletariat. The Allies, however, subsequently forbade unification in the 1919 Treaty of Saint-Germain.

Among Bauer’s collected works, The Austrian Revolution (1923) stands out as a particularly insightful and detailed analysis of the role of class in Austria’s transition from multinational empire to modern nation-state. Always a fierce defender of the working class, Bauer and others in the left wing of the Social Democratic Party declared in the 1926 Socialist Declaration of Linz that, should social democracy not be realized through peaceful and democratic means, they would not rule out “defensive violence” to achieve their ends. In addition to being the intellectual leader of the Social Democratic Party, he served from 1929 until 1934 as a representative in parliament.

Following a brief civil war in February 1934, in which the leadership of the Social Democratic Party was arrested and imprisoned, Bauer fled to Czechoslovakia. Austrian Chancellor Engelbert Dollfuss subsequently banned the Social Democratic Party and its trade unions and suspended constitutional democracy. A failed Nazi attempt to overthrow the government that resulted in Dollfuss’s assassination in July 1934 marked the end of the First Austrian Republic and the beginning of the ignominious period of authoritarian government known as Austrofascism. Bauer did not live to see the rebirth of social democracy in the Second Austrian Republic after World War II (1939–1945). He died in exile in Paris, France, on July 4, 1938, four months after Austria had been annexed by Nazi Germany, with Europe headed toward a catastrophic war and much of what he had worked for torn asunder.

Bibliography:

Bauer, Otto. Kapitalismus und Sozialismus nach dem Weltkrieg. Vienna:Wiener Volksbuchhandlung, 1931.
The Austrian Revolution. New York: Burt Franklin, 1970.
“Fascism.” In Austro-Marxism, edited by Tom B. Bottomore and Patrick Goode. Oxford, U.K.: Clarendon, 1978.
The Question of Nationalities and Social Democracy. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2000.
Braunthal, Julius. Otto Bauer: Eine Auswahl aus Seinem Lebenswerk. Vienna: Verlag der Wiener Volksbuchhandlung, 1961.