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Xerox University Microfilms 300 North Zeeb Road Ann Arbo', Michigan 48106 74-3188

HAMER, Thomas Lewis, 1940- BEYOND FEMINISM: THE WOMEN'S MOVEMENT IN AUSTRIAN SOCIAL DEMOCRACY, 1890-1920,

The Ohio State University, Ph.D., 1973 History, modern

University Microfilms, A XEROX Company , Ann Arbor, Michigan

© Copyright by

Thomas Lewis Hamer

1973

THIS DISSERTATION HAS BEEN MICROFILMED EXACTLY AS RECEIVED. BEYOND FEMINISM: THE WOMEN'S MOVEMENT IN AUSTRIAN SOCIAL DEMOCRACY, 1890-1920

DISSERTATION

Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate School of The Ohio State University

By

Thomas Lewis Hamer, B.S., M.A.

*****

The Ohio State University

1973

Reading Committee: Approved By

Professor Carole Rogel Professor Michael W. Curran Professor John A. M. Rothney Professor Enrico Quarantelli

Adviser Department of History PREFACE

At a time of renewed concern over women's rights it

has become commonplace to suggest that the study of women in history should be pursued in greater depth. Many mono­ graphs on the historical roles of women have appeared in recent years in response to this widespread contention. It is an assumption of this study that such activity, its time­ liness notwithstanding, represents a legitimate attempt by historians to investigate problem areas which require clarification.

One such area, heretofore unexplored, is the Social

Democratic women's movement in Austria and its efforts to further the cause of emancipation. There can be no doubt that this movement played a significant role in the life of that country. During the thirty years from 1890 to 1920 it grew from humble beginnings to a full-fledged mass phenome­ non of 110,000 members, many of whom participated regularly in thousands of meetings, parades and demonstrations over the years. It also had its own newspaper whose actual circula­ tion was considerably larger than the listed membership of the movement, since a single issue of the paper was frequently

ii passed from she subscriber to her friends.

From the very beginning the Austrian Social Democratic

women's movement was entirely forward looking. It was an

article of faith among the members that the emancipation of

Austrian women, which was taken to mean the winning of full

social and economic equality, could be achieved in their

lifetimes. They also believed that Social Democracy alone possessed the perspective and the means to gain that victory. In truth the Social Democratic women's movement did address itself to a broader spectrum of issues than its liberal and Catholic counterparts.

In the end, however, the belief in emancipation and confidence in the methods of Social Democracy resulted in disappointmenr. VThen the Social Democrats came to power in

1918, little was or could be done to improve the position of

Austrian women. Aside from the achievement of woman suf­ frage and political equality, the movement's broader expectations went largely unfulfilled. It is the purpose of this study tc trace the origins and development of the

Social Democratic women's movement during its first thirty years and to analyze its shortcomings.

I wish to express my thanks tc all those who assisted me in the completion of this project: Professor Karl R. iii Stadler, Ludwig Boltzmann Institut fur die Geschichte der

Arbeiterbevjequnq, Linz, Austria; in Vienna, Professor Ernst

Herlitzka, Verein für die Geschichte der Arbeiterbewequnor

Richard Klusarits, Karl Marx Bibliothek, Haus der SPO;

Dr. Herbert Steiner, Archiv der flsterreichischen Widerstandee;

and the staffs of the Osterreichische Nationalbibliothek.

Bibliothek der Universitat Wien and the Bibliothek der Kammer

für Arbeiter und Anqestellte.

To the Austrian Ministry of Science and Research,

Mrs. Hilda May and the Austrian-American Education

(Fulbright) Commission I owe my gratitude for material

assistance and housing which made my research possible.

Finally, I acknowledge a special debt of thanks to my

adviser. Professor Carole Rogel, who guided me in the preparation of this manuscript and to my wife Kathryn for her consistent encouragement.

XV VITA

December 7, 1940. . . Born - Hazleton, Pennsylvania

1952...... B.S., The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, Pennsylvania

1968...... M.A., San Jose State University, San Jose, California

1968-1971 ...... Teaching Associate, Department of History, The Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio

1971-1972 ...... Fellow of the Austrian Ministry of Science and Research, Vienna, Austria

1972-197 3 ...... Teaching Associate, Department of History, The Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio

FIELDS OF STUDY

Major Field: European History

East Central Europe; Professor Carole Rogel

Russian History: Professor Michael W. Curran

Twentieth Century Europe: Professor Robert A. Gates

Nineteenth Century Europe: Professor Sidney N. Fisher

V TA3LE OF CONTENT'S

Page

PREFACE...... ii

VITA ...... y

LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS......

CHAPTER

I. INTRODUCTION: THE STATIC POSITION OF WOMEN IN AUSTRIAN SOCIETY...... I

II. IN THE BEGINNING: EARLY PRECURSORS AND THEORETICAL ORIGINS OF THE WOMEN'S MOVE-'-lENT IN AUSTRIAN SOCIAL DEMOCRACY ...... 28

III. FORMATION AND DEVELOPMENT OF A SOCIAL DEMOCRATIC WOMEN'S MOVEMENT IN AUSTRIA, 1890-1920...... 58

IV. THE IMPACT OF THE FIRST WORLD WAR : TEMPORARY DISRUPTIONS AND UNDERLYING CON­ TINUITY...... 119

V. THE AUSTRIAN "REVOLUTION, " 1918-1920 ...... 170

VI. THE COMiMUNIST "ALTERNATIVE"...... 219

VII. CONCLUSIONS...... 231

BIBLIOGRAPHY ...... 238

vx LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS

AZ - Arbeiter-Zeitunq

AnZ - Arbeiterinnen-Zeitunq

NFP - Neue Freie Presse

RP - Die RevoIutionMre Proletarierin

V I 1 CHAPTER I

INTRODUCTION: THE STATIC POSITION OF WOMEN IN AUSTRIAN SOCIETY

In the spring of 1972 a remarkable series of newspaper articles appeared in the Kurier, a popular Viennese daily.

"On Being a Woman in Austria" ("Frau sein in Osterreich"), as the series was called, presented a moderate, reasoned account of the subordinate status of women in modern Austrian life. It was, as its author Thea Leitner noted in the sub­ title, "a critical report about the silent majority in this country."^ For some Austrians, the fact' that the series even appeared was noteworthy in itself. According to rumor,

Frau Leitner had tried for months to have the series run and had only met with success upon the promotion of her 2 husband to an important position on the Kurier staff.

1 " 'Thea Leitner, "Frau sein in Osterreich," Kurier, March 18-April 8, 1972. 2 This story was related to me in the Austrian National Library by a woman student at the University of Vienna. Frau Leitner was unavailable for interview and therefore did not confirm or deny its accuracy. For the student of history, however, the real signifi­ cance of the series is not represented by the fact of its publication. Rather, it lies in the realization that Frau

Leitner's observations on the contemporary status of women can serve as accurate social commentary for any given period during the last eighty years, i.e., since industrialization changed the face of Austrian society and its effect upon women was first noted. To one who is familiar with Central

Europe, such a situation may not be surprising. Social change in that area, where traditional values bulk large, has frequently been slow. But there is in the Austrian character a proclivity for clinging to the past which may even surpass 3 that found in neighboring countries.

The twentieth century has been a difficult time for

Austria. What was once the keystone of the imperial Habsburg

3 It is no coincidence that Austrian writers have been characterized as "perhaps the most trenchant foes of modern­ ity. " William M. Johnston, The Austrian Mind; An Intellec­ tual Find Social History. 1848-1938 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1972), p. 391. Nor is it insignificant that, of the twenty-nine chief book-producing nations, Aus'ria is one of eight which are moving toward greater standardization of literary out­ put rather than diversity. Alvin Toffler, Future Shock (London: Pan Books Ltd., 1970), p. 247. Monarchy bec am. e a small, economically disadvantaged repub­

lic.*^ There was also the impact of great wars and hard times,

as well as the fascist abberation. Beset by these upheavals,

Austrians have locked for comfort to the glories of the past

and the safeguards of tradition and custom. In the face of

political uncertainty and economic disruptions, security

has been sought in the preservation of traditional social

values. Today the social sphere remains an area of respite

from the pressures of modernity and change and from the

hardships that have frequently accompanied them. For Austrian

women, however, the results are less than positive. Social

continuity--the forceful maintenance of traditional social

institutions and values— has become a hallmark of Austrian

life and has in turn insured the defeat of past attempts

at emancipation.

At this point it would be well to identify those factors

which have helped to create the subordinate status of

Austrian women in the past and which are responsible for maintaining it today. It should be noted in passing that the

social position of Austrian women cannot be detailed pre­

cisely, since existing studies are few in number or of less

^See David F. Strong, Austria (October 1918-March 1919) (New York: Columbia University Press, 1939). 4 than scholarly quality. Nevertheless, enough information is available to provide a general understanding of the dimen­ sions of the problem.

Nowhere are subordinating factors more evident than in the vocational life of the country. To begin with, Austrian women have traditionally been excluded from positions of responsibility and status within the economic and profes­ sional sphere. This does not occur because there are no capable women to fill the positions. Significant numbers of

Austrian women have always had to work. In 1910, for example, 41 per cent of all women were regularly employed, while today the figure is virtually identical at 40.4 per . 5 ceno.

Rather, women have remained outside the decision and policymaking process because they are considered to be unfit or incapable of exercising the supervisory function. Al­ though precise figures detailing the percentage of women in business management positions are not available, it is significant to note that women comprised 72 per cent of the

5 Hertha Firnberg and Ludwig S. Rutschka, Die Frau in Osterreich (Vienna: Verlag des üsterreichischen Gewerk- schaftsbundes, 1967), p. 22; Leitner, "Frau sein in Osterreich," March 29, 1972, p. 9. unskilled or "helper" work force in 1910 and 76 per cent in

1961, with little variation in the interim.^ The exclusion of women from a leadership role is not confined to the

Austrian business community, however. Very few women have surfaced in really responsible positions within the political parties or in the government. And at a recent national leadership conference of the Federation of Austrian Trade

Unions (Osterreichische Gewerkschaftsbund), only seven women 7 attended. Finally, it is interesting to note as well that higher education may be the most tightly closed shop of all.

Here, where humanistic currents are traditionally alive in

Western societies and where cultural transmission may occur most vigorously, women comprise a mere 1.1 per cent of the senior faculties. Of the approximately 600 active professors 8 at the time of this writing, only seven are women.

In the vocational sphere sizeable wage differentials also exist between men and women. If it is true that the

6 " Firnberg and Rutschka, Die Frau in Osterreich, p. 25.

^Leitner, "Frau sein in Osterreich," March 18, 1972, p. 7.

^Gleichberechtiqunq-nur auf dem Papier (Vienna: Pressedienst des üsterrichischen Gewerkschaftbundes, 1971), p. 1. worth of an individual's work is reflected by his income, the

following statistics are particularly revealing. In Austria

today, women’s wages average 2970 schillings per month com­

pared to 4536 schillings per month for men. This differ­

ential means that women are paid from 30 to 40 per cent less

than men, often for performing identical or more difficult work.^ In general, it may be said that little or no account is taken of the fact that women are frequently engaged in

skilled precision work while the true industrial laborers

are usually men. The present situation is hardly unique;

rather it simply represents the current manifestations of the

traditional wage picture in Austria. During the First World

War, for example, the wages of women in the war industries

averaged from 15 to 60 per cent less than those of men where

identical or more difficult work was being performed.Not

surprisingly, the achievement of equal pay for equal work has been a consistent goal of every Austrian women's move­ ment .

9 Leitner, "Frau sein in Osterrich," March 29, 1972, p. 9.

^^Emmy Freundlich. Die industrielle Arbeit der Frau im Kriege (Vienna; Verlag Brüder Suschitzky, 1918), pp. 28-44. All of this is not to say that there has been no improve­ ment in the vocational sphere from past to present. In recent years important progress has been made in the direction of

equalizing fringe benefits and improving working conditions.

Slowly, middle level supervisory jobs are becoming available

to university educated women or those with advanced on-the- job training. And, in what may be the most significant development of all, the supply of such women is increasing yearly.But a great deal of additional progress will be required before the basic pattern is changed.

The values of a society are often expressed concretely in its legal system. Upon turning to the Austrian law code, one can readily find evidence of bias against women. Dis­ crimination is most apparent in the provisions governing marriage of the General Civil Code of 1811 (Das allgemeine bürqerliche Gesetzbuch) , which remains the law of the land today. Here the responsibilities and privileges of husband and wife are enumerated in a manner which is altogether revealing.

The husband, for his part, is declared to be head of the household. As such, he holds the ultimate power of

11 Gleichberechtiqunq--nur auf dem Papier, pp. 2-5. 8 decision and represents the family in all of its affairs.

He exercises nearly complete control over family property and, through a series of "special rights,” also becomes the final authority over the raising of children. In return for these privileges, he is charged with the primary responsibil­ ity of providing for the family. The wife, for her part, is required to accept the name of the man, live in his residence and is generally admonished to obey his directions for manag­ ing the children and the household. In return she can expect him to support her, although in practice this has often been impossible in the past due to prevailing hardship con­ ditions.^^ The net effect of these provisions, incorporated clearly as they are in the Civil Code, is to institutionalize the subordinate status of women in Austrian society.

If alterations in the marriage cade and other meaningful social changes are to occur, they will probably have to be induced initially through legislative action. With respect to politics, however, apathy rather than commitment seems

12 Anton Riehl, ed., Das allgemeine bürgerliche Gesetzbuch (Vienna: Carl Konegen Verlag, 1886), Articles 91-3, 111, 139-72; Die Stellunq der Frau in Ehe und Famil.^ e (Vienna: Sozialwissenschaftliche Arbeitsgemeinschaft, 19u2), pp. 4-13. to characterize the present attitude of Austrian women. In

1969 the Institute for Empirical Social Research (Institut für

em.pirische Sozialforschung-IFES) in Vienna conducted a study

of women and their attitudes toward politics. Of those

interviewed, only eleven per cent indicated a genuine

political interest, with four per cent describing themselves

as actually active in some role. Levels of education and

income among this group were considerably higher than among 13 the general population, while the average age was lower.

What political interest there is among Austrian women is, in

sum, largely concentrated among younger economic and intel­

lectual minorities among the female population.

Of greater interest is the pervasive indifference of

the majority as represented by the "average" Austrian woman

of lower middle or working-class means. Among this group

politics was rejected as a male activity where women had no place and would not by implication be able to function

effectively. Within the overall majority of those who ex­ pressed no genuine interest (53 per cent) in politics or were

neutral (26 per cent), 63 per cent of those who were married

13 Frauen und Politik (Vienna; Institut für empirische Sozialforschung, 1959), pp. 17, 30. 10 left politics to their husbands, while 70 per cent of the total group considered politics to be "dirty.The existence of this "extraordinarily strong political dis­ interest, " to quote IFES, means that reform movements aimed at securing emancipation through the political process have usually failed to inspire widespread enthusiasm in Austria, in spite of the fact that women have comprised a majority of the voting population since woman suffrage was granted in

1919.15

The root causes of political indifference among Austrian women and of their overall subordinate status are to be found in the popular attitudes of both sexes which foster a negative female stereotype. The discrimination that exists in Austrian society represents in the final analysis an institutional expression of these attitudes. Basic to the stereotype accepted by both sexes is the concept of female inferiority. To be "typically feminine" is to demonstrate little understanding or logic when dealing with complex problems, and these deficiencies are thought by many to be natural or God-willed. Women are therefore widely considered

1/L 'Ibid., p. 22.

15 I, lord ., Firnberg and Rutschka, Die Frau in Osterreich, pp. 11, 102. 11 by both sexes to be incapable of holding responsible positions in the vocational sphere.Other negative traits are also reputed to be present in the average woman. Thus, to be

"typically feminine" also means to be jealous, revengeful, distrusting, petty and frivolous or vain. "What do you expect 17 from a woman?" is a question frequently asked.

The identification of the woman with the family and the household is also extremely strong among both sexes in

Austria. "Die Frau gehfirt ins Haus!"--"The woman belongs at home!"--is an expression commonly heard. The roles of wife, mother and homemaker are popularly believed to be the natural, or God-willed, and ultimate functions of women.

Implied here as well is a dual service function for the woman. First, she has an obligation to serve her man by providing a suitable environment.for home life and the raising of children. But she also has a broader social

16 Leitner, "Frau sein in Osterreich," March 23, 1972, p. 5.

^^Ibid., March 18, 1972, p. 7.

TO Philipp Lersch, "Vom Wesen der Geschlechter," Die Frau: Mutter und Hausfrau in der modernen Gesellschaft, ed, by Franz M. Kapfhammer (Vienna: Bundasministerium für Unterricht, 1956), p. 26. 12 obligation. Performance of these domestic functions helps to insure the regeneration of the society, and thus they become her duty, in much the same way as the shibboleth that all men should be good fighters becomes a rationale for compulsory 19 military service.

But the importance which is placed on domestic work does not prevent men from denigrating it. Activities typically associated with the homemaker role, such as cooking, cleaning, sewing and childrearing, are generally held in low esteem by males who consider them to be easy and demeaning. Yet, because women themselves are also thought to be less worthy, any female who fails to express a real interest in these 20 tasks is thought to be "unfeminine."

Economic circumstances during the past century have created increasing numbers of such "unfeminine women." Many women were forced to seek employment outside the home as a matter of necessity. In many cases second incomes were needed to fend off real poverty and maintain an acceptable standard of living. The coming of greater prosperity to

IQ n Leitner, "Frau sein in Osterreich," April 1, 1972, p. 6.

2°Ibid., March 23, 1972, p. 5. 13

Austria in recent years has not produced a change in female

"work patterns, however. Rather, a desire for affluence is

simply replacing necessity as the primary stimulus of such incomes and the percentage of women working remains almost constant.

Characteristically, the husbands of workingwomen still continue to expect that household chores and other familial responsibilities will be fully met by their wives. As early as 1878, the German Social Democrat August Bebel identified this "double burden" as a primary socioeconomic cause of the subjugation of women.What was true in Bebel*s day remains

true t o d a y . 22 when children are involved the burden becomes a triple one. As the unsuccessful experiences of past women's movements in Austria have demonstrated, such over- 23 burdening leaves a woman little time for reform activity.

Indeed, it is entirely symptomatic that the acceptance

21 August Bebel, Woman and Socialism (New York: Inter­ national Socialist Press, 1910), p. 252.

2 2 Alva Myrdal and Viola Klein, Die Doppelrolle der Frau in Familie und Beruf (Cologne: Keipenheuer und Witsch, 1960) . 23 Frau Bundesrat Rudolfine Muhr, interview held at the Haus der SPO, Vienna, June 8, 1972. 14 of the traditional domestic role is shared by Austrian women.

When polled by IFES, female respondents listed in descending order of importance the following important activities in the life of a woman: (1) husband and family, (2) home,

(3) work, (4) religion, (5) childrearing, (6) education,

(7) social contacts, and (8) entertainment. Politics and 2A public issues ranked ninth, behind all of the foregoing.

It is clear from this ranking that most Austrian women con­ tinue to place greatest importance on their traditional roles and thus, by their own initiative, preclude much chance for a meaningful change in their status. Other studies in neighboring Germany have shown that single women and others who reject the traditional role suffer from insecurity and 25 see themselves as failures. In particular, these feelings are experienced by working wives who are torn between the conflicting responsibilities of job and family. They are left with a sense of incompleteness which may intensify into feelings of guilt if they are locked into a job where the potential for advancement does not exist, or where children

24 Frauen und Politik, p. 17.

25 Problème der alleinstehenden Frau (Bonn: Vorstand der SDP, 1955), p. vii. 15

26 are present in the home.

In sum, the impact of popular attitudes upon the posi­ tion of women in Austria is decisive. The complex of male criticism, the pull of traditional roles and the double­ burden— all crowding in on women--has produced self-deni­ grating docility and mistrust of other women. According to

Frau Leitner, many Austrian women regard themselves and each other as stupid and possessing the negative character traits 27 previously mentioned. When questioned about reform they collectively throw up their hands, declare themselves power­ less, and continue to tend to their daily lives as they have always done.

The role of cultural institutions in reinforcing the subordinate status of women is profound. The greatest single reinforcer is probably the institution of marriage itself as it has been described. When a woman enters into a marriage, her subordination acquires a degree of legitimacy and acceptability previously lacking and her personal freedom of action is more restricted than it would be under any circum-

26 " Leitner, "Frau sein in Osterreich," March 25, 1972, p. 7.

27 Ibid. 16 stances. Marriage is the bedrock upon which the subordinate status of women is based.

It is also the primary means through which male supremacy and the subordination of women are transmitted to future generations. Children growing up in the typical patriarchal household consistently acquire the discriminatory values of their parents. What they learn from observing their parents 28 is in turn reinforced by their grandparents. Elderly people occupy a position of respect in Austrian society and their opinions are highly valued. Because many women must work, grandparents frequently take care of the children for five or six working days per week. A visitor to Viennese parks notices many children at play under the watchful eyes of one or more grandparents. Not infrequently little girls are sitting on benches and sewing, knitting, or playing with dolls. If the visitor observes closely, he will see that the grandparent-chiId relationship is an authoritarian one.

Codes of conduct and other value systems are forcefully imposed upon the child with little room for disagreement.

28 Leitner, "Frau sein in Osterreich," March 29, 1972, p. 9. 17

Past and present social critics in Austria who have

addressed themselves to the problems of women have consistently

advocated the elimination of the patriarchal marriage. Almost

to a man (or woman) they call for its replacement by liber­

alized marriage grounded in the natural law of the nineteenth

and twentieth centuries.Individual liberty to the fullest

possible extent and shared responsibilities are the keystones

of this liberalized marriage. While the woman retains her

traditional role of wife, mother and homemaker, that of the

husband is substantially reduced. Instead of a dominant

authority figure, he is seen as an equal partner who shares

the chores and decisions of the household with his wife. This

"rediscovery of the family," which simultaneously allows

greater freedom for the woman while promoting social

stability, is also seen by analysts as a means of counter­

acting the unlikely possibility that communal living in 30 Austria will attract a significant number of young people.

pg Die Stellung der Frau, pp. 2-3; Das junge Mâdchen und die junge Frau in unserer Zeit (Bpnn: Vorstand der SPD, 1959), p. 37; Leitner, "Frau sein in Osterreich," April 6, 1972, p. 7.

^^Franz M. Kapfhammer, Mann und Frau in der Lebens- ordnung (Vienna: Bundesministerium für Unterricht, 1955), p. 15. 18

In addition to the family, other cultural institutions perpetuate the subordinate status of women. Here the impact of the educational system is important. In the past Austrian schools encouraged students to identify distinctly with accepted male and female roles at an early stage. Classes were segregated by sex, while the very limited range of sub­ jects offered to girls reflected the clear belief that women belonged at home. By the time a student graduated from the system, the grounding in male supremacy and female inferiority which he received from his parents had been effectively re­ inforced in the classroom.

In 1927 an attempt was made to reduce this effect by introducing a "unified curriculum" based on common instruc­ tion and a liberalized choice of subjects for g i r l s . 31

Good intentions notwithstanding, the attempt was a failure.

Segregated classrooms were largely eliminated, yet curricula continued to reflect and prepare children for what was thought to be their "natural" role in life. Technical and scientific training and advanced business education were still reserved for boys for the most part. Typical girls'

31 Rosina Kaplan, "Die Volkschule," in Frauenbewegunq, Frauenbildunq und Frauenarbeit in Osterreich (Vienna: Verlag des Bund der üsterreichischen Frauenvereine, 1930), pp. 117- 18; Crete Laube, "Mittelschulen," Frauenbewegunq, p. 120. 19

instruction continued to emphasize home education courses

and the development of low-level skills suitable for work in O p a factory or office. A kind of vicious circle was the

result, in which women found themselves locked into low paying

non-supervisory jobs by a lack of saleable skills, while

their presence in these jobs perpetuated the popular belief

that such work was their appropriate lot.

The electronic media also play an influential role in

perpetuating the subordination of women. In an age of

emerging affluence in Austria, radio and television have

found their way into nearly every home. As elsewhere, the

news programs which an individual views or listens to signifi­

cantly shape his view of the world around him and help to determine the extent of his awareness of public issues. In

the Austrian media, the question of women's rights and

feminist activities in other countries are treated cur­

sorily or with criticism.The commentators themselves,

like media management, are almost always men.

While feminism may be slighted, the image of women which presented in the electronic media is also

^^Leitner, "Frau sein in Osterreich," March 20, 1972, p. 5 .

33 Ibid., March 22, 1972, p. 6. 20

important in shaping public consciousness. Not surprisingly,

that image conforms to the traditional role of woman in

society. Locally produced entertainment programs emphasize

the domestic or religious side of women's lives and the

activities of gardening and church circles. A favorite type

of program deals with colorful local customs from the Alpine provinces of Austria, where the identification of women with traditional domestic roles is the strongest in the country.

The single major exception to these programming patterns is represented by the extensive coverage given to women athletes. Austrians are great sport enthusiasts, so women in the athletic arena, particularly where international matches are concerned, are presented with their aggressive competitiveness intact.

The literary media also make their contribution to the subordination of women. In the case of the popular press, the bolstering of existing attitudes does not come so much from the image of women that is presented as it does from the fact that newspapers and periodicals are usually oriented toward men. The use of sex in advertising is prevalent.

In addition to straight news, the other dominant themes of

34 Ibid., March 21, 1972, p. 5. 21 these publications include sports, adventure, automobiles, crime and both classical and popular (i.e. male dominated) entertainment. Aside from the ordinary women's columns which dwell upon domestic activities and romance, the interests 35 of women are generally ignored.

The role of books in maintaining the status quo should not be underestimated. Because of their long history as molders of public opinion, books may have done more to promote the subordination of women than any other media. A study by Professor Martin Hertgen of the University of Vienna has shown, for example, that Austrian novels tend to present a passive, submissive image of women which by implication is both proper and fulfilling. Those happy and well-adjusted women that appear in novels are usually mothers with large numbers of children. Courtship, marriage and childbearing are seen as the chief purposes of their lives. Children, for their part, are admonished to appreciate the simple virtues of idealized domesticity.^^

Alternatives to the wife and mother roles are rarely mentioned or are presented in a negative light. Unhappy or maladjusted women are usually single or career women who

^^Ibid., March 22, 1972, p. 6.

^ Ibid., March 21, 1972, p. 6. 22

have failed to find satisfaction outside of marriage and

fairily. Whan career women are introduced, they are usually

members of "respectable professions" such as teaching or

medicine. Nor so with men, however. Their world is pre­

sented as a place of accomplishment and adventure, where only

the fittest survive.

A classic synthesis of literary male-female role

identification may be found in a book written by Kurt Seelmann

for Austrian children from eight to fourteen. According to

Seelmann:

From the mother one learns love and feeling, from the father thinking and self-assertion. The father satisfies our material needs, in order that we may live in security. But the mother arranges it so that our home is properly cheer­ ful, so that all may feel well.^°

Although its influence cannot be determined precisely,

the Church has also played a role in perpetuating the subor­

dination of Austrian women. Supporters of women's rights believe that the Judaeo-Christian ideology, with its emphasis

on the treachery of Zve and the maternal idealization of

^^Ibid .

Kurt Seelmann, Wcher kommen die kleinen Buben und MScChen? (Vienna: verlag Jungbrunnen, n.d.), quoted in Leitner, "Frau sein in Osterreich," March 19, 1972, p. 5. 23

Mary, has contributed to the formation of the popular stere- 39 otypes of women. v7hat can be observed with assurance is the fact that the Church has favored male clergy and defended the traditional marriage.

From the days of the Holy Roman Empire, Maria Theresia and Francis Joseph, Roman Catholicism has played a dominant role in the history of Austria and the lives of her people.

The unusually close association of Church and State which characterized the Habsburg period continued on into the twentieth century and may be seen in the Christian Social regimes of the interwar period. From pulpits throughout the country and in the clerical press, priests encouraged women to lead good Christian lives by fulfilling their mother role and practicing simple, passive virtues. The burden of guilt for those who strayed was severe. And Church-associated activities involving women's groups emphasized the domestic function.

The fact that economic necessity forced significant numbers of women to partially abandon the traditional ideal

39 Adolf Schârf, Die Frau im Spiegel dæ Rechts (Vienna: Verlag der Wiener Volksbuchhandlung, 1925), pp. 5-6 ^^Emma Kancler, "Die tisterreichische Frauenbewegung und ihre Presse (unpublished Ph.D. dissertation. University of Vienna, 1947), p. 120. 24

and seek employment outside the home was usually seen by the

Church as a temporary situation over which the women con­

cerned had no control.Strident criticism was reserved, however, for those women's movements which sought to win a measure of independence from the strictures of the tradi­ tional ideal. The Social Democratic movement, which saw the entry of women into the workplace as the path to eventual emancipation, was deserving of special attention. Typically,

Catholic spokesmen equated the egalitarian thrust of Social

Democracy with social anarchy. It was imperative, they argued, to maintain the traditional family unit as the bedrock of cohesiveness and collectivity in civilized society. 3y attempting to reduce the God-given role of the woman in the family unit. Social Democratic individualism was undermining a most important bulwark against the 42 atomizing pressures of modernity.

In sum, it may be said that the subordination of women remains pervasive in Austrian society. It should not be assumed that this situation will improve markedly in the immediate future, the efforts of the current Social Democratic

^^Ibif■ up Anton Orel, Die Frauenfrage (Vienna: Karl Vogelsang Verlag, 1920), pp. 1, 7, 13. 25

Government notwithstanding.'^^ The combined impact of dis­ crimination in the vocational, legal, social and cultural spheres makes progress toward emancipation difficult at best.

To develop a proper feeling for such difficulties, one need only recall that institutional continuity is a major hallmark of Austrian society. It is not coincidental that many of the goals that are sought by women's groups today, such as liberalized abortion law, equal pay for equal work, and a revision of the marriage code, are identical in content to those goals of eighty years ago.

Nor is it surprising, in the face of consistent discrim­ ination, that change-oriented women's groups have made their presence known in the modern history of Austria. Of these groups, the Social Democratic women's movement has been the most important. From its founding in 1890, the members of

43 Since its inception in 1971, the Social Democratic Government of Chancellor Bruno Kreisky has announced its intention to revise marriage, abortion and childrearing laws. In the absence of a widespread popular mandate for reform, however, the outcome of these intentions must remain in doubt. Familienrechtsreform Konkret (Vienna: Verlag Bundesministerium für Justiz, 1972); Was hat die Reqierunq Kreisky für mich getan? (Vienna: Verlag Bundesfrauenkomitee der SPO, 1972); "SP-Frauen Sturm auf dem Absatz 144," Kurier, April 17, 1972, p. 2. 26 this movement have been the most consistent proponents of the cause of emancipation. In the face of war, economic hard­ ship and the persecutions of the fascist period, their efforts have not ceased. Beyond this, they have offered the most organized and comprehensive program yet proposed for achieving women's rights. Drawing upon their Marxist origins, the

Social Democratic women have adopted a universal approach which seeks emancipation in every sphere.Unlike their middle-class and Catholic counterparts, they have not stopped with questions of political equality, vocational opportunity and equal compensation.^^ Rather, they seek to attack the problem of discrimination at its source, in the Austrian mentality. In terms of its goals at least, it is the Social

Democratic movement which has most truly represented the interests of women.

What follows, then, is an analysis of the most con­ certed attempt to break the pattern of continuing discrimin­ ation heretofore described, during a particularly important

^PiQ Osterreichische Soaialdemokratie im Spiegel ihrer Programme (Vienna: Verlag der Wiener Volksbuchhandlung, 1971). 45 The other women's movements were an amorphous liberal middle-class movement and a Catholic movement, which had the preservation of the traditional role of women as its raison d “être. 27 period in Austrian history Austria's passage from the

Habsburg Monarchy through the First World War and into the

First Republic provides the setting for the study. During this time of unprecedented upheaval and change. Social

Democratic women had what they assumed to be their greatest opportunity to date to secure major gains in the fight for emancipation. Yet in the face of their expectations this

"opportunity" proved to be an illusion. Emancipation remained a-distant goal. From the story of their failure, it is hoped, added insight into Austrian social processes and the subordination of women may be acquired. CHAPTER II

IN THE BEGINNING: EARLY PRECURSORS AND THEORETICAL ORIGINS OF THE WOMEN'S MOVEMENT IN AUSTRIAN SOCIAL DEMOCRACY

Although the Austrian Social Democratic women's movement did not appear until the closing decades of the nineteenth century, the cause of emancipation was served much earlier than that. In point of fact individual feminists and organized women's movements of other types were active through­ out the entire century. Although these other efforts pro­ ceeded from motives other than their own, the Social Demo­ cratic women viewed them as important precursors of their work. As such they were frequently cited in Social Demo­ cratic speeches and publications. In the Social Democratic view these other efforts, which were usually liberal in nature, represented middle-class attempts to reform the declining capitalist order in the absence of vital economic considerations. While such attempts could only fail, they occupied nevertheless a significant place in the natural evolution of history. In this sense they served as a prelude

28 29

to the Social Democratic women's movement and were therefore

worthy of definite note.^

The first of these early predecessors whom the Austrian

Social Democratic women cited was Olympe de Gouges, a French

publicist who had been inspired by the Enlightenment ideals

of individual liberty, political equality and egalitarian

treatment under the law. In many respects de Gouges set the

tone for women's rights activity during the French Revolu­

tion. To begin with, she operated from the premise that sex

discrimination was an expression of irrational prejudice

unsupported by fact, since the alleged inferiority of women

had never been proved. Moreover, she was a "feminist," who

viewed the effort to secure equal rights for women as a battle of the sexes. Like several of her contemporaries, she

concluded that marriage had become a prison of subjugation

for women that should be supplanted by a "liberal union" of man and wife, which could be easily dissolved at the bidding

of one or both partners. Only in such a union, she believed.

^Adelheid Popp, Der Weg zur Hühe (Vienna: Verlag der Wiener Volksbuchhandlung, 1929), pp. 21-2.

2 Edna Nixon, Mary Wollstonecraft: Her Life and Times (London: J. M. Dent & Sons, Ltd., 1971), pp. 80-81. 30 would women win access to the liberal education which would at long last allow them to demonstrate their innate intel­ lectual capabilities. Without such a demonstration, the respect of men could never be earned and liberty would not be forthcoming.^

In order to win support for her views, de Gouges wrote several tracts and founded political clubs. In 1791 she went before the National Assembly to proclaim La Declaration des droits de la Femme et de la Citoyenne. This document was in fact a simple alteration of the famous Declaration of the

Rights of Man and the Citizen, passed by the Assembly two ' years before. By substituting the word "woman" for that of

"man" every time the latter appeared in the original decla­ ration, de Gouges laid claim to full equality for women.^

But centuries of conditioning prevented such a direct and complete alteration of social roles. Like many of her con­ temporaries of both sexes who tried to challenge the revolu­ tionary orthodoxy, de Gouges was cast into prison after

^Ibid., p. 81.

^Ibid. 31

5 further agitation and beheaded during the Reign of Terror.

Had de Gouges been acting alone, she might not even warrant the historical footnote now accorded her. In fact, her work was known to Mary Wollstonecraft, a mercurial English feminist who subsequently became the wife of the philosophical anarchist William Godwin. In 1792, only one year after de

Gouges had antagonized the French National Assembly, Woll­ stonecraft penned A Vindication of the Rights of Woman--the most important feminist tract of its day and, in the Social

Democratic view, a classic example of middle-class ration­ ality.^ Although her views echoed those of de Gouges to a considerable extent, Wollstonecraft's colorful writing style and controversial reputation insured that a wide audience would be exposed to the matter of women's rights.

As a typical representative of her age, Mary Wollstone­ craft placed her faith in part in the remedial qualities of reason. Like de Gouges, she believed that rational minds would accept the equality of the sexes. Education was again

Thérèse Louis Latour, Princesses, Ladies and Républi­ caines of the Terror (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1930), pp. 178-79.

^Ralph M. Ward le, Mary Wollstonecraft: A Critical Biocrraphy (Lawrence: University of Kansas Press, 1951), pp. 145-55; Popp, We g , pp. 21-22. 32

the panacea which would cause male disrespect to be dis­ credited, thus resuscitating marriage and the sexual exploi- 7 tation it engendered. Such advances could in turn only redound to the benefit of all mankind :

Contending for the rights of woman, my main argument is built on this simple principle, that if she be not prepared by education to become the companion of man, she will stop the progress of knowledge and virtue; for truth must be common to all, or it will be ineffi­ cacious with respect to its influence on general practice. . . Marriage will never be held sacred till women by being brought up with men are prepared to be their companions rather than their mistresses. I venture to predict that virtue will never prevail in society till -the virtues of both sexes are founded on reason. . .^

Olympe de Gouges found another echo in the same year in faraway East Prussia. There Theodor von Hippel, the mayor of Kflnigsberg, produced a book on "civil improvement" which addressed itself in part to the question of women's rights.

In his book von Hippel also argued rationally that the supposed inferiority of women had in fact never been estab­ lished. The burden of proof, he suggested, lay with the male supremacists. Until such time as they had developed their

7 Nixon, Wollstonecraft, pp. 84-85.

^Mary Wollstonecraft, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, p. 23, quoted in Nixon, Wollstonecraft, pp. 84, 93. cases, women deserved equal treatment under the law and political liberty as well.^ Although mild in tone and care­ fully reasoned, Hippel's book was published anonymously since its author anticipated correctly the wave of outrage it would

^ 10 create.

In every case the effect of these individual efforts was negligible. The uecades that followed, however, witnessed the evolution of the "woman question, " as it came to be known, into a genuine social issue. The entire "position woman should hold in society; how to best develop and use her abilities; how to make her a useful member of society with equal rights and opportunity to serve society,rather than the achievement of certain specific personal and poli­ tical rights, came to be debated.

In large part the source of these developments lay in the economic revolution then underway in Europe. Wherever industrialization took root on the continent, the old social

9 Theodor von Hippel, "Uber die bürqerliche Verbesserunc (Berlin: Vossichen Buchhandlung, 1792), pp. 138-72.

^^Bebel, Woman and Socialism, p. 28; Fünfzig Jahre Frauenwahlrecht (Bad Godesberg: Vorstand der SPD, 1953), pp. 2-5.

^^Bebel, Woman and Socialism, p. 3. 34 order of aristocracy, commercial-artisan middle class and peasantry began to break down in the face of the rising capitalist and laboring classes. Profound changes in the feminine role accompanied these developments. In both emerging classes women were freed from the bondage of the household by changes in the methods of production. Middle- class women, who had been required by social custom to hide themselves in the homes of relatives, now left their semi­ captivity to claim newly created office jobs. Demands for equal employment and advancement opportunities and for equal 12 pay for equal work quickly followed. At the same time, the application of industrial technology in the home in the form of labor-saving devices reduced the time spent by the middle-class wife on household chores. New levels of relative affluence occasioned by the rise of incomes and the mass production of cheaper consumer goods also made possible the hiring of domestics to help with the housework on a significantly increased scale. With more time at their disposal, married middle-class women now turned to self-

12 Grundula Bôlke,, Die Wandlung der Frauenemanzipations- theorie von Marx bis zur Rëtebewegung (Hamburg, Spartakus Gmb. H. & Co., 1971), pp. 6-7; Mechthild Merfeld, Die Eman- zipation der Frau in der sozialistischen Theorie und Praxis (Hamburg: Rowohlt Verlag, 1972), p. 19. 35 improvement and involvement in public affairs outside the home. From this involvement came demands for equal edu­ cational opportunity and political parity.

For working-class women the effects of industriali­ zation were different but no less profound. Economic condi­ tions had always decreed that the great majority of these women support themselves if single, or, in the case of married women, contribute to the family income through wage or piece work.^^ In former times such work had been per­ formed in the home as cottage industry. Now the forms of production shifted from home to factory and carried the bulk of the women along with them. For the first time in their lives workingwomen found themselves actively involved outside the home. Their entry into the factory was largely due to the impact of the machine, which took the heaviest work out of human hands and thus allowed for the utilization of workers of lesser physical strength.Entry into the

^^Btilke, Wandlung, pp. 6-7.

^"^Emray Freundlich. Die Frauenfrage (Vienna: Verlag von Robert Danneberg, 1912), p. 14.

^^Karl Marx, Capital, trans. by Samuel Moore and Edward Aveling (New York: International Publishers Co., 1947), p. 391; Bülke, Wandlung, p. 7. 36

factory confronted women in turn with a whole new set of

adverse conditions, some of which were comrrion to all workers

and others unique to women themselves. The resulting panoply of demands showed the existence of this dichotomy-- better working conditions, the ten hour day, improved insurance benefits; equal pay for equal work, the abolition of night work, special protections for pregnant women and mothers of young children, and separate dining and sanita­ tion facilities.

The new economic developments also stimulated, for the first time in history, the creation of organized women's movements in response to the maturation of the woman question.

Although several types of movements appeared, those of the liberal and Social Democratic variety always generated the greatest interest and became the most prominent. During the period following the French Revolution, the evolution of liberal feminist activities paralleled that of the larger phenomenon of liberalism itself, of which they were an adjunct. After disappearing during the post-Revolutionary

Edith Hüttl, "Die Frau in der ôsterreichischen Sozialdemckratie" (unpublished Ph.D. dissertation. Univer­ sity of Vienna, 1949), pp. 6-7, 11-12. 37 reaction, liberal activities on behalf of raddle-class women began to reappear in Europe during the 183D's, and reached another peak in the watershed year of 1848. In Germany the voices of Amalie von Struve, Mathilda Anneke and Emma

Herwech, the so-called "amazons of the German revolution," were shrilly raised in support of political equality. In

France one Madame ce Mauchamps persuaded Louis Philippe, the

King of the French, to declare hirself "King of the French

Women" as well.^^

Typical liberal sentiments of the period are expressed in the proposals of J. Clemens-Sinon, an obscure Viennese and Luise Otto, an author and founder of the middle-class women's movement in Germany. Writing in 1348, Clemens-Simon argued that the emancipation of women could only be achieved in a humanitarian state which guaranteed certain well- defined freedoms, including: (1) open access to education,

(2) choice of religion, (3) equality within the marriage, and (4) the right to elect deputies and serve in a separate assembly of women which would presumably legislate legal guarantees of equality. Clemens-Simon also recommended the

Clara Zetkin, Zur Geschichoe car proletarischen Frauenbewegunq Deutschlands (Frankfurt a. M.: Verlag Roter Stern, 1971), p. IS. 38 utilization of corps of domestics in middle-class homes to reduce the household burdens of the middle-class wife and T 8 allow her more time to cultivate her freedom.

Luise Otto, for her part, published her "Adresse eines

MSdchens" ("A Girl's Address") to the Saxon Minister of the

Interior in the Leipziger Arbeiter-Zeitung on May 20, 1848.

She called upon the minister not to forget women employees, whose wages were even lower than those of men, in his drive to improve working conditions. Eleven months later Otto founded the first women's newspaper in Germany, the Frauen-

Zeitung, under the motto: "Dem Reich der Freiheit werb' ich

BurgerinnenI " ("I recruit women citizens' for the empire of freedom"). The announced "program" of the paper claimed:

(1) the right of women to develop their capabilities fully,

(2) the right of separate identity under the law, and (3) the right to participate fully in advancing the causes of 20 freedom and humanity.

18 J. Clemens-Simon, Reform ein Princio der Arbeit, des Lohnes, der Strafe und der Frauen-Rechte (Vienna: Verlag Freiherr Tendler, 1848), pp. 21-24. 19 Zetkin, proletarischen Frauenbewegunq, pp. 23-24.

20 Ibid., pp. 25-25. 39

For middle-class women, however, the ideas of John

Stuart Mill represented the culmination of the liberal approach to the "woman question." In 1869 Mill wrote The

Subjection of Women, a comprehensive synthesis of the liberal position whose publication coincided with the appearance of the first organized middle-class women's movements in

Britain and on the continent.Very quickly these movements seized upon Mill's book and made it their manifesto.

Mill began by ascribing the subjection of women to the power of age old social custom, which he rejected as an unreasonable exercise in prejudice. Starting with the admitted discrepancy in the physical strength of the sexes, men had come to believe irrationally in the mental and social inferiority of women as well. Over the passage of time men had also selfishly cultivated and used the sub­ missive sexual role of the female to perpetuate the stereo­ typed image of inferiority and keep women in servitude.^2

The male tendency to cling to this image for selfish ends was so strong, in fact, that the subjection of women remained the sole exception in an otherwise laudable pattern

21 Antje Kunstmann, Frauenbefreiung: Privileg einer Klasse? (Starnberg: Werner Raith Verlag, 1971), p. 14. 22 John Stuart Mill, On Liberty— The Subjection of Women (New York: Henry Holt and Co., n.d.), pp. 208-15. 40

of liberal progress toward enlightened humanity--"the soli­

tary breach of what has become fundamental law."23

According to Mill, strong measures were needed to insure

the individual liberty of women and break the stranglehold

of subjection. First, full personal equality within the

marriage, including the granting of property rights, had to

be achieved and guaranteed by law. Mill viewed marriage

in its existing form as a "school of despotism" whose trans­

formation into "the real school of the virtues of freedom" 24 was a prerequisite for social progress. A true relation­

ship between two individuals did not require that one of

them be absolute master. Mill, in sum, like his liberal

predecessors, accepted the moral regeneration of the marriage

and the ending of "sex slavery" as the ultimate basis for

emancipation.

In response to the economic trends which were drawing

women out of their homes. Mill also came out strongly for

equal employment opportunity and political equality. Women

should have access to every position held by men and should

also play an active role in the elective and policymaking

23 Ibid., p. 237.

24 Ibid., p. 277. 41

95 processes of government. It is of interest to note that

Mill was not willing to accept without reservation the idea that women were just as capable as men in positions of responsibili ty:

. . . there are many things which none of them have succeeded in doing as well as they have been done by some men--many in which they have not reached the very highest rank. But there are extremely few, dependent only on mental faculties, in which they have not attained the rank next to the highest.26

But any such limitations. Mill believed, were the result of cultural conditioning which had taught women to think of themselves as inferior, and could be eliminated through education. In any event, women should not be prevented from competing with men in the marketplace.

Like Mary Wollstonecraft, Mill took a universal view of the assumed benefits of women's participation in public life. In the final analysis, the whole of humanity would be regenerated if the woman question--"the solitary breach of what had become fundamental law"--were solved. "All of the selfish propensities. . . which exist among mankind," he

25 Ibid., pp. 294, 302.

^^Ibid., p. 300. 42 wrote, "have their source in the constitution of the 27 relation between men and women."

In the years following the publication of The Sub­

jection of Women (1869), Mill's carefully reasoned analysis became basic doctrine for several liberal middle-class women's movements in Europe. Later Social Democrats, for their part, reacted to it consistently. In their view. Mill's impres­ sive treatise, which did in fact advocate a fair measure of social reform, represented the culmination of the middle- class attempt to induce permanent change through rationally derived legal guarantees. This attempt was bound to fail, they believed, because permanent social change could only be introduced through the alteration of economic relation­ ships, e.g. the winning of economic independence by 28 women.

On the Social Democratic side of women's rights activity, the evolution from individual effort to organized group action v;as also occurring. During the first half of the century, for example, any consideration of the woman

27 Ibid., p. 354. 28 Popp, We q . p. 5; Zetkin, proletarischen Frauen- bewegung, p. 54; Bebel, Woman and Socialism, pp. 296-97. 43 question was to be found in the schemes of individual

Utopians. Charles Fourier and Henri de Saint-Simon, to name only two, accorded women an equal place in their communal 29 planning. The Utopians also presaged the work of later scientific socialists by equating the freeing of the woman with that of the industrial worker. In at least one case, that of Flora Tristan, a woman advanced a utopian plan of her 30 own.

But the future of socialism and working-class women's movements lay with the Marxists and their organized Social

Democratic progeny. In time a complete socialist theory of women's emancipation evolved at their hands, which reflected the belief of its creators that liberal legal guarantees would never be sufficient to insure the emancipation of women.Social equality, they felt, could not be conceived in the courtrooms or guaranteed by law. Rather, it had to come as a result of economic development, especially changes

29 Zetkin, proletarischen Frauenbewegung, pp. 29-30; Kunstmann, Frauenbefreiung, p. 14.

^*^Zetkin, proletarischen Frauenbewegung, pp. 30-31. O 1 Bebel, Woman and Socialism, p. 5; Kunstmann, Frauenbefreiung, pp. 20-21. 44

in the productive process. Thus the socialist theory of

women's emancipation offered a clear evocation of economic

determinism. Typically, its proponents had as their

immediate objective the curtailment of the exploitation of

the workingwomen in the factory through the elimination of

wage work and the promotion of unrestricted job competition 32 between the sexes. The economic self-sufficiency created

thereby for women would signal an end to their dependence on men, and this alone would ultimately make total emancipation possible.

The creation of a socialist theory of women's emanci­ pation began with Karl Marx himself. Although Marx never did concern himself directly with the woman question, his depiction of the modern family as a unit in the industrial 33 productive process provided a basis for the theory. In

this context the family was no longer viewed as a moral and

social institution; rather its form and character and the

roles of its members were determined by their economic

functions. Central to this new conception of the family was

^^Bftlke, Wand lung, p. 8.

33 Ibid., pp. 8-9; Marx, Engels, Lenin über die Frau und die Familie (Leipzig: Verlag für die Frau, 1972), p. 12, 45 the impact of mechanization upon the activities of women and children. With the introduction of the machine to do the heavy work of production, the utilization of workers with lesser physical strength and more supple limbs became desirable and capitalist entrepreneurs everywhere began to employ women and children in increasing numbers. In this way, traditional bonds and individual roles were broken and changed as women and children moved from home to factory.

The family, that time-honored repository of bourgeois values, was being dissolved by changes in the productive process.

Naturally, the wages paid to women and children were less than those paid to the male worker.' This was taken by

Marx as a typical example of the undervaluing of women in bourgeois society, and was representative of the capitalist's consistent desire to maximize his profits without consider- 35 ation of the human cost. However, since all members of the proletarian family were now contributing to the support of the family, the capitalist was also able to reduce the wages of the male worker— formerly the sole breadwinner--as

^^Marx. Engels. Lenin, p. 496; BOlke, Wandlung. pp. 11-12.

35 Marx. Engels, Lenin, p. 496. 46 well. In time, any worker who had not done so already was forced to "sell" his wife and children to the employer, i.e. encourage them to take jobs in the factory. Thus, through

"wage competition" a vicious cycle was created which increased the misery of the family members and the proletariat as a whole and, in the short run, redounded to the benefit of the capitalist employer.

But, in spite of the suffering and the severity of conditions, there was room for optimism because of the work­ ings of the dialectic in history. In the cyclically increas­ ing misery of the proletariat brought on by the utilization of women and children and the effects of wage competition lay the seeds of the ultimate victory of the proletariat and, by implication, the emancipation of women through new­ found economic self-sufficiency. As Marx put it:

However terrible and disgusting the dissolution, under the capitalist system, of the old family ties may appear, nevertheless, modern industry, by assigning as it does an important part in the process of production, outside the domestic sphere, to women, to young persons, and to chil­ dren of both sexes, creates a new economical foundation for a higher form of the family and of the relations between the sexes.

^^Ibid.

^^Ibid 47

Although Marx had indirectly set out the basic postu­

lates, it remained for the German socialist August Bebel to

clarify and synthesize the socialist theory of women's

emancipation. This he did in 1879 in Die Frau und der

Sozialismus (Woman and Socialism), certainly the single most

important socialist publication on the woman question.

Women socialists everywhere read Bebel's book and took it to heart. Despite the existence of German press laws which initially hindered publication and dissemination of the book, it ran to fifty-three editions and had been translated into 38 fifteen other languages by 1909.

Die Frau und der Sozialismus made two significant

additions to what Marx had said, and then molded the whole into a readable synthesis. To begin with, Bebel provided the first full explanation of the central role of the family on in the emancipation of women.Here he drew heavily upon the research of the American anthropologist Lewis Morgan, who had traced the evolution of the modern patriarchal monogamous marriage in his book Ancient Society (1877). According to

38 Merfeld, Emanzipation, pp. 62-53; Karl Renner, "Bebel's 'Frau,'" Der Kampf, III (December, 1909), p. 97

39 Merfeld, Emanzipation, pp. 62-66. 48

Morgan, mankind had experienced three principle epochs in its history: savagery, barbarity and civilization. In the first or savage epoch marriage had consisted of a loosely formed and easily dissolved union within an open and usually matriarchal society characterized by unrestricted sexual intercourse among blood relations and the communal sharing of property. The barbarous epoch was characterized in turn by the placing of successive limitations upon these activities until, with the evolution of civilization, marriage had become a patriarchal monogamous institution featuring ex­ clusive and permanent cohabitation between the partners and the acquisition of private property by the members of the family under the stewardship of the male.^^

For Bebel, it vias entirely significant chat the evolution of the modern male-dominated marriage had been made possible by the desire to possess and inherit private property. In a real sense, Morgan's research allowed him to explain the subjection of women in economic determinist

40 Morgan did not explain why ownership of property had become a male right; he only observed that it had happened. Bebel accepted this presentation uncritically. Lewis H. Morgan, Ancient Society (Chicago: Charles H. Kerr & Co., 1877), pp. 393-499. 49

terms. As Morgan had written:

With property accumulating in masses and assuming permanent form, and with an increased proportion of it held by individual ownership, descent in the female line was certain of overthrow and the sub­ stitution of the male line equally a s s u r e d .

With the onset of civilization the desire to acquire private property had taken the form of cultivating land and domesti­

cating animals. Over the passage of time, according to

Bebel, the steady intensification of this desire had in turn introduced continuous refinements into the productive process. This process culminated in capitalism, where a con­ tinuous increase in raw productivity and the productivity of

labor had raised the value of human labor power to the point where the family had become the basic economic unit of A? production-

A steady decline in the personal value of women had accompanied the increasing emphasis on the economic functions of the family. In the beginning of civilization women had merely shared in the productive process; for example, in helping to tend domesticated flocks. By the time the capi­ talist phase of human history had been achieved, they had

41lbid., p. 355,

42 Bebel, Woman and Socialism, pp. 104-05. 50

become as pieces of property themselves, to be owned and

exploited by the male as he saw fit. Herein lay the essence

of the bourgeois marriage. "Mercenary marriages" were con­

cluded in which wives were selected according to their ability 43 to contribute to the financial support of the family. For

middle-class men this was a matter of preference, for

working-class men one of necessity. Children, too, began to

be viewed in terms of their productive potential at increas­

ingly early ages. In Bebel's view prostitution--"a necessary

social institution of bourgeois society"--represented the 44 ultimate manifestation of this process.

It was within the proletarian family that the exploi­

tation of women reached its peak in the form of their 45 "double burden," or job-family conflict. They were

expected by their husbands not only to contribute econom­

ically to the family by holding a full-time job, but were

also required to satisfy fully their "natural" role of home­ maker, wife and mother as well. And yet, in spite of tre-

43lbid., p. 119.

44 Ibid., p. 134.

45 Ibid., p. 6 . 51 mendous effort needed to satisfy both roles, "women's work" was denigrated.

The sexual relationship, in which the husband viewed his wife much as an item of property, played a vital role in maintaining the monogamous bourgeois marriage and perpetu­ ating the bondage of women. The qualities of comeliness, passivity, submission and self-sacrifice were held to be necessary in women by men who consciously and selfishly used the threat of social censure against any woman who deemed to behave otherwise. Naturally, the double standard remained in effect, as well. Meanwhile the bourgeois Church, with its emphasis on motherhood and proscriptions on divorce, added its weight to the status quo and abetted the male supremacists by making the escape of the woman from "sex slavery" all but impossible.

It was obvious to Bebel that the dimensions of the woman question precluded the success of liberal attempts to insure equality through legal guarantees, since the liberal mentality failed to acknowledge the essentially economic character of the family and the economic origins of discrim­ ination. This did not mean, however, that the liberal

4^Ibid., p. 5; Merfeld, Emanzipation, pp. 63-65. ^^Bebel, Woman and Socialism, p. 112. 52 methodology of legal reform and political representation should be discarded altogether. On the contrary, such devices could be used to help secure that economic independence which was a prerequisite for social equality.For example, all restrictions which prevented women from competing on an equal basis with men in industry could be removed legisla­ tively.

In the main, however, as Marx had implied, the destruction of existing prejudices toward women would come about through the entry of women into the workplace, a basic requirement of continued capitalist development. As women obtained the chance to demonstrate their abilities on the job, they would come to recognize their self-worth as equal human beings and thus achieve the level of awareness which was a prerequisite for emancipation. In time, workingmen would also acknowledge the women's worth and come to appreci­ ate the fact that their female counterparts were their natural allies in the common struggle against the bourgeoisie--

"what is right for the working class, cannot be wrong for .49 women. As this realization grew, workingmen would

48 Ibid., pp. 233, 277, 280, 295-97 49 Ibid.. p. 280, 53 abandon their fear of wage competition and their bourgeois notions of feminine inferiority. In the evolution of these enlightened attitudes among both sexes lay the key to women's emancipation, for proletarian thinking would dominate the coming socialist order.

Class solidarity, therefore, remained paramount for

Bebel. Women were urged to join with Social Democratic parties in their drive to organize the working class politically and to secure representation in the councils of government. The Social Democratic parties, Bebel believed, were the only parties which addressed themselves to the true needs of women. He warned that working-class women could expect no support from their middle-class "enemy sisters," who had a vested interest in the perpetuation of the bour­ geois national state— an institution which existed to protect private property. Already, he pointed out, liberal feminists had failed to endorse attempts to establish state regulation of working conditions in factories employing women.50

Thus Bebel provided a rationale for the emancipation of women and something of a blueprint for action as well.

50jbid., p. 307. 54

Because of the dialectic, the same industrialization which temporarily increased the exploitation of ^omen through factory work and the misery of the working class through wage competition was also breaking down restrictive family ties and providing women with a means of supporting themselves.

In time, the production of cheap consumer goods and the intro­ duction of labor-saving devices into the working-class home, augmented by state run nurseries and kindergartens, would further increase their economic independence and assure their 51 emancipation.

In 1884, five years after the appearance of Bebel's book, Friedrich Engels produced a companion volume, Der

Ursprunq der Familie, des Privateigentums und des Staats (The

Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State), which represented his effort to carry out a promise made to his 52 friend Karl Marx prior to the letter's death in 1883.

Bebel's work notwithstanding, Marx had wanted to present

Morgan's findings in the light of his own conclusions. Engels now undertook the completion of this task. Although Origin

^^Ibid., p. 465.

52 Friedrich Engels, The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State, intro, by Eleanor 3. Leacock (New York: International Publishing Company, 1372), p. 7. 55 did not significantly extend or add to Bebel's work, it did carry the name of Engels and thus served to re-emphasize the woman question in general and the relationship between industrialism and the family in particular.

The completion of the socialist theory of women's eman­ cipation came with the work of Clara Zetkin, secretary of the

Second International and a prominent figure in the German

Social Democratic women's movement for three decades. In

1889 she penned Die Arbeiterinnen-und Frauenfrage der

Geqenwart, next to Bebel's book, the most significant social­ ist tract concerning the woman q u e s t i o n . ^3 As a synthesis of Marx and Bebel, this brochure was unsurpassed in its clarity and theoretical consistency. In particular, Zetkin provided the clearest explanation of how the woman question could only appear and be solved in conjunction with economic development.

But Zetkin also made an important contribution to the socialist theory of women's emancipation in her analysis of the relationship of political activity to emancipation. She pointed out that participation in public life through

53 Werner ThiJnnessen, Frauenemanzipation; Politik und Literatur der deutschen Sozialdemokratie zur Frauenbewegung, 1863-1933 (Frankfurt a. M.: Europâische Verlagsanstalt, 1969), p. 46. 56 political organization had become a necessity for working- class women. The economic revolution which had freed women

from the home was not yet complete. While women were now

economically independent of men, in theory at least, they remained dependent upon capitalism. Hardly an issue arose in bourgeois society that did not concern them directly, thus necessitating their attempt to influence the decision­ making process by organizing on behalf of Social Democratic parties.

If working-class women needed added proof of the im­ portance of organizing, they had only to remember that industrialization was a two-edged sword that cut both ways.

It freed them from the home, but only at the expense of increasing class misery through wage competition--further evidence that the woman question could only be solved in conjunction with the victory of the proletariat. Working- class women had to move beyond the narrow feminism of their middle-class contemporaries and join hands with the male proletariat. Class--not sex— solidarity would lead to emancipation.• 4-- 55

^^Clara Zetkin, Die Arbeiterinnen-und Frauenfrage der Gegenwart (Berlin: "Vorwârts" Verlag, 1895), pp. 19-20.

55 Ibid., pp. 39-40. 57

Now that the socialist theory of women's emancipation was complete. Social Democratic women had an inspiring and comprehensible rationale on which to base subsequent actions. Thereafter, the women occupied themselves with attempting to put theory into practice. Organizational and political questions came to play a major role in Social

Democratic women's movements.

No challenges were raised to the basic assumption of the theory itself, which was that traditional social prejudices would be overcome through the impact of economic developments aided by political reform. No serious effort was made to ascertain whether the theory really related to extant social realities. But would the entry of women into the workplace continue to increase? Was the employment of women outside the home really changing the character of the family? Would working-class men, the alleged vanguard of the future, really come to value women as their equals and allies? And, ultimately, was the socialist society in which women would be guaranteed an equal place actually in train?

No positive guarantees could be given in reply. CHAPTER III

FORMATION AND DEVELOPMENT OF A SOCIAL DEMOCRATIC WOMEN'S MOVEMENT IN AUSTRIA, 1890-1914

The modest beginnings of the Social Democratic women's movement in Austria can be traced to the closing years of the nineteenth century and the turning of the twentieth.

Although the movement did not achieve maturity until 1907, its basic character was shaped in the previous decade or two.

Taking their cue from Bebel, Social Democratic women sought as their overriding goal a positive solution to the "woman question." To a very real extent, those principles which were initially set down in the socialist theory of women's emancipation were adopted in toto by the Austrians and served to guide their movement from its beginnings. In part this resulted from a predilection to avoid putting the theory to the acid test, which was in turn reinforced by the character of the Austrian movement's leaders who remained at its head up to and beyond the interwar period.^

^One of these early leaders, Gabriele Proft, died as recently as April 6, 1971.

58 59

Those who claimed a leadership role were essentially

activist types who possessed little inclination for theoret­ ical analysis. As a result they were personally disinclined to challenge the orthodoxies of Marx and Bebel. Moreover, those aspects of the theory which emphasized class solidarity and political activity suited particularly well the tenor of the larger Social Democratic movement in the country. For all of these reasons, the Austrian Social Democratic women’s movement accepted the theory as accurate and devoted its energies to other more immediate concerns.

For much of the nineteenth century Austrian governments had encouraged modern industrialization and experienced its inevitable social consequences. A true industrial prole­ tariat appeared, which by 1890 constituted a full twenty per cent of the entire work force in the country, or some 2 2,880,000 persons. From the very beginning the wives and daughters of workers, whose willingness to work was prompted by the simple fact that a workingman's wages alone would not support his family, constituted a significant proportion of these factory laborers. By 1910, the earliest date for

2 C. A. Macartney, The Habsburg Empire, 1790-1918 (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1968), pp. 630, 618. 60 which statistics are available, 897,000 persons, or one- fourth of all those employed in the factories, were women.

Their presence centered in the textile industry.^

Harsh working conditions and low wages in the factories spawned in turn a workers' movement in Austria which, in its final form, would directly influence working-class women.

From its inception, this workers' movement was influenced by its German counterpart, with which the Austrians had close contact. The earliest known proletarian organization in Austria was in fact a branch of Ferdinand Lassalle's

General German Workingmen's Association (Allqemeine deutsche

Arbeiterverein) which appeared in Vienna in the 1860's.*^

During the two decades that followed, however, the nascent workers' movement was all but immobilized by reactionary government pressure and a split within its ranks between the "Moderate" supporters of Marx and the "Radicals" or anarchists. By the mid-1880's a nadir had been reached.

All that remained were a few minor publications and workers'

3 Ibid., p. 275. Firnberg and Rutschka, Die Frau in Osterreich, p. 23; Kâthe Leichter, Frauenarbeit und Arbeiterinnenschutz in Osterreich (Vienna: Verlag der Wiener Volksbuchhandlung, 1927), p. 7.

“^G. D. H. Cole, A History of Socialist Thought, Vol. Ill, Part II, The Second International, 1889-1914 (5 vols.; London: Macmillan & Co., Ltd., 1956), p. 524. 61

"educational associations" (Bildungsvereine) which, following the German example, had been created after the proscription by the government of politically active workers' organi­ zations.^

That recovery from this point was speedy and permanent was in large part due to the efforts of one man. In just two years, from 1886-1888, Victor Adler was able to mold the basis for lasting unity and organization within the ranks of the Austrian proletariat. Adler's great gifts did not lay in his intellectual capacity, for he was not an original thinker, but rather in his abilities as a persuasive media­ tor and organizer. Within a very short time he had driven the anarchists out and completed preparations for the founding congress of Austrian Social Democracy, held at

Hainfeld in Lower Austria at year's end, 1888-1889.^

Thereafter Adler's personal prestige and influence within the Social Democratic Party were immense. It was really he and only he who guided the Party until his death

^Ibid., pp. 526-27.

^Ludwig Brügel, Geschichte der flsterreichischen Sozial­ demokratie (5 vols.; Vienna: Verlag der Wiener Volksbuch­ handlung, 1922), III, 381-98. 62

in 1918. Central to his role as Party chief were the

personal qualities of humanitarianism, which had initially prompted his concern for the proletarian poor, and moder­

ation, by which Party actions were generally characterized.

In matters of theory, Adler was content to accept at face

value the thought of regular German Social Democrats, among 7 them August Bebel. Thus he remained a convinced Marxist, in order not to lose sight, as he put it, of his original goals.

Like Bebel, Adler had initially believed that the achievement of such goals could be facilitated by democratic political processes, chiefly through the workings of a par­

liament elected on the basis of universal suffrage. Vital strategic considerations, in fact, caused him to place overweening importance on the achievement of suffrage.

Because the Austrian Social Democratic Party was becoming a mass-based party, the vote would be the means by which the

Party would see its programs put into force. In the local

n 'Regular Social Democrats may here be distinguished from the revisionist followers of Eduard Bernstein, who argued that Social Democratic parties should take cognizance of the entrenched power of industrial capitalism and their own broad based position by emphasizing evolutionary social reform. Although Adler always rejected Bernstein's "Reformism" per se, in point of fact he embraced many of its goals and in par­ ticular its emphasis on democratic means of change. 63

Austrian context, moreover, suffrage was an issue which

everyone could agree upon, i.e., it provided a common cause

for disputatious national g r o u p s . ^

The singular significance of the campaign for enfran­

chisement to Adler and the Austrian Social Democratic Party

cannot be overestimated. As he wrote, it was;

The single counterweight, the single weapon against political and economic pressure. . . the best means of agitation, the best means of propagating our views, the best means of organ­ izing, the best means of uniting our comrades, in order to create a battleready and capable army from an apathetic mass. . .^

The early history and orientation of the Party deci­ sively influenced in turn the shaping of the Social Demo­ cratic women's movement in Austria. In 1867 the first workingwomen's educational association (Arbeiterinnen-

BiIdungsverein) was founded in Vienna. Thereafter the association as well as the movement lapsed into virtual

8 Cole, Second International, p. 536.

9 According to at least one observer, Adler's emphasis on suffrage was ultimately detrimental to the Social Demo­ cratic movement, since "from the moment when manhood suf­ frage was introduced in 1907, the Austrian Socialist Party lost much of its impetus and had not clearly known what its common rallying cry would be." Ibid., p. 544. 64

inactivity during the reaction of the 1870's and 1880's.^®

By 1890, however, the women's movement found its counter­

part to Adler. This was Adelheid Popp (1869-1939) who, as

the fifteenth child of an impoverished weaver, had worked a

full eleven hour day in the factory in her youth.

Like Adler, Popp was not an original thinker, but

rather an excellent organizer and conciliator whose warm, 12 vital personality is still remembered today. She dominated

the women's movement from the beginning until its suppression

in 1934. Like Adler she had read her Bebel early and had

agreed with its contention that a positive solution of the

woman question lay within the context of the overall

victory of the working class, i.e., the creation of a

socialist society in which women would gain the acceptance

of workingmen by virtue of their economic independence and

self-sufficiency, required a cooperative effort with men and

could be facilitated by political activity on the part of

women. Under her stewardship, the leadership of the women's

^^Adelheid Popp, Erinnerungen aus meinen Kindheits-und Mcldchenjahren. aus der Agitation und anderes (Stuttgart: Verlag von I. H . W. Dietz, 1915), p. 26. 12 Verein für die Geschichte der Arbeiterbewegung, Lade 22, Adelheid Popp, "Die Erweckerin der Frauen;" Frau Nationalrat Rosa Jochmann, interview held at the Haus der SPO, Vienna, May 17, 1972. 65

movement rarely wavered in its support for the Party, in spite

of what it considered to be footdragging by the Party with

respect to the question of women's rights. Popp's political

kinship with Adler also meant that the women's movement

later came to embrace suffrage as its primary tactical goal

and committed itself thoroughly to the idea of stimulating 13 social change through the democratic parliamentary process.

Although ultimate emancipatory changes in society would be

induced through economic development as Bebel had indi­

cated, social attitudes would be altered and emancipation brought closer, it was believed, by the impetus of progres­

sive legislation.

Together with her colleagues, Adelheid Popp set about

organizing a viable Social Democratic women's movement in the form of reading and discussion clubs, as seen in the reconstitution in Vienna of the Arbeiterinnen-BiIdungsverein

(1890) and the creation of "Libertas" (1893) and "Wahrheit "

("Truth") (1895). Under the auspices of these clubs libraries were established and meetings were organized at which

13 Popp, We q , pp. 38-39; Verhandlungen des Parteitages der üsterreichischen Sozialdemokratie. . . 1892 (Vienna: Verlag von Ludwig Breitschneider, 1892), p. 63. 66

speeches were given and discussions held. By 1896, the

membership of the clubs totalled 2 ,2 5 6 .^^ part this

early emphasis on the educational clubs was the result of

Austrian law, which, in the form of Paragraph 30 of the

Law of Associations (Vereinsgesetz) (1867), specifically

decreed that "all foreigners, women and minors will not be

permitted to acquire membership in political associations."^^

In order to win charters from the government, the educational

associations had to promise to eschew all political activi­

ties in their by-laws.As standard fare at the meetings,

courses in elementary education, German, foreign languages, 17 ■ bookkeeping and hygiene were offered.

To a greater extent, however, the creation of the

educational clubs reflected Popp's belief that working-class

women had to and could be induced to recognize their own

^ Adelheid Popp, ed ., Gedenkbuch 20 Jahre üster reichischen Arbeiterinnenbewegung (Vienna: Verlag der Wiener Volksbuchhandlung, 1912), p. 10; Popp, We g , pp. 23, 75; Kancler, "ôsterreichische Frauenbewegung," pp. 34-35. 15 II "Vereinsgesetz, " Reichsgesetzblatt für das Kaiserthum Osterreich (Vienna: Aus der k. k. Hof-und Staatsdruckerei, 1867), Nr. 134, p. 65.

^^Statuten des Arbeiterinnen-Bildungs-Vereines in Wien (Vienna: Genossenschafts-Buchdruckerei, 1890), p. 3.

^^Hüttl, "Frau in der ôsterreichischen Sozialdemokratie, " p. 18. 67 worth and their place in history as a prerequisite for emancipation.^^ In this sense, the Social Democratic women's movement could abet the influence of economic developments. At gatherings of the educational clubs, the socialist theory of women's emancipation was broken down into the simplest possible terms and presented in a manner which could be readily understood by the audience.

In her memoirs Adelheid Popp presents a memorable account of the nature of the work in which she and her colleagues engaged during the early years of the movement.

During the week organizers would travel about at night on public transportation, having in many cases already worked a full factory shift themselves, to address meetings and set up recruiting drives. Long hours without pay were frequently rewarded with meager results. On weekends longer trips to neighboring locales and provinces would be taken. Since such activity represented a direct departure from the tradi­ tional roles assigned to women by society, Popp and her colleagues often suffered ridicule and had to contend with drunks and would-be lovers while travelling alone at night.

^^Popp, Erinnerungen, pp. 11-15, 23, 44. 68

Uniformed police or local officials were often present at the meetings, which were sometimes broken up.^^

In all her efforts Popp was assisted by a small coterie of women who came to be the permanent leadership core of the movement during the period under study, and beyond. The first to join her during the 1890's were Anna Boschek (1874-

1957) and Therese Schlesinger (1863-1940). Boschek came from a working-class background, and joined the movement during its first year. In 1893 she was elected to the executive board of the Provisional Commission of Austrian

Trade Unions (Provisorische Kommission der Gewerkschaften

II Qsterreichs) and thereafter devoted her energies,, to the organization of women in the unions. She remained a close friend of Adelheid Popp and an influential figure in the 20 movement. Therese Schlesinger, on the other hand, came from a middle-class background and joined the movement for humanitarian reasons. Possessing a flair for words, she authored many pamphlets and articles for the movement and

-^Ibid., p. 43.

20 L. Pluskal-Scholz, "Anna Boschek," Werk und Widerhall; Grosse Gestalten des üsterreichischen Sozialismus, ed. by Norbert Leser (Vienna: Verlag der Wiener Volksbuchhandlung, 1964), pp. 92-96; Verein für die Geschichte der Arbeit- erbeweaunq. Lade (no number), "Anna Boschek." 69

21 also served as one of its more fiery speakers.

After Gabriele Proft (1879-1971) and Brr.my Freundlich

(1878-1948) had joined the Party in the 1900's, the leader­ ship core of the movement was complete. Proft had come to

Vienna from Troppau in her youth. After joining the move­ ment in 1909 she quickly became and remained its Secretary, or Adelheid Popp's chief administrative assistant. An excel­ lent speaker, she spoke at many meetings and later was a prominent figure at general Party assemblies. Like Therese

Schlesinger, Emmy Freundlich from Bohemia came from middle- class parentage and was of an intellectual bent. She, too, authored many of the movement's tracts and also became a leader in the Austrian consumer movement. After the First

World War she, like Adelheid Popp, held offices in inter- 2 3 national women's organizations.

21 "Therese Schlesinger," Die Frau. April 13, 1963, p. 15; Verein für die Geschichte der Arbeiterbevægung. Lade 23, "Therese Schlesinger."

o 9 "Gabriele Proft," Die Frau, March 1, 1969, p. 7 ; Jochmann interview.

^^Annette Richter, "Emmy Freundlich," Werk, pp. 156-59; "Emmy Freundlich," Die Mitgleider des hsterreichischen Nationalrates, 1918-1968 (Vienna: Osterreichische Staatsdruckerei, 1968), p. 53. 70

The consolidation of this particular core of women behind Adelheid Popp had certain implications for the move­ ment. To begin with, they were all personally tough and long-lived, which meant that they continued to hold the reins of leadership throughout the First Republic, where they served as elected representatives in the National Council.

Boschek and Proft, for their part, returned as deputies in the Second Republic following the Second World War. More­ over, all shared the beliefs of Popp with regard to the efficacy of the socialist theory of women's emancipation and the democratic political process as a lever of social change. These beliefs, in combination with extended tenure of these women in positions of leadership, strengthened the commitment of the movement to a democratic political strategy.

24 A subtheme of the Social Democratic women's movement may be found in the outstanding personal courage and perse­ verance demonstrated by its leaders. All experienced much personal adversity during their careers, yet they continued in the forefront. Adelheid Popp, for example, lost her husband after only seven years of marriage and both of her sons at relatively early ages. She herself died after years of illness during the "Hitler time," her death going entirely unreported at the insistence of the regime. Had she not been sick, she would have been thrown in prison. Therese Schlesinger also lost her husband at an early age, became permanently crippled at the time of childbirth, and suffered from tuberculosis, the "Viennese disease." Per- 71

The early efforts of the leadership were ably assisted by the movement's biweekly newspaper, the Arbeiterinnen-

Zeitunq. which first appeared in 1892 and continued to pub­ lish until it was replaced by Die Frau in 1925. Here the

Social Democratic women sought to emulate the success of their male counterparts in the Party whose celebrated

Arbeiter-Zeitung, launched by Adler in 1889 as a successor to the Gleichheit. had earned much credibility for Social

Democracy. The women could not hope to match the sophis- 25 ticated intellectual content of the Party organ, but they did hope to publicize their cause and earn recognition from their prospective constituents.

Within a year after its appearance the editorship of the Arbeiterinnen-Zeitunq passed into the hands of Adelheid haps the cruelest blow of all fell in 1922 when her only daughter committed suicide. By 1938, while old and sick, she was driven out of Austria by the Nazis and took refuge in France, where she died in 1940 as Hitler's armies overran the country. Emmy Freundlich, for her part, fled the Nazis to New York, where she died in 1948 while working for the United Nations. Anna Boschek and Gabriele Proft stayed behind and were arrested, but survived the fascist period and led the rebuilding of the movement after the Second World War. Verein, Laden 22, 23; "Gabriele Proft," Die Frau, p. 7; "Therese Schlesinger," Die Frau, p. 15; Pluskal-Scholz, p. 95; Richter, p. 159. 25 Cole, Second International, pp. 528, 542. 72

Popp. Immediately the paper took on a mere aggressive, polemical tone which assured that it would be noticed, if 26 not accepted. In an unsigned introductory article entitled "An Invitation" ("Zur Einführung"), Popp outlined what the overriding goals of the paper would be. The

Arbeiterinnen-Zeitung, she wrote, was to be a vehicle for bringing public attention to the plight of working-class women by publicizing all injustices done to them. It would also seek to educate its readers in the spirit of socialist awareness and the need for presenting a common working-class 27 front in the struggle for emancipation. Subsequent strident criticism of authorities and conditions earned the paper several confiscations at the hands of government censors.

Over the years the Arbeiterinnen-Zeitunq also became the forum where the secondary or more specific objectives of the women's movement were most clearly expressed. These objectives were mainly of the "bread and butter" type, and were considered to be a form of recompense which society

^^Kancler, "Osterreichische Frauenbewegung," p. 99.

27 "Zur Einführung," Arbeiterinnen-Zeitung, February 17, 1893, p. 1. 73 owed the working wife and mother. They also revealed that the movement and Austrian Social Democracy in general had definitely become reformist in nature. In the area of working conditions— equal pay for equal work, the eight hour day, the elimination of nightwork, free Saturday afternoons and female factory inspectors were demanded. In the social sphere, the movement sought a substantial increase in benefits for expectant mothers on the job and at birth, and the expansion of public child care facilities for the existing children of working mothers. A revision of the marriage code, calling for the ending of compulsory Church marriages, equal treatment for wives and husbands and the elimination of proscriptions on divorce was also proposed.

All such reforms were to be guaranteed legally, and the laws in turn were to be passed following the achievement of universal suffrage and the retraction of the hated

Paragraph 30.28

Not infrequently, articles also appeared by Eleanor

Marx-Aveling and Laura Lafargue, the daughters of Marx, and August Bebel's daughter Frieda, depicting the life of

28 Gabriele Proft, "Adelheid Popp," Werk, p. 300; Hüttl, "Frau in der dsterreichischen Sozialdemokratie," pp. 6-12. 74 women workers in foreign countries. Whether accurate or not, the Austrian women usually concluded conditions were worse in their own country than elsewhere.

After a very slow beginning, the number of readers increased to a total of 10,500 by 1907. Nevertheless, as circulation increased and spread into the provinces the

Arbeiterinnen-Zeitunq was able to perform one more valuable service for the movement. It became the most effective means of tying the movement together, as views from Vienna and the provinces were interchanged and reports on past activities and announcements of future meetings were carried. Thus the paper helped to preserve the sense of unity which the leadership believed was so important.

To a lesser extent Adelheid Popp and her colleagues supplemented their organizational and press activities with trade union work. Here again they had the example of the

Party to follow, which had sought successfully to indoc­ trinate the unions and reduce within them all influence but

29 'Kancler, "Osterreichischen Frauenbewegung," pp. 6-7.

30 Verhandlunqen des Parteitages der deutschen Sozial­ demokratie Qsterreichs. . . 1907 (Vienna: Verlag der Wiener Volksbuchhandlung, 1907), p. 75. 75

31 its own. For a brief period, from 1898-1903, the movement sought to emulate the Party's success in building a base of trade union support, but a growing desire for direct political action soon outstripped this effort. The leadership also involved itself in strikes on a regular basis, however, with the result that Adelheid Popp and others spent some of their time in jail.^^

But such activity only represented temporary diversions from the path of the women's movement to maturity, as ex­ pressed in active political involvement. Given the intract­ able realities of Austrian society and the premium placed on political action in the Party, it is perhaps inevitable that the movement would eventually come to view itself as essentially political, albeit with economic and social goals.

In spite of the fact that they had not yet generated much

"socialist awareness" among constituents, which was properly viewed as a requisite for political action. Social Demo­ cratic leaders now bent their energies toward political involvement. Increasingly, in their perspective, political

31 Macartney, Habsburg Empire, p. 673.

32 Julius Deutsch, Geschichte der ôsterreichischen Gewerkschaftsbewegung (2 vols.; Vienna: Verlag der Wiener Volksbuchhandlung, 1929), I, 342-43; Popp, Erinnerungen, pp. 47-49, 52-53. 76

action came to be their raison d ''etre.

The increasing political involvement of the movement took two basic forms: that of the desire to create active political organizations at the national and local levels, and the tendency to place ever more emphasis on suffrage as the overweening goal of the movement. In both cases the changing attitude of Austrian governments toward the women's movement was a major factor in making progress possible.

During the 1890's tensions created by the "nationality ques­ tion" --which concerned the role which the major nationalities were to play in the Habsburg Monarchy, how much local autonomy each was to have, and the form under which, if at all, the

Monarchy was to continue--had embroiled Austrian governments domestically to the point where all other considerations were m i n i m i z e d . ^4 The resulting tendency of the governments to overlook the political activity of women was in turn strengthened by the vague but noticeable influence of general European currents toward political liberalization and, more specifically, by the fact that Emperor Franz

Joseph turned on three separate occasions (1893, 1896, 1907) to a widening of the franchise as an expedient for prolonging

33 For a discussion of the "nationality question," see Macartney, Habsburg Empire, pp. 603-86. 77

34 the life of the Monarchy. While it was true that Para­ graph 30 of the Law of Associations, which forbade political activity on the part of women, remained in effect, Austrian officials looked the other way with increasing frequency after the early years.

The lessening of official pressure coincided with a growing desire to form local "free organizations," which would be closely if indirectly associated with the Party and would have an implied function of political agitation.

In this way, it was hoped, the letter of Paragraph 30, if not the content, could be skirted. Aside from ideological considerations, this desire may be seen as the outcome of the Social Democratic women's belief that working-class women themselves were in the best position to speak to 35 their own needs. Moreover, they were not content to rely solely on their male comrades in the regular Party to get what they wanted, and they also had before them the example of the rival Christian Social Party, which had organized women supporters and used them effectively as campaign

34ibid.. pp. 559-63, 792-95. 35 Verhandlunqen des Parteitages der Osterreichischen Sozialdemokratie. . . 1903 (Vienna: Verlag der Wiener Volksbuchhandlung, 1903), p. 52. 78 workers in the Reichsrat election of 1897.^^ Although the overlying emphasis on class solidarity and working with the

Party remained as strong as ever, the women sought within this context to establish a political identity for them­ selves .

Accordingly, Adelheid Popp went before the Party in

1 896 with a proposal that "The women comrades have the right, where they find it necessary, to create free organizations next to the trade union organizations on the district 37 level. , At this stage it was felt that the approval of the Party, the dominant center of Social Democracy, had to be obtained before such a step was taken. Opposition within the Party to women's organizations was still too

As a result of the widening of the franchise by the Austrian government in 1896, the Christian Social and Social Democratic parties were able to field candidates for the Reichsrat election, with the result that the Christian Socials won twenty-seven mandates, including all five seats from Vienna, and the Social Democrats fourteen, including no seats from Vienna or Lower Austria. After the results had been announced Karl Lueger, the Christian Social leader, was quoted as saying "We owe our victory to the women." ("Wir verdanken den Frauen unseren Sieg".) Social Democratic women did not fail to take note of this. Macartney, Habsburg Empire, p. 675; Brügel, flsterreichischen Sozial- deraokratie, IV, 308; Popp, Weg, p. 80.

37 Verhandlungen des Parteitages der ôsterreichischen Sozialdemokratie. . . 1896, p. 44. 79 strong, however, and the Popp resolution lost by the margin of one vote, 40-41.^^

The next aspect of the effort to politicize the movement came in 1898 with the creation of a national executive com­ mittee to bind the movement more closely and to provide a sense of direction. The old loosely formed Organization

Committee (Organisationskomitee) of the educational clubs had not proven to be effective in this regard, so the first national conference of Social Democratic women (Frau- enreichskonferenz) was called to consider the question.

With the results of the 1897 election still fresh in the delegates' minds, it was decided to establish a national committee (Frauenreichskomitee) over the opposition of the trade union representatives, who feared the ultimate domin- 39 ation of the movement by as yet unformed political clubs.

Within three years the Frauenreichskomitee sought to accommodate the growing desire for political activity by creating new pseudo-political organizations on the national level to supplant the fading educational associations. By

1901 the Association of Social Democratic Women and Girls

^®Huttl, "Frau in der fisterreichischen Sozialdemo­ kratie, " p. 114.

39 Popp, We g , pp. 74-78. 80

(Verein sozialdemokratischer Frauen und MSdchen) and an

Association of Women Workers at Home (Verein der Heim- atarbeiterinnen) for domestics, housewives and those who worked at home had been founded. Ifhile not declaring them­ selves to be political organizations as such, these asso­ ciations discussed political issues,supported political reform and worked on behalf of Social Democratic candidates dQ in Reichsrat and local elections. "

Thus, significant progress toward the creation of a political apparatus was made on the national level. At the local level, however, the efforts of the movement's leader­ ship continued to be blocked by elements within the Party di and the women's trade union groups." In 1903 the Frau­ enreichskomitee attempted to outflank this opposition at the second Frauenreichskonferenz by asking those in attendance to approve the formation of local political clubs. Under pressure from Party members and the women unionists, however.

^^Hüttl, ‘t’rau in der fisterreichischen Sozialdemokratie, " p. 57. 41 See below for discussion of the relationship between the movement and the Party for a more complete explanation of attitudes within the Party. 81

4-9 the proposal was withdrawn before a vote could be taken.

The second major manifestation of the increasing interest in political activity was the establishing of woman suffrage as the overriding immediate goal of the movement.

Suffrage offered the twofold appeal of timeliness and tangibility, which the movements' social and economic demands did not necessarily do. Although no one really believed that the enfranchisement of Austrian women could be achieved in Austria in the near future, woman suffrage would never­ theless become a legitimate issue in liberal and socialist circles all over Europe. It was a definite, concrete measure, which could easily be written into law codes.

In fact, the question of woman suffrage had been a nascent factor in the women's movement since its infant, years. As early as 1893, Social Democratic women had recog­ nized the desirability of the vote. In the first of two large women's assemblies of that year, called in conjunction with the government's campaign to extend the franchise, the following resolution was passed:

42 " Was fordern die Arbeiterinnen Qsterreichs? Bericht über die zweite Konferenz der sozialdemokratischen Frauen Qsterreichs, Abegehalten zu Wien am 8. November 1903 (Vienna: Verlag der Wiener Volksbuchhandlung, 1903), pp. 9-27. 82

In recognition that women suffer from the same economic hardships as men, in further recog­ nition that this developing and socially dangerous condition also fines expression in a lack of political rights, in furcher recog­ nition that only the acquisition of political power in this system can bring ir to an end, and that a collective struggle against collective exploitation is necessary for the achievement of this goal, this assembly demands active, passive, general, equal and direct suffrage for all repre­ sentative bodies for all citizens over twenty-one years of age without regard to sex, and declares that it will sacrifice all and spare nothing in the struggle. . .^3

Although the strong interest in suffrage which is evident

in this resolution tended to wane over the next decade, the

issue never died completely and thus came easily to mind in

subsequent years as the movement turned political.

The advance of the women's movement toward maturity, as

expressed in its growing concern for political issues,

raised the question of the movement's relationship with the

Party to the point of decision. As indicated earlier, the

subjects of political activity and Party ties were inter­

related and had direct bearing on each other. For, in the movement's own view, political action was imperative if it were to become really effective; if it were to work actively

for the achievement of its goals. And yet such action

43 Popp, W e g , pp. 36-37. 83 clearly required the approval of the Party, which was the fulcrum and the arbiter of Austrian Social Democracy.

In theory the Party supported full equality for women, as may be seen in the following excerpt from the program of the founding conference at Hainfeld (1888-1889):

The Social Democratic Workers Party in Austria strives for the emancipation of the entire pop­ ulation without distinction of nation, race or sex from the chains of economic dependence. . . the lack of political rights and. . . spiritual degradation. .

In the same program suffrage was recognized as a legitimate goal for women.

With this commitment in principle made, the leadership of the Party adopted in practice the moderate course of

Victor Adler. Adler was firmly convinced that the women had to remain in the closest union with the Party, for the sake of working-class solidarity. Therefore, he opposed the formation of any separate women's organizations and counseled the women to be patient and to work for the Party and themselves through existing means. In the meantime, he promised, he would work to overcome opposition to the women's movement among lower echelons of the Party. As

^^Verhandlunqen des Parteitages der ôsterreichischen Sozialdemokratie. . . 1889, p. 3. 84

added support for this position, he stated that it would

also be politically unwise to violate the provisions of

Paragraph 30, when in fact the paragraph had ceased to have much real effectiveness. In the eyes of his female critics, 45 Adler's backing of women was hesitant and indifferent.

On the suffrage issue, Adler revealed his gradualism

even more specifically. The winning of voting rights for

working-class men, he believed, would be a difficult and

preemptive task for Austrian Social Democracy. The ex­

tension of such rights to women, in the face of opposition

from all levels of society, had to be considered as utopian

and would only be attempted after the victory of the men

had been assured. Addressing the second Frauenreichskon-

ferenz in 1903, Adler made this all quite clear:

From the standpoint of political tactics I must say: we must declare at every opportunity that we are for woman suffrage and that we are wil­ ling to make the firsii step in this direction; but. . . that . . . /Tirst step_/ . . . is the the winning of suffrage for men.^G

'^^Victor Adler, "Parteibericht nach Hainfeld, " Victor Adlers Aufsâtze, Reden und Briefe (Vienna: Verlag der Wiener Volksbuchhandlung, 1922), I, 105; see remarks of Therese Schlesinger, Was fordern, pp. 12-13.

46 Was fordern. . ., p. 27. 85

Although very gradualist, Adler's position was extremely advanced when compared with that held by many of the rank and file members of the Party where traditional social attitudes held sway over the newer teachings of Social

Democracy. For many of them, emancipation suggested an extensive disruption of society and the assignment of women to roles for which they were neither fit nor wanted, not to mention the fact that male prerogatives would be threatened thereby. The affinity of many women for the Church also discredited the suffrage issue among workingmen, who feared the victory of clericalism at the polls if women were to vote. Finally, and probably most importantly, workers accepted the idea of "wage competition," which held that women would begin to force men into unemployment if allowed to enter the economy unchecked because of their willingness to work for lower wages. Any attempt to promote economic 47 independence for women had therefore to be stopped. The women's movement countered by trying to prove--as in Bebel

47 Verhandlunqen des Parteitages der ôsterreichischen Sozialdemokratie. . . 1891, p. 41; Verhandlunqen des Partei­ tages der ôsterreichischen Sozialdemokratie. . . 1892, p. 53; Verhandlunqen des Parteitages der Osterreichischen Sozial­ demokratie. . . 1896, pp. 106-107; Victor Adler, "Die erste Frauenkonferenz," Aufsâtze, I, 140. 86

and Zetkin— that the entry of women into the workplace was a

matter of necessity and that the ultimate solution to the

problem lay in higher wages for all workers of either sex

or the elimination of wages altogether. Many workingmen

remained unconvinced, however.

On numerous occasions Adler acknowledged that the

complaints of the women about rank and file attitudes were

justified. In response he counseled patience and asked the

women's movement to overlook the opposition in the interest

of collective effort and class solidarity. At the same

time, he called upon the men to dispense with their 49 "reactionary" beliefs and grant the women full acceptance.

The question of whether Adler temporized in his support

of the women's movement, as some of his critics in the move­ ment believed,is a difficult one to answer. Certainly he was correct in concluding that the granting of woman suf­

frage was a highly unlikely possibility in Austria at the

48 Popp, Weg, p. 39.

zig Victor Adler, "Die erste Frauenkonferenz," pp. 136-41; Adler, "Die Frau in der Organisation," Aufsâtze. I, 142-45.

^^Verhandlunqen des Parteitages der deutschen Sozial­ demokratie Qsterreichs. . . 1904, p. 101. 87 time. And yet it would seem, in spite of his numerous general statements, that his support of the women in their fight to win recognition from the Party rank and file was less than what it could or should have been. One must remember that the women's movement had been in existence for seventeen years before the Party granted its formal approval for the women to establish and direct their own local organ­ izations. Given his immense prestige, it would seem that

Adler could have helped make that approval a reality some­ what sooner. But his consistent adherence to the gradualist view of progression through ordered steps perpetuated the secondary importance of the women's movement and made such early approval impossible.

In any event, the campaign to win the acceptance of the

Party rank and file consumed much of the energy of the women's movement during the early years. Since most of the opposition to the women was of a local nature, the conflict itself was primarily fought at the national conferences of the Party or Party Days (Parteitage), where decisions affecting Social Democracy were decided by a vote of the assembled representatives from the Party districts. Here the efforts of the women were aimed at securing approval for 88 their own indirectly affiliated "free organizations" and adequate representation at Party Days. As previously indi­ cated, the attempt to organize locally was stymied at first by Adler in the name of solidarity and then by local repre­ sentatives out of prejudices and fear of economic competition.

The movement's second defeat on this question at the Frau- enreichskonferenz of 1903 only strengthened the determin­ ation of its leaders to solve the problem soon, however, for they believed that their purposes as a movement had been undercut thereby (or, as Therese Schlesinger put it--"the economic struggle is dependent on the political struggle"). 5 *L

The question of representation at Party Days was equally important to the movement because it came to symbo­ lize the entire quest of the women for full political equality within the Party and in society. Beginning as guests at Party Days, the leadership of the movement had succeeded by 1894 in winning acceptance of the abstract right of women to join the Party and to participate in local elections of delegates to the conferences, either as voters or candidates. In practice, of course, no women joined the

Party and men dominated the elections. Meanwhile, women's

S^Was fordern, p. 22. 89

52 concerns were largely ignored at the conferences.

In response, the women's leaders concluded that their ultimate goals stood little chance ~f acceptance as long as they could not even get the ear of the Party or win effective representation in its councils. The frustration of the women began to clash with the gradualism of Adler. At the

Party Day of 1900 Adelheid Popp and Therese Schlesinger proposed unsuccessfully that all organs and organizations of the Party demand and support full political equality for 5 3 women, especially in the matter of suffrage. A nettled

Adler retorted: "But do you say to me that we have no other concerns beside this?. . . But do you believe that this takes precedence over the pressing concerns of the entire nation?By 1904 a rapid resolution of this prob­ lem had also become imperative. At the Party Day of that year Schlesinger strongly criticized the Party for its indecisiveness toward the woman's movement and Adler replied:

52 Verhandlunqen des Parteitages der ôsterreichischen Sozialdemokratie. . . 1892, p. 159; Verhandlunqen des Partei­ tages der ôsterreichischen Sozialdemokratie. . . 1894, pp. 87-88, 194. 53 Verhandlunqen des Parteitages der deutschen Sozial­ demokratie Qsterreichs. . . 1900, p. 68.

^‘^Ibid ., p. 84. 90

Comrade Schlesinger was so inhuman that she demanded that we give up out of hand what we are supposed to be doing, and then she carried her inhumanity so far as to demand that we immediately give up what we have longed for and suffered f o r . 55

Thus the women's movement had arrived at a turning point in its development, whereby the resolution of certain questions involved in its relationship with the Party would determine whether or not it continued to grow. During the period between 1907 and 1914 those questions were resolved, at least to the point where further growth and development were made possible, if not to the total satisfaction of the membership. With respect to organization and structure, a network of local cells was being created throughout the country under the aegis of the Frauenreichskomitee. The leadership of the movement could also pride itself on growing international connections. In a word, the Social

Democratic women's movement was now fully underway.

Probably the single most important development occurred in the area of the movement's relationship with the Party itself. As has been seen, the refusal of the Party to officially grant approval for the organization of women's

^^Verhandlunqen des Parteitaces der deutschen Sozial- demokratie ôsterreichs. . . 1904, p. 73. 91 cells on the local level had stymied the overall growth of the movement. In 1907, however, it became necessary to undertake a general revision of the organizational statutes of the Party, since the introduction by the government of universal manhood suffrage in separate national constitu­ encies had disrupted Party unity. Nationalistic Czech

Social Democrats, long at odds with its German leadership and encouraged by their successes in the 1907 elections, began to create their own nationally based organization in

Bohemia while remaining formally within the Party.

Taking advantage of this situation, representatives of the Frauenreichskomitee declared at the 1907 Party Day that the problem of local organization had become "one of the most burning questions" for the women's movement.

Local outlets of the Verein für sozialdemokratische Frauen und Müdchen, they pointed out, were not really adequate for the tasks of recruitment and political activity. An auton­ omous women's organization had already been formed in Brünn in defiance of the Party. Anticipating that the opposition

56 Macartney, Habsburg Empire, pp. 793-94; Brügel, Osterreichischen Sozialdemokratie, IV, 77-101.

5 7 Verhandlunqen des Parteitages der deutschen Sozial­ demokratie. . . 1907, pp. 75-76. 92 of male regulars in the Party would take the form of a declaration that women were not ready for serious political activity--i.e. were not politically sophisticated and were susceptible to Christian Social influences--speakers from the Frauenreichskomitee reminded the delegates that working- class women had been active throughout the country at anti­ inflation rallies and on behalf of Social Democratic candidates in parliamentary elections.

Working-class women had not only proved their readiness for political action, they declared, but were deserving as well of recompense from the Party for their efforts. Then they closed with a matter-of-fact prediction:

If we are successful in bringing sufficient strengths and means to bear for the creation of free political organizations for women, and if the Party comrades support us in all localities, then the Frauenreichskomitee will also be able to give a numerical report about politically organized women at the next Party D a y . 58

The "free political organizations" mentioned by the speakers represented an attempt by the women to moderate opposition in the Party while avoiding outright violation of the letter of the law. They also symbolized the con-

SBlbid., p. 75. 93 viction that women's interests could best be promoted by women themselves. 5 9 The free organizations would be created by and for women at the local level, thus reducing the likelihood of grassroots friction between male and female comrades. Lipservice would meanwhile be paid to the fiction of Paragraph 3 0 for the sake of the authorities.

With the frustration of the speakers apparent and the problem of Czech separatism hanging over all, the women were granted their demands. At the same time, formal acknowl­ edgment of the Frauenreichskomitee was given as well. The new organizational statutes of the Party included the following paragraphs:

The systematic agitation and organization of the Party among the female proletariat will be con­ ducted by female stewards, who will be elected in all localities with the consent of the local Party organization, and their identity will be made known to the Frauenreichskomitee in Vienna. The Frauenreichskomitee will be elected by the Frauenreichskonferenz, which will be held every two years in conjunction with the regular Party Day.°0

5 9 Frauenwahlrecht und Arbeiterinnenschutz: Verhand- lunqen der Dritten sozialdemokratischen Frauenkonferenz in Osterreich (Vienna: Verlag der Arbeiterinnen-Zeitung. 1 9 0 8 ) , p. 1 5 .

6 0 Verhandlunqen des Parteitages der deutschen Sozial- demokratie Osterreichs. . . 1907, p. 76. 94

The way was now open for the full organizational development of the movement, or as Adelheid Popp subse­ quently put it--"From 1907 on dates the emergence of the political organization of women.Almost immediately the

Social Democratic women mounted a sustained campaign of agitation and recruitment. The most important single aspect of this campaign was the now familiar attempt to raise socialist awareness among the working-class women. Efforts were made to see that the local free organizations held dis­ cussion meetings at least once a month, where topics such as the influence of clericalism in the schools and the place of the working class in history were considered. At the same time a direct appeal was issued to all local Party leaders for their support, and the local cells were tied together through a periodic "Korrespondenz," edited by Emmy

Freundlich.At the 1908 Frauenreichskonferenz the decision to select crownland representatives to coordinate

^^Popp, Weq, p. 85.

^^"Unsere nâchsten Aufgaben," AnZ, February 19, 1907, p. 2; Adelheid Popp, "Organisierung der Frauen," Arbeiter- Zeitunq, October 22, 1911, p. 2; Therese Schlesinger, "Die Erziehungsarbeit auf der Frauenkonferenz," AnZ, November 18, 1913, pp. 3-4. 63 Verhandlunqen des Parteitages der deutschen Sozial- demokratie Ôsterreichs. . . 1909, p. 60. 95 the local activities was made.^^

The recruitment campaign fared moderately well as long as political and economic conditions within the Habsburg lands did not get entirely out of hand. At the Party Day of

1909 the Frauenreichskomitee delivered on its promise of a numerical progress report made two years earlier. The number of politically active Social Democratic women had increased from roughly 4000 in 1907 to 5,412 in 88 organizations.^^

Thereafter the recruiting drives continued to bring in more supporters at a respectable rate. By 1911 the membership of the movement totalled 17,823 and Social Democratic women's organizations were found in every province except Tirol and

Carinthia.^^ By 1913 it had climbed to 28,058 in 312 locales.

Accompanying the mounting recruitment effort was an increase in political agitation regarding issues of the day.

64_

^^Verhandlunqen des Parteitaqes der deutschen Sozial- demokratie ôsterreichs. . . 1909, p. 59.

^^Verhandlunqen des Parteitaqes der deutschen Sozial- demokratie Osterreichs. . . 1911, p. 6 6 .

67 Verhandlunqen des Parteitaqes der deutschen Sozial- demokratie Osterreichs. . . 1913, p. 26. 96 which may be taken as an indication that the horizons of

the movement now extended beyond its own parochial concerns.

During the five-year span from 1907 to 1911, hundreds of

rallies and discussions were held to protest the rising costs

of inflation, inadequate housing, unemployment and the need

for federalization of the Monarchy. With the outbreak of

the Balkan Wars of 1912-1913, these assemblies took on an 68 increasingly pacifist tone.

But the creation of the free political organizations,

in spite of their limited organizational successes and

growing involvement in contemporary issues, had not really

solved the ultimate organizational question of complete union between the women's movement and the Party. Ideology and

tactical conviction, as expressed through Marx, Bebel and

Zetkin, decreed that victory would only be assured when a

fully unified working-class effort had been established.

Class solidarity remained in the minds of the leaders of both the women's movement and the Party as an ultimate

^^Frauenwahlrecht und Arbeiterinnenschutz, pp. 3-4; Protokoll der vierten sozialdemokratischen Frauenreichs- konferenz (Vienna: Verlag der Wiener Volksbuchhandlung, 1911), pp. 344-45; Protokoll der fünften sozialdemokratischen Frauenreichskonferenz, abgehalten zu Wien, am 30. und 31. Oktober 1913 (Vienna: Verlag der Wiener Volksbuchhandlung, 1913), p. 275. 97 objective. The provisions of Paragraph 30 prohibited such a union, but it was widely believed in both camps that the elimination of this pesty regulation was only a matter of time.G9

Accordingly, a debate sprang up within the women's move­ ment over the question of the anticipated Anschluss with the

Party. It was sparked by the acceptance of additions to the organizational statutes of the Party at the 1909 Party Day.

These additions stated that delegates to a Frauenreichskon- ferenz who had been chosen by the members of local women's cells now belonged to the Party. The women's movement also received the right of representation in all main bodies of the P a r t y . 70 Within the women's movement the passage of

In 1911 the lower house (Abgeordnetenhaus) of the Austrian Parliament voted to do away with the provisions of Paragraph 30 which applied to women, but the upper house (Herrenhaus) refused to act upon this decision. Engelbert Pernerstorfer, a Social Democratic deputy of the lower house, led the unsuccessful fight for revision. Frauenwahl­ recht und Arbeiterinnenschutz, p. 15; "Der Absatz 30 besteht nicht mehr," AnZ, March 14, 1911, p. 1; Die TStiq- keit der deutschen sozialdemokratischen Abgeordneten im flsterreichischen Reichsrat, 12. Oktober 1910 bis 31. Mërz 1911 (Vienna: Verlag der Wiener Volksbuchhandlung, 1911), p. 34. 70 Verhandlungen des Parteitages der deutschen Sozial- demokratie Osterreichs. . . 1909, p. 9. 98 these resolutions was correctly interpreted as a preparatory step toward complete unification with the Party.

But not all of the leaders and members of the movement were willing to accept union. In 1911, in anticipation of the third Frauenreichskonferenz, a debate raged between the proponents of union led by Gabriele Proft, and those who opposed it led by Emmy Freundlich. Adelheid Popp acted as mediator. In defending the idea of union Proft pointed out that women's organizations could draw upon the accumulated wisdom and financial strength of the Party, while still retaining a say over the course of their own actions.7^ Her opponents, for their part, tended to center their arguments on the issue of collective financing. The movement would be in danger, they felt, if dues and contributions which had hitherto been collected separately were put into a common treasury and then redistributed by the Party. Less money, it was believed, would come back to the movement than it rightfully deserved.

71 Gabriele Proft, "Der Anschluss der Frauen an die politischen Vereine," AnZ, August 15, 1911, pp. 1-2.

72 Protokoll der vierten Frauenreichskonferenz. pp. 354-58. 99

At the Frauenreichskonferenz the Frauenreichskomitee countered these objections with what it termed a compromise solution. Adelheid Popp, speaking for the Frauenreichs- komitee, maintained that all members of the women's movement recognized the need for collective organization and wished to see it ultimately adopted. To counteract the resulting problem of collective financing, she proposed that women receive representation on all Party organizations and com­ mittees proportional to their numbers. In part, it was be­ lieved, these representatives could act as watchdogs over 73 the allocation of monies. The Frauenreichskonferenz accepted this view, but it was rejected by the Party regulars at the 1911 Party Day immediately following the conclusion 74 of the women's gathering. Thus, while the women's move­ ment was making significant progress, the debate over the still unresolved question of union revealed that consider­ able distrust continued to exist between the movement and the rank and file of the Party.

Accompanying the increase in membership and organiza­ tional activity was a national rise in the circulation of

73lbid., pp. 351-52.

^^Ibid., p. 351; Verhandlungen des Parteitaqes der deutschen Sozialdemokratie Osterreichs. . . 1911, p. 183. 100 the Arbeiterinnen-Zeituncf. From a figure of 10,500 in 1907, readership increased almost threefold to 29,000 by June, 75 1914. In large part this jump resulted from a decision taken at the 1908 Frauenreichskonferenz, which stipulated that subscription was thereafter to be mandatory for all members of the movement.With respect to content, however, the Arbeiterinnen-Zeitung did not change significantly during this period. Each issue was composed of the usual articles, as well as reports of hundreds of meetings and rallies which testified to the growing presence of the movement throughout the country.

A breakthrough in political organization was not the only indicator of the maturity of the Social Democratic women's movement in the years from 1907-1914. With respect to ideology and tactics, this period also saw a logical evolution of position on the suffrage question. The vote for the women became the single most important means by which the reordering of society vjas to be promoted, i.e., the

^^Popp, Weq, p. 87; Hüttl, "Frau in der flsterreich­ ischen Sozialdemokratie," p. 176.

^^Frauenwahlrecht und Arbeiterinnenschutz, p. 14. 101 primary means by which Bebel's woman question was to be solved.

Once again 1907 was decisive. In that year the Austrian government granted universal manhood suffrage, which was enthusiastically received by the Social Democrats. It will be recalled that the Party had always stood for complete enfranchisement of both sexes, although in practice Adler's strategy had called for winning the vote for men first.

Once male suffrage had been achieved, Adler had stated, the

Party would work actively for the extension of this right to women. As a result Social Democratic women were content during the early years to work for male suffrage as the first step toward their own enfranchisement. In so doing they also hoped to allay skeptics' fears that they were unprepared to participate in the political life of the 77 country.

The granting of universal manhood suffrage in 1907 changed all this immediately. Women suffrage at all levels of government now came to be viewed more than ever as a clearly identifiable, tangible goal the achievement of which, it seemed reasonable to assume, lay within the grasp of the

77 "Unsere nâchsten Aufgaben," p. 1. 102 movement. To some extent this conviction reflected the international evolution of the woman suffrage issue, which manifested itself in suffragette activities in several

Western countries. But in Austria the fact that the govern­ ment had introduced manhood suffrage on its own initiative in response to the nationality question, and not as the direct result of the efforts of the Social Democratic Party, was overlooked.78

It was during this period that the relationship of suffrage to the ideology of Marx and Bebel and the emanci­ pation of women was most clearly articulated by the movement's leaders in a number of pamphlets, articles and speeches. Of course, emancipation in the form of a reordering of society to provide full equality for women--Bebel's "woman question"--remained the final objective. This reordered society was to be created by replacing the existing capi­ talist system with one based on the equal distribution of 79 wealth, where all would be guaranteed equal opportunity.

^^Cole, Second International, p. 538.

79 Frauenwahlrecht und Arbeiterinnenschutz, p. 27; Therese Schlesinger, Was wollen die Frauen in der Politik? (Vienna: Verlag der Wiener Volksbuchhandlung, 1909), pp. 23-25; Protokoll der fünften Frauenreichskonferenz, p. 288. 103

These changes were not to be induced by violence, how­ ever, but rather in a peaceful, piecemeal fashion.Here suffrage was to play an even greater role. Like Victor

Adler and the other leaders of the Party, Adelheid Popp and her colleagues had always assumed that the granting of universal suffrage would produce a parliamentary majority which would legislate out of existence many of the more unjust aspects of Austrian life, such as a biased educational system, discriminatory law codes and inequitable wage dif­ ferentials .

Suffrage acquired an added dimension, as the chief stimulus of "socialist awareness" among working-class women.

Recognition of self-worth and the need for social change could best be fostered in the individual, it was thought, through her participation in the political process and through voting in particular. Once such awareness had been expanded, the vote would again become the means by which further socialization was enacted.In the meantime.

"Die Gesellschaftsordnung, die wir anstreben," AnZ, January 17, 1911, p. 2; Emmy Preundlich, "Parlement und Arbeiterschaft," AnZ, December 2, 1913, p. 1.

^^Schlesinger, Was wollen, p. 25. 104

discussion of bread-and-butter social welfare issues would

help to stimulate awareness and would direct attention to

the worst abuses that afflicted working women. 8 2

In a 1 9 0 9 pamphlet entitled, "What do Women Want from

Politics?" ("Was wollen die Frauen in der Politik?"),

Therese Schlesinger stated the expanded case for suffrage clearly:

But no other means would be better suited to bring self-satisfaction to the woman worker, who is exploited two and threefold and sup­ pressed in the workplace and the family, than if she would have the right of helping to choose who should represent the interests of the people in national, state and local assemblies. Through no other way could she be so effectively stimulated, indeed be forced to think about, her own dire straits and the means to do away with them, than if she were to demand suffrage, participate in political battles and send her representatives into legally constituted corporate b o d i e s . ^3

The result of all this was the increasing tendency to equate the power of the vote with guaranteed social change, a rather awkward synthesis of democratic liberalism and

8 2 Protokoll der vierten Frauenreichskonferenz. p p . 3 7 0 - 7 1

8 3 Schlesinger, Was wollen, p. 20. 105

84 Marxist orthodoxy. This tendency was evident in an

article by Adelheid Popp which appeared in 1910 in the

Arbeiterinnen-Zeituncf. "Therefore, we say:" she wrote, "We want political rights, we want political influence, in order to win influence over the formation of economic rela­ tionships in the state.Nor did this tendency seem to be without an ideological rationale. As Therese Schlesinger reminded her colleagues, Marx himself had called upon the working class to seize political power in order to throw off its economic exploitation.^^

To her credit Emmy Preundlich tried to warn her col­ leagues not to overestimate the efficacy of suffrage as a tool for social change. Writing in 1913, she characterized the nature of parliaments in an article entitled "Parliament and the Working Class" ("Parlament und Arbeiterschaft").

At the 1913 Party Day the statement had been made that the

84 Adelheid Popp, "Wenn die Frauen das Wahlrecht hâtten," Vierzig Jahre internationaler Frauentaq, 1910-1950 (Vienna: Verlag der Wiener Volksbuchhandlung, 1950), p. 6; Therese Schlesinger, "Frauenarbeit und Politik," Der Kampf, I (April, 1 9 0 8 ), 311.

^^Adelheid Popp, "Die Frauendemonstration für politische Rechte," AnZ, April 26, 1910, p. 5.

85 Schlesinger, "Frauenarbeit," p. 311. 106

Austrian Parliament ought to be an aggressive, revolutionary force. This view overestimated Parliament, she said:

That each parliament must be ^ class parliament, as long as we have our. . . /presen^/ . . . social order. . . that Parliament is no revo­ lutionary weapon and can never achieve the gains won in revolutionary struggle. . . we must now learn. . . But above all we are not permitted to forget, that the great revo­ lutionary struggle which we must always con­ tinue to lead. . . will not be led in Parlia­ ment, but in conjunction with the entire working class, outside of Parliament. . . Our prepar­ ation must now take the form of educational work and. . . developing socialist. . . enlight­ enment, which we always fail to emphasize suffi­ ciently.

For the most part such warnings went unheeded. Lip- service was paid to the idea of social revolution while the fixation with the achievement of suffrage continued. On the crucial marriage and family question, for example.

Social Democratic women continued to believe that the entry of women into the economy would destroy the family as the basic social unit and generate socialist awareness and an interest in politics in women. Once these conditions had been fulfilled, revision of the marriage laws by a popularly elected parliament would follow. Again, suffrage was seen as the key element. Only a few years before she

R7 Preundlich, "Parlament," pp. 1-2, 107

voiced her misgivings about the usefulness of parliamentary

action, Preundlich herself had expressed the view which

continued to prevail among her colleagues. Although she

acknowledged that Austrian women would never be truly free

until they had won complete marital equality, attitudes

would change and marital laws be rewritten. All laws that

had been created in Parliament could be rewritten there as well.BB

In this manner final expression was given to the close

identification of the Social Democratic women's movement

with the suffrage issue. But a third dimension of the move­ ment's maturity also appeared during these years. Again

1907 marked a new departure, for in that year the Austrian

Social Democratic women formally entered the international

socialist movement. This action resulted in a widening of

the contacts established by the Austrian women’s movement

and gained for it a new measure of legitimacy.

Given their Marxist backgrounds, the question of inter­ national solidarity had always been important to the Social

Democratic women. From its founding in 1889, Adelheid Popp

S^Emmy Preundlich, "Prauenrecht und Kinderschutz," Der Kampf, III (April, 1909), 311; Preundlich, Frauenfrage, p. 24. 108

and others had maintained their own ties with the Second

International through its secretary, Clara Zetkin. As early

as 1893, Adelheid Popp had appeared in Zurich as a guest at

the second congress of the International and had spoken there 89 on the issue of legislative protection for women workers.

Thereafter no Austrian women and very few from any country

attended the meetings of the International until 1907,

although the International, for its part, did go on record 90 several times as favoring unrestricted universal suffrage.

This pattern of non-involvement changed dramatically in

1907. At the instigation of Zetkin and her supporters in

Germany, the first International Socialist Womerfs Conference

was held that year in Mannheim, in conjunction with the sixth

meeting of the International, A sizeable Austrian dele­

gation led by Adelheid Popp attended. Perhaps to their

surprise, the Austrians found themselves to be outsiders on

89popp, Weg, p. 99.

90 See the following protocols: Protokoll des Inter- nationalen Sozialistischen Arbeiterkonqresses in der Tonhalle Zurich vom 6. bis 12. August, 1893 (Zurich: Buchhandlung des Schweiz. Grütlivereins, 1894), p. 52; Cinquième Congres Socialiste International tenu a Paris du 23 au 27 September 1900 (Paris: Société Nouvelle de Librarie et d'Edition, 1901), p. 112; Internationaler Sozialisten-Kongress zu Amster­ dam 1904 (Berlin: Verlag Buchhandlung Vorwârts, 1904), p. 54. 109

the vital question of suffrage, which consumed the bulk of

the debate at the conference.

As a matter of course it was decided to issue a state­ ment calling for universal suffrage in the name of the con­

ference. Zetkin used the debate over the wording of the

statement to express the frustration which she and several

of her more aggressive German colleagues felt over the rigid, gradualist tactics which Victor Adler had prescribed in Austria. It would have been better, she maintained, if

Adler had plumped for woman suffrage from the very beginning and not allowed it to become a secondary issue, dependent for full Party support on the prior achievement of manhood suffrage. Certainly woman suffrage stood little immediate chance of passage in Austria, she conceded, but its eventual victory could have been brought closer if Adler had sup­ ported it unreservedly from the start. The atmosphere in which the campaign for manhood suffrage in Austria was con­ ducted was extraordinarily suited for presenting a demand for full equality for women, she concluded. Decisions con­ cerning women should not always be made on the basis of what 110

91 was most pracüxcal.,

Ac1er, appearing as a guest and supported bv Adelheid

Popp, countered by noting that Austrian Social Democratic

woman now received the open support of the Party both

within and outside Parliament. It was the position of the

Austrian delegation, he said, that each country should have

the option of choosing to promote suffrage by a method which best suited its needs. Through Adelheid Popp he 92 offered a resolution to that effect. But the Adler view was rejected by the conference. The resolution it adopted was that of Zetkin, which called upon the socalist party in each country to "fight energetically" for the intro- 93 duction of woman suffrage. The compromising response of the Austrian women to this slap on the wrist 'was typical of their moderate nature, and in its best sense represented their proclivity for solidarity. While some resentment over

91 Clara Zetkin, Zur Frage des Frauenwahlrechts : Bear- beizet nach dem Referai auf der Konferenz sozialistischen Frauen zu Mannheim (Berlin: Verlag Buchhandlung Vorwârts. 1907), pp. 49-51.

92 Victor Adler, "Mannerwahlrecht und Frauenwahlrecht," Aufsâtze, I, 147-48. 93 Zetkin, Zur Frage, pp. 53-54. Ill the action of the conference lingered in their minds, they continued to participate fully in international activities and at the same time retained their unbroken loyalty to

Adler.

At the second international conference held at Copen­ hagen in 1910 it was decided to hold an International

Women's Day every year thereafter, to call attention to the 94 campaign for woman suffrage. Four such days were subse­ quently held from 1911 to 1914, until the outbreak of the

First World War put a temporary end to the practice. In

Austria, as elsewhere, thousands of Social Democratic women flocked to the capital on the appointed day to listen to speeches and to demonstrate before the Parliament building for woman suffrage. Great parades were organized on the

Ring, and out in the countryside scores of similar gather- 95 ings took place.

For the Austrian Social Democratic women, the highpoint

94 Bericht an die Zweite Internationale Konferenz sozialistischer Frauen zu Copenhagen am 26. und 27. August 1910, ed. by Clara Zetkin (Stuttgart: Verlag und Druck von Paul Singer, 1910), p. 8; Popp, We g , p. 100. 95 Der Frauentaq (Vienna: Verlag des Frauenreichs- komitees, 1911), pp. 2-6; Protokoll der fünften Frauen­ reichskonf erenz, p. 286; Frauentaq, 1914, pp. 2-7; "Der Frauentaq," A Z ,. March 9, 1914, p. 2. 112 of their international activity was to come in August, 1914, when they would play host to the third International

Socialist Women's Conference in Vienna. But the First

World War intervened, and the conference was cancelled at the last minute.Nevertheless, it may be said that the

Austrian women were stimulated by their international involve­ ment and the feelings of class solidarity it fostered. In particular, their commitment to suffrage was strengthened.

Whether the activities of the international women's con­ ferences and International Women's Days induced the Austrian government to view the women's movement and the suffrage issue with greater favor, however, is problematical at best.

To a lesser extent, the fact that the competitors of the Social Democratic women's movement took it more seriously and criticized it more extensively during the years from

1907 to 1914 may also be taken as a sign of its emerging presence among the reformist groups in Austria. The Social

Democratic women's movement was not, of course, the only movement of its type in Austria. During the closing decades of the nineteenth century the question of women's rights had become prominent in virtually every Western nation, with

96 Popp, Weq, p. 100. 113 women of all classes committing themselves to the struggle

for emancipation. In Austria there existed, in addition to the Social Democratic effort, a liberal middle-class and a

Christian Social (Catholic) movement.

For the most part, the liberal middle-class and the

Social Democratic women's movements tended to deal with each other only in general terms, since they were not competing directly for the same constituencies. Liberal efforts were aimed at those ladies from professional- and commercial families who desired to escape from the home and gain access to higher education, business and the professions on an equal footing with men.^? The middle-class women, for their part, gave the impression of rather proper persons who were a bit too genteel to engage the Social Democrats in a direct confrontation. Their concerns were more lofty: the triumph of universal principles at home and peace among men abroad.

The liberal middle-class movement arose in the 1870's under the leadership of Marianne Hainisch. Like similar movements elsewhere, it drew upon the principles of great

97 Kancler, "üsterreichische Frauenbewegung," pp. 8-28. 114

liberals like John Stuart Mill and applied them to its own

local situation in the form of demands for suffrage, educa­

tional and economic opportunity, equal pay and improved

working conditions for women. By the early 1900's it had

recruited a membership totalling several thousand and enjoyed 98 extensive international contacts among the Western nations.

By this time as well, however, Austrian liberalism had been

in decline for twenty years. As a result the liberal

middle-class women found little acceptance among Austrians

as a whole and thus their efforts contributed but little to

the extension of women's rights.

The Christian Social women's movement promised even

less. From its very beginnings during the 1900's, it had

accepted as a basic premise the God-given roles of wife and

mother as being desirable and natural for women. Ideally,

it believed, women belonged at home for the good of society

and themselves. The Christian Socials recognized, however,

that the increasing entry of women into the workforce was prompted by necessity and could not be avoided. Accordingly,

they came out for improved working conditions for women,

temporary social benefits, and the ultimate raising of

98 Ibid., pp. 8-28. 115 wages to the point where they were sufficient for the entire family.Christian Socialism, in sum, while concerning itself with shortrun gains for women, had as its ultimate goal the return of the workingwoman to the home and the continued dominance of the male.

The First World War subsequently moderated this stance, while in no way contributing to the viability of the move­ ment as a real force for reform insofar as women were con­ cerned. As thousands of women flocked into the factories to assume responsibility for domestic war production,

Christian Social women's leaders began to demand equal treatment for women on the job and better working conditions and wages. But in the main they were caught up in the burgeoning demand for woman s u f f r a g e . ^^0 in November, 1918 the cleric Ignaz Seipel established the Christian Social position on woman suffrage. The female vote, he wrote, would shortly become a reality in Austria. He advised his

Christian Social colleagues to accept that fact, for in the long run it would work to their advantage. In the new

Austria matters would be decided democratically and the votes

99lbid., pp. 119-20.

^°°Ibid., pp. 128-33. 116 of women, among whom Church influence remained strong, could be used to strengthen the Catholic presence in the country.Since the Catholic Weltanschauung emphasized traditional roles for women and their ultimate return to the home in particular, woman suffrage in the Christian Social conception would have the effect of retarding emancipation as conceived by Social Democratic women.

Given the basic differences with respect to the woman question, relations between the Social Democratic and

Christian Social women's movements were always marked by hostility. Polemics and epithets marked the interchange between them. From pulpits and speakers’ platforms priests and Christian Social spokesmen accused the Social Democrats of atheism, immorality and of wanting to undermine the 102 social fabric through the destruction of the family. In reply, the Social Democrats tried to disassociate the questions of religion and clericalism. Religion, they main­ tained, was a private matter between man and his conscience

^^^Rudolf Neck, ed., Osterreich im Jahre 1918; Berichte und Dokumente (Vienna: Verlag für Geschichte und Politik, 1963), p. 171.

“Sozialdemokratie und Religion," AnZ, October 1, 1912, p. 1. 117 and not something with which the State should be concerned.

On these grounds they did not oppose it. But clericalism, they believed, perpetuated the gap between rich and poor by poisoning the minds of the young in the schools, at home and in the Church. While the high clergy lived in splendor, the downtrodden continued pathetically to seek comfort in the promise of an afterlife.

Many of the most virulent anti-clerical attacks came from Social Democratic women. They felt a continuing need to prove themselves in the face of the suspicions of the rank and file Party members, many of whom believed that working-class women remained dangerously susceptible to the influence of the Church.Thus they shared in sowing the seeds of deep distrust between the Social Democrats and the

Christian Socials, which had tragic long-range consequences for Austrian society and for their own inpacc as an effective force for reform. As long as the Habsburgs stayed

"Eucharistie," AnZ, September 17, 1912, p. 1; Adelheid Popp, Die Arbeiterin im Kamof urns Dasein (Vienna: Verlag der Wiener Volksbuchhandlung, 1911), p. 17.

104 Frauenwahlrecht und Arbeiterinner.schutz, p. 29; "Unsere nSchsten Aufgaben," AnZ, p. 1. 118 on the throne and provided the basic governing impulse for the country, the split between the Social Democrats and the

Christian Socials remained serious but tolerable. After the collapse of the Monarchy, however, when these two groups came to vie for dominance in Austria, the impos­ sibility of permanent cooperation between the two helped to tear society apart and make cooperative government impossible after 1920. CHAPTER IV

THE IMPACT OF THE FIRST WORLD WAR: TEMPORARY DISRUPTIONS AND UNDERLYING CONTINUITY

By 1914 the Social Democratic women's movement in Austria had reached maturity, as expressed in the pre-war confir­ mation that suffrage was the key to women's emancipation.

It is now appropriate to ask whether some realization that the movement had shortcomings occurred to the movement's leaders as it has to the historian. Given their consistent inability to overcome the traditional prejudices of the average workingmen and women, would it not be proper to assume that the movement's leaders had probably begun to doubt their mission by 1914? Did they begin to question the validity of the socialist theory of women's emanci­ pation and the efficacy of suffrage as a lever of social change? The answer to these questions is in fact a definite "no," since a thorough review of the Social Demo­ cratic women's literature of the period reveals a contin­ uing belief in the approach already accepted.

But how much of what was written and said by these women was rhetoric designed for public consumption and how

119 120 much was actually believed by them? This question is particularly germane since the claims of the women's move­ ment and the realities of Austrian society are in definite conflict. The existence of this conflict might in turn cause the observer to come down on the side of rhetoric, but such a conclusion would be erroneous in this case.

Rather, che Social Democratic women continued to be true believers long after one might have expected them to have lost faich in their theory and in the powers of suffrage.

At least three reasons for their persistance are evident. To begin with there was, conceptually, no alter­ native for them. The Austrian Socialists inherited Marxist theory in its completed form and independent speculation was discouraged. Assuming a prior acceptance of Marx, it was difficult to fault Bebel on his analysis of economic development and its effect on the position of women.

Secondly, one must consider the Social Democrats' role in Austrian political life. Simply put, the Social Democrats enjoyed the advantage of being out of power. They could afford to operate outside the constraints of reality. In this context theory and supposition went unchallenged until they collided with society. Therefore belief and hope persisted in the women's movement until this confrontation. 121 i.e., the "acid test," occurred.

But there is a third important reason which helps to explain why the women's movement clung to the theory and the quest for suffrage. This reason may be identified as the singular effect of»the First World War upon the Social

Democratic women's thinking. It is difficult to under­ estimate the impact of the war in this respect. To the

Social Democratic women it appeared to be the logical unfolding of the capitalist system during which those normal processes of economic development were highly accelerated.

Thus it seemed that the socialist theory of women's eman­ cipation was coming to fruition at a very rapid rate; a rate which suggested that emancipation was attainable in the foreseeable future. In keeping with international developments, the war also had the effect of adding still more weight to the suffrage campaign. As will be seen below, the participation of women in the war effort strengthened the conviction that they would soon obtain the vote. Had it not been for the war, in sum. Social Demo­ cratic women would in all probability have become pragmatic that much sooner. As it was the war deceived them, encour­ aging established beliefs and making the coming collision with social realities that much more painful. 122

It cannot be said that Austrian Social Democrats resisted the outbreak of war in July, 1914 with strikes and a collective refusal to serve as, in theory at least, members of the Second International were supposed to do.

On the contrary, they interpreted it as a conflict worthy of their support, in which they would defend themselves against autocratic Russia. As Victor Adler put it:

Today we are faced. . . with the question whether the Russian armies will march into Brünn, Budapest or Vienna. In such a situ­ ation I cannot investigate whether a Russian victory might be favorable for the fight to liberate Russian workers. If I feel the knife at my throat, I have first of all to push the knife away.^

The leaders of the women's movement concurred with this view. The Frauenreichskomittee dutifully defended Austrian participation in the war on Adler's grounds, and declared itself powerless in the face of events over which it had no 2 control or responsibility. In retrospect it is difficult to see how the women could have done otherwise, given the

^Quoted in Arthur J. May, The Passing of the Hapsburg Monarchy, 1914-1918 (2 vols.; Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1956), I, 288. 2 "Arbeiterfrauen, Arbeiterinnen und ParteigenossinnenI" AnZ, August 11, 1914, p. 1. 123

Party's position. From the beginning, however, the Frau- enreichskomitee feared the sufferings which the war would bring more openly than did the Party. Within a few weeks after hostilities began it became evident that their fears were justified. A period of genuine deprivation for the working class began which was to last for the duration of the war and which grew in intensity as the fighting dragged on. In order to fully understand the impact of the war upon the women's movement, it is necessary to first discuss its effect upon the movement's constituency, the working- women themselves.

From the outset workingwomen suffered grievously in the war. Their immediate problem was one of unemployment.

During the early months of 1914 approximately 900,000 women were employed in the industries of the Austrian half of the Monarchy. Of this group the greatest single concen­ tration occurred in the textile and clothing industry, where some 604,000, or 2/3 of the total, had found work.^ What happened in this industry is symptomatic of the plight of women workers throughout the economy, as the Monarchy went

3 Gertraud Wolf, Der Frauenerwerb in den Hauptkultur- staaten (Munich: Verlagsbuchhandlung Oskar Beck, 1916), p p . 51, 53. 124 over to wartime production. Because of monetary and com­ mercial disruptions induced by the war, the pessimism of the employers and the sudden demand for war-related items,^ those factories not directly concerned with the production of uniforms of other military necessities began to lay off their employees in large numbers. Although wartime employ­ ment statistics are sketchy, some idea of the impact of these layoffs upon textile workers and the proletariat in general can be obtained by looking at the figures which the Union of Textile Workers of Austria (Union der Textil- arbeiter Osterreichs) collected on its members. In July,

1914 there existed some 718 cases of unemployment among the membership of approximately 41,000, or 1.7%, unemployed.

Within one month, unemployment had climbed to 8,363 cases, or 21.2% of the total. in spite of government attempts to deal with the problem, men and women whose jobs did not relate to war continued to be discharged throughout the

4 Emmanuel Adler, "Das Arbeitsrecht im Kriege," Die Reqelunq der Arbeiterverhâltnisse im Kriege, ed. by Ferdinand Hanusch, Wirtschafts-und Sozialgeschichte des Weltkrieges, ed. by James T. Shotwell, Qsterreichische und Ungarische Serie (Vienna: Verlag Holder-Pichler- Tempsky, A.G., 1927), p. 19.

^Ernst Hübel, "Die ArbeitsverhSltnisse in der Textil- industrie," Reqelunq, p. 271. 125 remaining months of 1914.^ While the surplus men were fre­ quently absorbed into the army, no such alternative existed for women.

With the coming of the new year, however, the initial pattern of unemployment began to be reversed, as the short war which many had anticipated became an extended struggle of attrition. This extension of the conflict had at least two significant effects on the position of working women in Austria. In the first place, as ever greater numbers of ablebodied men were drawn into the fighting, the need for their replacements continued to grow throughout 1915. At first the government and employers sought to fill the gaps on the work force with older men and invalids, but it quickly became apparent that these expedients could not meet the growing demand for labor. Accordingly, employers began to hire women in ever increasing numbers for jobs formerly held by men. Their initial reluctance to do so was overcome in part by the second major ramification of the war with respect to the employment of women. As it became clear that the struggle would be one of attrition, a total war mentality began to take root among the employers and the

^Emmy Freundlich, "Die Wirtschaftskrise und der Krieg," AnZ, September 22, 1914, p. 2. 126 government in Austria; a mentality which demanded that every 7 resource of the country be utilized against the enemy.

Nowhere were the changing patterns of employment clearer than in the metals industry. Throughout 1915, in this most vital war-related industry, women assumed the heavy work formerly done by men at forges, presses and lathes. In many cases, due to extended working hours and constantly increas­ ing demands for production, their output of light and heavy weapons, bombs, and shells exceeded that formerly achieved by men. But heavy work was not the only area in which women excelled. Surprised employers also found that women could often do precision work with a greater degree of accuracy than men. In all, the total number of women employed in the metals industry increased from 15,380 at the close of

1914 to 20,756 one year later. During the same period the total number of male workers climbed from 53,294 to 57,097.

7 Bericht der k.k. Gewerbe-Inspektoren über ihre Amtstatiqkeit im Jahre 1915 (Vienna: Druck und Verlag der k.k. Hof-und Staatsdruckerei, 1916), p. IXII; "Die Industrialisierung der Frau," hZ, December 11, 1915, p. 6. 8 Këthe Leichter, Frauenarbeit und Arbeiterinnenschutz in Osterreich (Vienna: Verlag Arbeit und Wirtschaft, 1927), p. 12; Popp, Weq, p. 116. 127

Thereafter the number of men employed declined markedly in the face of conscription, while that of women increased until

1918 when a shortage of raw materials forced the closing of g many factories.

But the metals industry was not the only area of the economy where women assumed a considerable measure of the burden of wartime production. On Austrian farms, for example, they continued to account for slightly more than half of the labor force, as they had prior to the war.^^

When the war came the government had allocated raw materials almost exclusively to the most efficient factories. The resulting decline in home industry forced more working women . into public employment, where they were used as traffic police, streetcar conductors, letter carriers, paperworkers, carpenters, painters and even miners.This trend toward widespread utilization of women culminated in a widely dis­ cussed government degree of December 10, 1915. By this decree the government frankly acknowledged its dependence

9 Viktor Stein, "Die Lage der ôsterreichischen Metall- arbeiter im Kriege," Regelung, p. 252.

^^May, Passing, p. 313. 11 Emmy Freundlich, industrielle Arbeit, p. 7. 128

on female labor and lauded women as the "soldiers of the

hinterland.

Thereafter, the number of women employed outside the

home continued to increase at an even faster rate until the

spring of 1918. Unfortunately, raw data on the number of women employed was not kept in Austria during the war. Trade

union membership statistics, while only representing a

fraction of those employed, nevertheless provide an indi­

cator of what was happening. From 1914 to 1918, the female membership of "free" (i.e. Social Democratic) trade unions more than doubled, rising from 30,250 in 1914 to 81,043.

This was an increase from 12.5% to 27.46% in the total

membership.Austria was certainly not alone in this

context, in that the other war-time belligerents were under­

going the same types of changes in employment patterns.

Direct conscription of women for the labor force never

had to be considered, since there were always more women

^^"Die Industrialisierung der Frau," p. 6. 13 Freundlich, industrielle Arbeit, p. 74.

^‘^Ibid ., pp. 9-11.

^^Arthur Marwick, The Deluge: British Society and the First World War (London: The Bodley Head, 1965), p. 89; Ursula von Gersdorff, Frauen im Kriegsdienst, 1914-1945 (Stuttgart: Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, 1969), p. 12. 129 willing to work than there were jobs available. From the very beginning, curing the early period of unemployment and beyond, necessity rather than patriotism drove the women out of their homes. A number of factors encouraged this: the loss of husbands' incomes; the virtual elimination of home industry; and the complete insufficiency of government support payments to soldiers' families in the face of galloping inflation.The severe impact of wartime inflation' is particularly important to these developments. From July,

1914 to June, 1915 the wholesale price index for Austrian cities increased more than 200%. Food and fuel prices were 17 especially hard hit. As may be expected, this pattern continued throughout the remaining two years of the war and was greatly exacerbated in turn by a severe shortage of foodstuffs. After 1916 the "food question" grew especially acute.

Desperate women, in sum, were grateful for any work and generally accepted it on unfavorable terms. As Emmy

Freundlich put it, they failed to "recognize the higher

Adelheid Popp, "Das Problem der Frauenarbeit, " AZ, January 9, 1916, p. 3; Freundlich, industrielle Arbeit, pp. 20-28. 17 Karl Pribram, Zur Entwicklung der Lebensmittelpreise in Krieqszeit (Tübingen: Verlag von J. C. 3. Mohr, 1917), p. 792. 130 social value of their work. Rather, they approached it with the same attitude of selflessness with which they regarded their domestic work."^® As a result, many women labored during the war under very poor working conditions and received very low pay. Continuing discrimination toward women in the workplace and the inevitable demands of a frenetic wartime economy were in part responsible for this situation. But official regulations governing the economy also contributed to it substantially, since they allowed those who managed the factories virtual autonomy over daily operations.

The heart of these regulations was the War Service Act

(Kriegsleistungsqesetz), which had been pushed through the

Reichsrat on September 26, 1912 during the Balkan crisis.

The Social Democrats, among others, had objected strenu­ ously to the bill because they feared its consequences for the working class.In effect, this law provided for the

"complete militarization of civil life, personal freedom and

^^Freundlich, industrielle Arbeit, p. 29.

^^Emmanuel Adler, Das Arbeitsrecht im Kriege," p. 43. 131

20 property." In the event of war, "... all measures neces­

sary for successfully carrying on the war, insofar as these 2 L needs cannot be met in the normal way" were authorized for

the duration of the conflict. All ablebodied men up to

fifty years of age not directly engaged in military service 22 were frozen in their jobs, where their obligations were,

"in all cases, limited by the capacity of the individual."^3

Women, however, could only be enrolled in the factories of

their own free will, through "freely contracted agreements"

(i.e., individual contracts without benefit of collective 24 bargaining).

Under the impetus of the Kriegsleistungsqesetz. supple­

mentary laws provided for a War Surveillance Office (Kriegs-

überwachungsamt) to investigate malingering. Actual

20 Joseph Redlich, Austrian War Government, Economic and Social History of the World War (abridged), ed. by James T. Shotwell (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1929), p. 58.

^^Ibid.. pp. 56-57. 22 Emmanuel Adler, "Das Arbeitsrecht im Kriege," p. 156. 23 Redlich, Austrian War Government, p. 57.

24 Emmanuel Adler, "Das Arbeitsrecht im Kriege," p. 156. 132

administration of the economy was vested in War Combines and

Centrals (Kriegsverbânde and Zentralle), which had specific

areas of responsibility, in conjunction with the War Ministry

(Krieqsministerium). Because each of these agencies were

tools of the General Staff, militarization of the home front

was assured and the civil government left without an 25 effective policymaking role. The consolidation of these

agencies into a centralized War Economic Office (Kriegs- wirtschaftsamt) in 1917 only intensified the problem. At

the local level militarization implied the separation of

factories into two general types: those administered directly by army officers and those whose civilian managers took orders from the military.

Even in normal times Habsburg military officers could

not be expected to have a highly developed social con­

sciousness or be sensitive to workers' grievances. Any such

tendencies were only exacerbated under the press of wartime

conditions. Because government war measures suspended or

25 Redlich, Austrian War Government, pp. 62, 121.

Richard Riedl, Die Industrie Osterreichs w&hrend des Krieges, Wirtschafts - und Sozialgeschichte des Weltkrieges, ed. by James T. Shotwell, Osterreichische und Ungarische Serie (Vienna: Verlag Hfllder-Pichler-Tempsky, A.G., 1932), p. 9. 133 rendered ineffective protective legislation as well, factory administrators under the aegis of the General Staff were able to literally push their workers to the limits of their capacity. The great majority of applications for extended shifts were granted by the authorities, who also lifted such proscriptions as the elimination of nightwork for women.

Whereas workingwomen had averaged a work week of fifty-three and one-half hours prior to the war, seventy-two hours was now the average.

In addition to long hours, substandard heating, light­ ing, ventilation, dining, sanitation and dormitory conditions also plagued the female work force. Factory inspectors' reports of the war years comment extensively on severe abuses of this type, which would not be permitted during peacetime 27 operations. Understandably, the incidence of malnutrition, tuberculosis and functional disorders among women was

27 See Bericht der k.k. Gewerbe-Inspektoren über ihre Amtstâtigkeit in den Jahren 1914, 1915 (Vienna: Druck und Verlag der k.k. Hof- und Staatsdruckerei, 1915-1915); Bericht der k.k. Gewerbe-Inspektoren über ihre AmtstStigkeit im Jahre (1916 (Vienna: Druck und Verlag der ôsterreichischen Staatsdruckerei, 1920); Bericht der Gewerbe-Inspektoren über ihre Amtstâtigkeit in den Jahren 1917, 1918 (Vienna: Druck und Verlag der Osterreichischen Staatsdruckerei, 1921-1922. 134

28 abnormally high in the war plants. Dangerous working conditions were also a problem, culminating in one instance in a tremendous explosion and fire at the Wôllersdorf 29 munitions works, which cut down the victims in rows. On

March 18, 1917, the government established Grievance Com­ missions (Beschwerdekommissionen) in response to a growing number of complaints about working conditions. Because these commissions had no independent authority of their own, however, they remained largely ineffectual. The same may be said of the Commission for Women's Work (Kommission für

Frauenarbeit), which was established in the Ministry of

Social Welfare (Ministerium für soziale Fürsorge) by the government at the beginning of 1918.

Without the protection of collective bargaining, work­ ingwomen were also forced to accept wages which could only sustain a very low standard of living in the inflated economy. The net effect of this in some cases was to widen

28 Siegfried Rosenfeld, "Die Gesundheitsverhâltnisse der industriellen Arbeiterschaft Osterreichs wâhrend des Krieges," Reqelunq, pp. 419-40; Freundlich, industrielle Arbeit, pp. 53-63. 29 Popp, W eq, pp. 106-08. 30 "Kaiserliche Verordnung vom 18. MSrz 1917," Die Gev-erkschaft, March 23, 1917, pp. 1-3. 135 still further the disparity in wages between men and women which had existed before the opening of hostilities. The disparity was evident in both public and private enterprise.

Women streetcar conductors in the city of Vienna, for example, were paid 3.60 Kronen per day, while men received

3.90 Kronen for doing the same work. On January 1, 1917, when cost of living raises were granted, women received an additional 11.60 Kronen per month with no dependents allow­ ance. As for men, the increase was to 35 Kronen per month 31 for the father of two. Similar situations could frequently be found in privately owned concerns as well, although in general munitions workers fared better in this respect than other workingwomen. In the private sector, however, all workers encountered significant disparities in wages paid by different companies.

In the face of so many hardships, it is to be expected that war-weariness, coupled with unprecedented feelings of frustration and alienation, set in among the workingwomen.

Never before had so many workingwomen indicated a desire to change their circumstances. In this sense a potential con­ stituency of unparalleled size and vigor and a unique

^^Freundlich, industrielle Arbeit, pp. 37-43. 136 opportunity were created for the Social Democratic women's movement. A long step toward emancipation could be taken if the movement were able to place itself at the head of the dissidents and direct their energies along lines which it had set. It is important, therefore, to fully understand the mentality with which the movement was dealing. Exactly how did workingwomen react to the war and their role in it?

What were the dimensions of the task which faced the Social

Democratic women?

in the beginning, as one would exp sc r, the war depoli­ ticized many of those who had been active in Social 32 Democratic organizations. Under the prevailing uncertainty and economic dislocations of the times, individuals were forced to concentrate their efforts on the securing of life's basic necessities. There was no time for political or organ­ izational activity in the face of the pressing need to insure an adequate income and food supply. Naturally, this same view was reflected among the large mass of workingwomen who had previously been inactive. Throughout 1915, most working-

32 From a high of 23,000 in 1913, membership in Social Democratic women's organizations shrank to 13,5 00 by the end of 1914, and continued to decline until a nadir was reached one year later. Protokoll der fünften Frauenreichskonferenz, p. 271; Popp, W eq, p. 103. 137 women concentrated on necessities and thought only of going back to their old jobs or of returning to their homes 33 following the war.

As the endless war dragged on and the misery intensified, however, attitudes began to change. For the first time in their lives, many workingwomen began to develop a genuine concern for issues outside themselves. In the main it may be said that their concern remained at the level of protest­ ing the war itself. The peace theme and the demand for an improvement in the food situation dominated the assemblies and demonstrations where workingwomen were present.

But this specific concern with the war was also pro­ ducing a vague self-awareness and self-esteem in the workingwomen. For the first time a sense of confidence and self-worth, borne of suffering and contribution to the war effort, began to pervade large numbers of them. Their experience was not unlike that of workingwomen elsewhere, for example those in England, as described by Arthur

Marwick:

In the business, medical and military functions which have been mentioned, the women concerned were very largely women of the middle and upper

3 3 Freundlich, industrielle Arbeit, p. 72; Adelheid Popp, "Wie organisieren wir die neuen Arbeiterinnen?" A Z , August 20, 1915, p. 2. 138

classes. Yet the major section of these women had been in pre-war years a depressed class, tied to the apron strings of their fathers or husbands. Now that they were earning their own account, they had economic independence; now that they were working away from, in some cases far from home, they had social independence. Above all, in their awareness that they were performing arduous and worthwhile tasks, were living through experiences once confined only to the most adventurous males, they gained a new self-consciousness and a new sense of status.

. . . the ultimate experience for working-class women was remarkably similar to that of the upper- class women, save the former were less well placed to defend the gains of the war period than were those of the classes above. Most important for women of the lower classes was the escape from ill-paid life-diminishing drudgery as dressmakers and domestic servants or low-grade industrial labour into work which gave both economic status and confidence in the performance of tasks once the preserve of skilled men. Even those women who were unable to free themselves from the swamps of the worst-paid trades were able to command at least1 a week as opposed to the 9s of pre-war d ays. . .

Obviously then, women of all ^^asses shared in a similar kind of emancipation.

Some idea of the extent to which Austrian workingwomen were influenced by such feelings may be gained by noting the

frequency and the intensity with which they engaged in anti­ war protest during the second half of the war. Police

reports of the period as well as those of the Social Democrats

themselves show that these protests were severe and could be

^^Marwick, The Deluge, pp. 93-94. 139

violent. Thus Professor Joseph Redlich's observation-that

the Austrian people demonstrated "amazing patience and self-

abnegation"^^ during the war would have to be modified in

this case.

Anti-war sentiment among Austrian workingwomen first

began to be manifested openly during the summer of 1915.

The intervention of Rumania on the side of the Allies in

August, which increased despondency and war-weariness in

Austria,provided the occasion. At a munitions plant in

Rômerstadt a ten-minute work stoppage to protest the war 37 occurred among the women workers. Thereafter police

reports describe a steadily growing number of similar inci­

dents. From 1915 on Social Democratic women found their

meetings increasingly well-attended. Frequently speakers

were interrupted by cries from the audience which denounced

35 Redlich, Austrian War Government, p. 112.

^^Frederick C. Penfield, United States Ambassador in Vienna, quoted in May, Passing, p. 310.

37 "Aufzeichnung um Ministerium des Innern über einen telefonischen Bericht der Sth. in Mühren über eine kurze Arbeitsniederlegung am 1. August in Rttmerstadt," Arbeiter- schaft und Staat im Ersten Weltkrieg, 1914-1918, ed. by Rudolf Neck (2 vols.; Vienna; Europa Verlag, 1964, 1968), I, 92. 140

38 the government and the war. clearly, the dissidents were identifying with the Social Democrats as the party of opposition, yet their concerns remained limited for the most part to the war itself or to war-related issues. During

1917 they were substantially energized by the Russian revo­ lutions of that year and the subsequent peace negotiations at Brest-Litovsk.

During the last two years of the war, police reports indicate, women were in the forefront of several disturbances at industrial centers or in cities. A January, 1917, report of a strike at Ternitz, for example, makes the observation that, "individual workers stated with indignation that the strike had gotten underway through the efforts of women workers and the impetuousness of young workers.An

August, 1917 report of a similar incident concludes, "It must be said that women took a leading role in uniting the rail-

"Unsere Unterhaltsbeitr&ge," AZ, November 28, 1915, p. 7; "Anzeichnung des Ministeriums des Innern über die gedrückte Stimmung der Bevôlkerung in Niederüsterreich und Erlass an der Sth. in Wien," Arbeiterschaft, I, 265. 39 "Das k.u.k. Kriegsministerium legt dem Ministerium des Innern einen Auszug aus dem Bericht des GM. v. Putz, Inspizierenden der militSrischen Leiter, über die Ausschreitungen in Ternitz um Jan. 1917 vor," Arbeiterschaft. I, 232. 141 road workers.Most importantly, the first incident of the major strike of January, 1918, which constituted the most serious domestic disturbance of the war, was apparently instigated in large part by women workers.In succeeding months reports from Vienna told of women looting grocery stores, overturning food wagons and smashing windows with 42 srones.

Thus it is readily apparent that the war made militants of many workingwomen. It now remained for the Social Demo­ cratic women's movement— it was the great challenge of the movement--to seize upon this popular fervor and guide it so that Social Democratic ends would be served. But what of the attitude of the workingmen? It was an article of faith with the women's movement that emancipation could only come in conjunction with a victory of the entire working class.

‘^^"Bericht der politischen Expositur Knittelfeld an die Sth. in Graz fiber die Bewegung unter den Eisenbahnern, " ibid., II, 24.

^^Sammelakt des Md. I. mit dem einlaufenden (meist tele­ fonischen) Meldungen fiber den grossen Streik in Nieder- tisterreich, " ibid., II, 232; Sth. PrMs. Wien (Dr. Troll) telefoniert am 15 J&nner 1918 um 10 Uhr machts," ibid., II, 233. A2 "Bericht der Polizeidirektion Wien an das Ministerium des Innern fiber den Fortgang der Streikbewegung, " ibid., II, 597; "Bericht der Polizeidirektion Wien an das Ministerium des Innern fiber die Ausbreitung des Streiks, " ibid., II, 612. 142

Since an enlightened male proletariat was an obvious pre­

requisite for. this, what effect was the war producing on the

mentality of the men?

In point of fact many workingmen came to accept women

more fully as a result of the war. As in the case of

general public opinion, a goodly amount of respect for women

resulted because of their contributions to the war effort.

By 1918 it was rather widely believed that the state should

compensate women with full citizenship, as they had indeed

earned a reputable place in society by virtue of their war

service. For the most part, however, the central reason for

the change in heart which some male workers experienced was

the demonstration of equal capabilities on the job by women

workers. An article in the Osterreichischer Metallarbeiter,

the organ of the metalworkers' union, expressed this idea;

It has taken the war to make people realize the working capacity of women. . . Whether this will be translated into reality in the daily life between the sexes remains to be seen. It is well-known that the backward, narrow-minded worker undervalues the women as a colleague, be it in a bank or in a factory. His limited brain restricts a woman's sphere of activity to the kitchen and the house. The thinking trade union member, however, accepts the woman as a colleague and protects her against exploitation.

^^"Das kommende Frauenaufgebot," Osterreichischer Metallarbeiter, December 30, 1915, p. 3. 143

The metalworkers, in fact, proved to be as good as their word. In an unprecedented display of solidarity in early

1917, better paid workers accepted less of a cost of living increase so that less fortunate workers, chiefly women, 44 would receive a greater raise.

To what extent did the attitude of the metalworkers represent that of the male working class in general? If one is to take the observations of Emmy Freundlich, the most perspicacious observer in the women's movement, at face value, a sizeable majority of the male workers did indeed accept and encourage their female counterparts.^^ Freund- lich's observations are supported in part by the fact that during the strike of January, 1918, the central workers' council passed a resolution which included a demand for woman suffrage by a margin of 308-2.^^

And yet it would be incorrect to assume that all workingmen were then willing to do the same. Definite resistance to women continued among a significant minority.

^^Ereundlich, industrielle Arbeit, p. 75. 45 Freundlich, industrielle Arbeit, pp. 64-72.

'^^Um Friede, Freiheit und Rechtl Per Jënneraufstand des innerdsterreichischen Proletariats (Vienna: Verlag der Wiener Volksbuchhandlung, 1918), p. 43. 144 perhaps even a majority, of male workers in the factories.

They had a powerful ally in the Trade Union Commission itself. In the summer of 1915, during an acrimonious dispute with Adelheid Popp, who questioned the sincerity of union efforts to organize workingwomen. Commission leader Anton

Hueber made light of the movement's own efforts in this area 47 and referred to workingwomen as "extrawurst."

A better understanding of the Trade Union Commission's attitude toward workingwomen can be obtained by examining the comment of its organ. Die Gewerkschaft, during the war.

Undoubtedly, many workers shared this viewpoint. At the onset of the war Die Gewerkschaft firmly opposed the idea of a large scale introduction of additional women into the factories. Four major reasons were given to justify this position: (1) it would not be "humanitarian," (2) women lacked experience, (3) it would add to the unemployment problem among workingmen, and (4) wives of soldiers received compensation from the government while unemployed men did 48 not. By mid-1915 the paper was willing to agree that the

47 Anton Hueber, "Die weiblichen Mitgleider in der Gewerkschaften," A2, August 23, 1915, p. 2.

^^"Frauenarbeit wShrend des Krieges," Die Gewerkschaft. August 19, 1914, p. 2. 145 introduction of more women into the factories was becoming a fact of life. It also conceded that this pattern would continue to some extent after the war. But Die Gewerk­ schaft took no comfort in that. Any such continuation, it concluded, would simply reflect the desire of greedy employers to hire more women at wages lower than those of men. Thus the fear of wage competition continued to be an integral 49 feature of the union mentality. Thereafter Die Gewerk­ schaft concerned itself primarily with the "undeniable dis­ advantages" of wage competition and the question of what would happen when returning veterans sought to reclaim their old jobs now held by women. Unlike the Osterrichischer

Metallarbeiter, which recommended the organization of both sexes in the likelihood of postwar conversion problems. Die

Gewerkschaft offered nothing in the way of concrete solutions on this point.

Thus it can be seen that workingmen were anything but unified on the woman question. The powerful self-centered

49 "Krieg und Frauenarbeit," ibid., February 23, 1915, p. 3; "Frauenarbeit," ibid., August 15, 1915, p. 1.

^*^"Die Frauen in der Wiener Grossindustrie, " ibid., May 2, 1915, p. 3; "Die Frauenarbeit nach dem Krieg," ibid., August 14, 1917, p. 4; J. R. Reumann, "Die Organisierung der Arbeiterinnen," Osterreichischer Metallarbeiter, September 23 1916, p. 4. 146 opposition of the Trade Union Commission to the movement's attempt to help with organizing could only exacerbate prole­ tarian resistance to the continued introduction of women into the factories. In this way, whether unintentionally or not, the actions of the Commission struck at what was, in the women's view, the very source of their emancipation.

Nevertheless, a considerable number of workingmen had been induced by the war to accept women as equals on the job and, to a lesser extent, in society. Whether their presence was strong enough to overcome the resistance of their colleagues, or whether they would maintain their positive convictions after the war, could not be assured, however.

The Social Democratic women, for their part, accepted from the very beginning the premise that the war would induce changes in Austrian society which would significantly hasten the coming of emancipation. As early as August 11,

1914 the official response of the Frauenreichskomitee to the opening of hostilities carried the statement that

...world history teaches that the results of war always bring great changes in the inner life of states and peoples. The war will create a new Austria. In order to be prepared 147

for this new fight, we women must stand together.51

Four weeks later Emmy Freundlich offered this prediction:

But straightaway it will be proven, that women can do more than people are now so often willing to entrust to them. State and society will have to change toward them; more and more they will become the bearers of official duties. , . and in that the changed position of society toward women's work will be expressed. Women can and must help, women are necessary for social and economic l i f e . 52

At the onset of the war, however, the most pressing

problems which occupied the bulk of the movement's energies

were directly related to the war. Questions concerning the

emancipation issue, and the theory and suffrage in

particular, did not begin to be discussed with regularity

until well into 1915. In the face of wholesale defections,

the preservation of local organizations within the movement

and the effort to maintain contact with individual members 5 3 were given top priority. The war would come to an end, it was declared, but socialism would remain. Over the course

51 "Arbeiterfrauen, Arbeiterinnen and Parteigenossinnen, " p. 1. 52 Emmy Freundlich, "Der Weltkrieg," AnZ, September 9, 1914, p. 4.

^^"Arbeiterfrauen,"p. 1. 148 of the next two years organizational regrouping, and later expansion, received as much attention as the authorities would allow. During the last two years of the war, the women's movement experienced a substantial rise in member­ ship. At the 1919 Party Day the figure for the total member­ ship of women's organizations was given as 69,918, in comparison with the 12,000+ which the movement had had at its nadir in 1915.^^ in large part, however, this dramatic increase in membership reflected war-weariness and disgust with those who had managed the war and was not the direct result of Social Democratic efforts.

Of necessity, the women's movement also involved itself early on with war-related social welfare issues. The wide latitudes allowed the employers and the military by the Krieqsleistungsgesetz had all but negated protective legislation for the workers. At the wartime Frauenreichs- konferenz of 1917 a collective resolution was passed which typified the specific demands of the movement in the welfare area: (1) reimposition of the eight hour day, (2) reimpos-

54 Protokoll des Parteitages im Jahre 1919: Die Verhandlungen der sozialdemokratischen Arbeiterpartei Deutschftsterreichs (Vienna: Verlag der Wiener Volksbuch- handlung, 1919), p. 70. 149 ition of the prohibition on nightwork for women, (3) limit­ ation of child labor to age sixteen and above, (4) free

Saturday afternoons, (5) better factory inspection and female factory inspectors, (5) improvement of unhealthy work conditions, (7) extension of time off with compensation for expectant mothers to a period from two weeks before the projected birth date to eight weeks after delivery, (8) state child care centers for working mothers and (9) the creation of a labor exchange to help the unemployed.^5

Although the women's movement, supported by the Party, consistently called upon the authorities to grant these measures in the name of all those who were serving their country, their efforts went largely unheeded. Even the attempt to equate welfare measures with the health of work­ ing mothers and their yet unborn children, in other words, with the future of the nation, failed for the most part.

During the later course of the war, after the Reichsrat had been reconvened. Social Democratic delegates only succeeded in winning passage of an extension of postnatal time off

55 Die nâchsten Aufqaben der sozialdemokratischen Frauen; Verhandlungen der VI. sozialdemokratischen Frauenreichskon- ferenz am 18. und 19. Oktober 1917 (Vienna: Verlag des Frauenreichskomitees, 1917), p. 22. 150 with compensation from four to six weeks. The labor of children under sixteen in the factories was eliminated as well.56

The call for equal pay for equal work and the complicated inflation issue were also pushed regularly by Social Demo­ cratic women during the war. In the former case the movement met with no success. With respect to inflation, the govern­ ment did cause cost of living raises to be granted and also increased its maintenance payments on several occasions to certain classes of recipients. In neither instance, how­ ever, were the increases substantial enough to offset the side effects of inflation.

An interesting dilemma related to social welfare work was created for the Social Democratic women with the appear­ ance of the combined "helping action" (Hilfsaktion) of the other women's movements. Immediately upon the outbreak of

55 Die Tatiqkeit des Klubs der deutschen sozialdemokrat­ ischen Abgeordneten im Osterreichischen Reichsrat, 30. Mai 1914 bis 16 Juli 1917 (Vienna: Verlag der Wiener Volksbuch- handlung, 1917), p. 41. The Austrian government, being hardpressed during the war, tended not to interfere with the activities of the Social Democratic women's movement. Interference, generally in the form of censorship, only came when statements made by the movement's leaders impugned the government or the war effort directly or, in its early days, when agitation moved into the streets. 151

war, liberal and Christian Social women began to organize,

with the blessing of the authorities, neighborhood centers

to help those most disadvantaged by the war. At these centers

jobs and welfare counseling was dispersed along with food and

child care. In some cases sewing centers were also organized

to turn out uniforms and other military necessities. Financ­

ing was provided in part by private donations and in part by government subsidy. The whole effort was directed from

a central office presided over by the wife of the mayor of 57 Vienna.

For the middle-class and Catholic women's organizations, as well as for the charity-minded ladies' from the wealthy families, the "helping action" represented a fine opportunity to demonstrate patriotism and join in the common war effort.

The Social Democrats refused to cooperate initially on grounds of class solidarity and because they believed that the middle-class women could do little to mitigate the lot of the working class. Very quickly their position became untenable, however, since they could not afford to damage their credibility with the working class by having middle- class women helping the poor while they remained aloof.

57 Die Frauen-Hilfsaktion Wien (Vienna: Verlag Gerlach und Werdlung, 1915), pp. 1-39. 152

In the final days of 1914 they joined the "helping action," and justified their reversal on the grounds that their presence would stimulate a greater commitment to social welfare on the part of the government and would also demon­ strate the political maturity of the Social Democratic movement.

The movement's involvement with such war-related issues continued for the duration of the conflict. Patterns had been set in the first months of the war, and any changes thereafter only represented modifications of one or more activities. Of greater and more lasting significance was the effect of the war upon the Social Democratic conception of historical progression relative to the coming of emanci­ pation. Like many socialists, those in the women's movement viewed the war as an extension of the capitalist order— an extension in which those normal processes of capitalist development were highly accelerated. Thus, it could be concluded, capitalism was moving toward its destruction at a much more rapid rate as a result of the war, and therefore emancipation could be expected to be achieved much sooner than anyone had believed.^9

^^"Die Frauenhilfskomitee," AnZ, January 5, 1915, p. 3.

^^Die nâchsten Aufqaben, p. 32. 15 3

As the Social Democratic women looked about them, they saw much evidence to support the contention that the war was bringing about at a very rapid rate those changes envisioned by Bebel. To begin with, wartime necessity had significantly accelerated the entry of women into the factory. And there were good grounds to believe that a large number of them would stay on the job after the war, given the casulty rates in the fighting and the effects of inflation. Many Social

Democratic women also convinced themselves that the war experience was creating among both sexes of the working class the kind of socialist awareness which was a prerequisite for emancipation. Those workingwomen who could no longer depend on their husbands or fathers for support, and that included almost all of those in factories, had achieved a degree of economic independence heretofore unequalled. With this new economic independence came a sense of greater self-esteem, movement leaders believed, which was being expressed initially as a willingness to involve oneself politically in protesting the war. The movement's task was to help convert simple anti-war feelings into socialist awareness.

^^Popp, Erinnerungen, pp. 94-95; "Die Frauenmobil- isierung," AZ, December 12, 1915; p. 12; Emmy Freundlich, "Mütter," AZ , August 27, 1916, p. 2. 154

Taking their cue from the metalworkers, the Social

Democrats also believed that the war was allowing the work- ingwoman to prove her equality in the workplace and thus to overcome the prejudice of men. In this belief was repre­ sented the easy acceptance of the metalworkers and others of like mind as the vanguard of the future, and the concomitant conclusion that those who expressed a fear of wage compet­ ition and prejudice toward women were receding into the back­ ground.^^ As an article in the Arbeiterinnen-Zeitung stated, it was "unthinkable" that those work abilities which women had demonstrated would be disregarded after the war.^^

So great, it was thought, was the social impact of the war that the existing marriage form, the bulwark of sub­ jugation, was also being altered. In November, 1915

Adelheid Popp confidently claimed that, "The words, 'the woman belongs at home,, the mother of the children,' have been negated in the last six months.Therese Schlesinger followed immediately with the statement that continuation of

^^Ibid

^^"Frauenarbeit und Mütterschutz, " AnZ, February 25, 1916, p. 2.

^^Adelheid Popp, "Die Arbeiterinnen nach dem Kriege," AnZ, November 24, 1915, p. 1. 155 the "national household" would be "completely impossible" after the war.^^ Thus the war became a great lever of social change for the Social Democratic women. By seeming to con­ firm the socialist theory of women's emancipation and by holding out the promise of early emancipation, the war strengthened the commitment of the movement to traditional conceptions and methodology. And it may be said that all of the movement's leaders shared these beliefs to one degree or another.

The examples one might offer are many. Therese

Schlesinger, writing in Der Kampf (1915), stated that, "The study of history shows that without doubt goals are achieved more quickly with the help of war than would be possible during peacetime.Emmy Freundlich, speaking at the

Frauenreichskonferenz (1917), maintained "The war has greatly increased the tempo of the development of capitalist society. Women are now involved in earning a living in all areas and have today become the foundation of the entire

^“^Therese Schlesinger, "Krieg und Einzelhaushalt, " Der Kampf, VIII (November-December, 1915), 411. 65 Therese Schlesinger, "Zur Industrialisierung der Frauen," Der Kampf, IX (January, 1915), 30. 156

6 6 economy." Ghostwritten articles on workingwomen for the

Arbeiter-Zeitunq composed by the movement's leaders, as was

common, revealed a similar view. Two such articles appeared

in 1915 and 1916:

After Bebel's book it could be seen for the first time that the social position of women from early times to the present has undergone a substantial development. Today a powerful transformation, whose end can only be the full economic and political equality of the women, is again underway.^7

Unless all signs deceive us, the period following the war will be a decisive one for women. . . In spite of the workingwoman's economic position, society retained its old system of rights; there was a growing gap between new reality and old rights. Who knows how long this would have lasted if it had not been for the w a r . 6 8

And finally, Klara Mautner, a middle-class woman writing in the Arbeiter-Zeitunq, made a statement which Social Demo­ cratic women might only differ with in degree,

. . . the war signifies a turning point in the history of women. It has concluded the debate over the "natural profession" of women. . . the

GGpie nâchsten Aufqaben, p. 23.

^^"Die Frauenmobilisierung," p. 2. 68 "Der Tag der Frauen," AZ, December 12, 1916, p. 3. 157

epoch of the woman as homemaker, wife and mother is definitely at an end.G^

One cannot blame the Social Democratic women too much if, after some twenty-five years of effort, they tended to embrace as truth only those factors which supported their case. Certainly there were grounds to believe that, in a superficial sense at least, the war had confirmed aspects of Bebel's analysis and had also advanced the social position of workingwomen. But in assuming that the impact of the war on women would be deep-seated and permanent, the women in the movement only compounded their earlier errors with respect to Austrian society and proletarian mentality. No guarantees could be given on a number of fundamental points: that the influx of women into the factory would continue at a substantial rate, that women would retain what economic independence they had won in the war, that theY would maintain any political interest they had, that such interest could be transformed into socialist awareness, that a sizeable majority of male workers were receptive to women and, finally, that the proletariat would achieve a dominant influence in Austrian society.

69 Klara Mautner, "Die Frau von morgen," AZ, March 25, 1916, p. 8. 158

Undoubtedly, the tendency of the women's movement to

overestimate the significance of the war's effect on their

position was stimulated by the definite progress toward

suffrage which was made at the same time. By undermining

opposition to woman suffrage among society in general and the

workingmen in particular, the war acted as a confirmation of

previous viewpoints and methods in a second major way. With

respect to the issue of the vote, developments in Austria

paralleled those in other nations. As women came to play

an increasingly vital role in the war effort, public opinion

came to believe that they should be rewarded for their

sacrifices with full citizenship and suffrage in particular.

They had demonstrated their political maturity and fitness

to participate in the affairs of state by answering the call

just as the troops had done. They were indeed "soldiers of

the hinterland.

This new appreciation of women was probably best

expressed in a lead editorial of the moderate Neue Freie

Presse on November 23, 1918:

70 "Die Kundgebung der Frauen," AZ, May 8, 1917, p. 5. Adelheid Popp, "An die Frauen für den Krieg leisten," AZ, February 22, 1917, p. 5. 159

. . . the truth is, that opposition. . . ljc.o woman suffrage/. . . has been disarmed in recent years by the accomplishments of women. If they had not replaced men in the fields. . ., at the writing table and in the factories, a grinding crisis would have come upon us. Shouldn't the many hundreds of thousands of women who made these sacrifices, and who still stand at their jobs every day from early morning until evening, be voters? . . . These venerable people, before whom all men bow, these heroines. . . shouldn't they be afforded access to the ballot box and public opportuni­ ties. . . The conscience turns away from a denial of it.

The Social Democratic women's movement, of course,

tried to promote such feelings to the greatest extent possi­ ble. Among workers of both sexes, the impulse toward

democratization received a large boost from the Russian

revolutions of 1917. In this regard the Bolshevik position

on peace without annexations and the self-determination of

peoples found fertile soil in Austria. Toward the end of

the war, in probable anticipation of a breakthrough.

Social Democratic women began to emphasize that they would

settle ultimately for nothing less than full active and

passive suffrage for women at all levels of representation.72

^^"Der nâchste Wahlkampf; Neue Wâhler durch das Stimm- recht der Frau," Neue Freie Presse, November 23, 1918, p. 1.

72 Die nachsten Aufqaben, p. 29. Active suffrage is defined as the right of voting; passive suffrage as the right to stand for elective office. 150

When the Austrian government, in the midst of the January,

1918 strike, verbally agreed not to stand in the way of local attempts to secure the vote in district (Gemeinde) elections, the movement made it plain that it considered 71 this to be a first step only. Accompanying the basic push for active and passive suffrage was the allied demand for access to all public agencies and positions of political responsibility.

In all of these political demands the movement received the backing of the Party leadership. The continuing rela­ tionship of the movement and the Party during the war is worth noting in itself because it points out, perhaps more clearly than ever before, the conformist character of the women's movement. In the face of certain pressures to the contrary, which were raised by certain issues that will be discussed below, the movement on the whole remained true to the official Party led by Victor Adler-

73 In fact the government did nothing. "Bericht der Polizeidirektion Wien an das Ministerium des Innern über die sozialdemokratische Landeskonferenz," Arbeiterschaft, II, 185; "Das Frauenwahlrecht in der Gemeinde," AnZ, August 23, 1918, p. 1.

'^^Krieq und Absolutismus : Friede und Recht--Zwei Parla- mentsreden von Karl Seitz und Karl Renner in der Budgetdebatte des dsterreichischen Abgeordnetenhauses vom 14. und 16. Juni 1917 (Vienna: Verlag der Wiener Volksbuchhandlung, 1917), p. 25. 161

The clearest manifestation of this pattern occurred

in conjunction with the so-called "problem of the Left."

Because of the duration and the intensity of the war, a highly motivated group of pacifists on the Left came to

openly oppose the main Party's support of the war and co­ operation with the Austrian government. They viewed the

Party's "hurrah socialism" as a sell-out of the principles of the Second International and, together with likeminded dissidents in other belligerent countries, sought to rein- vigorate the international socialist movement as a counter to 75 the war. For the first time since Victor Adler had recon­ stituted Austrian Social Democracy in the late 1880's, the leaders of the Party were subjected to open and sustained criticism. Ironically, at the head of the Left was Adler's own son Friedrich.

As the war dragged on the Left's position appealed to a growing minority within the women's movement and to most of the leadership core. In time Gabriele Proft and Therese

Schlesinger openly joined with the dissidents, with Emmy

Freundlich frequently in agreement. It was entirely symptomatic of Austrian Social Democracy and the women's

75 Brugel, Usterreichischen Sozialdemokratie, IV, 227-60. 162 movement, however, that the dissidents made no attempt to break with the Party. And the influence of Adelheid Popp was such that she was able to keep the official women's movement in firm agreement with the Party. Although Popp herself had misgivings about the Party's position on the war, class solidarity in her view precluded all other con­ siderations. Thus she refused to print reports of the split in the German Social Democratic Party in the Arbeiterinnen-

Zeitung, despite severe criticism on this point.

The first important defeat of the dissident elements in the movement occurred in March, 1915. Under the leader­ ship of Clara Zetkin, the international women's Left met at

Bern, Switzerland to discredit those patriotic socialists who supported the war effort in their respective countries, and to build a base for an international peace drive. This women's initiative preceded considerable similar efforts by the main body of the international Left, which met at the

Swiss villages of Zimmerwald (September, 1915) and Kienthal

(April, 1916). More than once Zetkin urged the Austrians to attend, and her personal emissary journeyed to Vienna

^^"Die Verhandlungen der Frauenreichskonferenz," AnZ, November 27, 1917, p. 4. 163 with the same intent. After a lengthy and heated debate with­ in the movement, it was decided that no delegates from Austria would be sent. Victor Adler was on hand to help defeat the

Left if need be.^^

In conjunction with the debate over participation in the international Left, the question of an ultimate collective organization was renewed. Some of the dissidents, exclusive of those in the Frauenreichskomitee, did not like the idea of close and permanent union with the dominant Victor Adler wing of the Party. Again the debate was heated, and again the dissidents lost. In a characteristic postmortem, Adelheid

Popp described the preservation of the unity concept as the

"greatest achievement of the women comrades in the war.

Later in the war, at the Frauenreichskonferenz of 1917, a vigorous attempt by dissidents, not necessarily on the Left, to block a raising of monthly dues and subscription rates for the Arbeiterinnen-Zeitung was soundly defeated.^9

Like the Party itself, the women's movement adopted an anomalous position on the international question. While

^^Popp, Weq, pp. 122-23. 7p '°Ibid., p. 123. 79 Die nâchsten Aufqaben, pp. 2-6, 30-31. 164 rejecting the entreaties of'the Left, which represented the only socialists who were attempting to organize inter­ nationally, the movement continued to proclaim its support for the international principle. Clearly, Austrian parti­ cipation in international activities required the satisfaction of certain ideological and temperamental prerequisites. In this vein, the women's movement continued to observe

International Women's Days. Although the 1915 and 1916 observations occurred for the most part in name only, that of 1917 proved to be an impressive demonstration for peace and suffrage.80

The defeat of the Left dissidents on the international question presaged their repudiation on two other occasions when the women's movement was at least peripherally involved. In October, 1917 Austrian authorities finally allowed the Social Democrats to hold their first Party Day of the war. By this time several factors, including inten­ sified war-weariness, Friedrich Adler's assassination of the

Austrian Prime Minister Count Karl Stürgkh and Adler's subsequent "martyrdom," and the events in Russia had

80 "Zum Frauentag," AnZ, April 10, 1917, pp. 1-2. 155

strengthened the Left considerably. To the assembled

delegates Gabriele Proft read the "Declaration of the Left,"

which called upon the party to: (1) recognize the dissident

(Independent) Social Democratic Party in Germany as well as

the Majority Socialists, (2) work to the limit of its

ability for peace on the "Russian formula," i.e., without

annexations or indemnities, (3) repudiate wartime cooperation with the bourgeois parties, (4) support a resolution of the

nationality question in the Habsburg domains through a con­

stituent assembly of individual nations, and (5) support a 81 truly international Social Democratic Party in Austria.

After a heated debate which featured accusations of misguided "reformism" and complacency on the part of the

Party leadership, the conference nevertheless rejected points one, three, four and five of the Declaration in favor

of the Party's established stance on these issues. Only Q p point two was adopted. it can be assumed that the majority of the female delegates present voted with the Party in

each instance.

^^Verhandlungen des Parteitages der deutschen Sozial­ demokratie Osterreichs. . . 1917, pp. 113-17. 82 Brügel, ttsterreichischen Sozialdemokratie. IV, 317-23. 166

The next major setback of a dissident Left initiative took place during the great strike of January, 1918. Again the women's movement concurred. It should be noted that the opposition in this case was more radical and on different levels than before. It was centered in the workers' councils which appeared spontaneously during the strike and in the budding Communist factions, and therefore did not include many of those who had been prominent previously.

Once again the dissidents expressed dissatisfaction over the unaggressive moderation of the Party leadership and its tendency to acquiesce to government directives all too readily. From the beginning the Party leaders, who had been just as surprised as the authorities by the strike, had sought "to formulate, and to give solid, fruitful direction to the spontaneous action of the masses, in order 83 to protect the populace from failure and catastrophe."

In the name of such direction, the leadership convinced the workers to go back to their jobs, issued an empty declar­ ation calling for peace without annexations and indemnities, and accepted the Government's verbal promise of domestic

8 3 Um Friede, Freiheit und Rechtl, p. 12. 167

84 reforms (subsequently unfulfilled). In spite of a certain truth in their criticisms, the dissidents were ignored.

Meanwhile a lead editorial in the Arbeiterinnen-Zeitung com­ plimented the strikers on a "great success," above all in that "the workers' protest forced the Government to realize that it must decide to do things which were hitherto out of the question."85

For Adelheid Popp, the victory of the regular wings of the Party and the women's movement signified the preser­ vation of class solidarity, the "greatest achievement of the war." But the victory--of those who remained committed to traditional views--also reemphasized the fact that the move­ ment would continue to rely uncritically on the socialist theory of women's emancipation and the power of the vote.

Confident and unquestioning, the moderates allowed themselves to believe that history had carried them along to the point where emancipation was possible. The postwar period would indeed be "a decisive one for women. a "powerful trans-

^^Osterreich 1918, p. 12.

"Der Massenaufstand der Arbeiter und Arbeiterinnen!" AnZ, January 29, 1918, p. 2.

^^"Die Tag der Frauen," p., 3. 168 formation" was underway, "whose end can only be the full 87 economic and political equality of women."

On October 21, 1918, with the Monarchy collapsing,

German Austrian deputies of the Reichsrat voted to establish

go an independent Austria on the basis of universal suffrage.

And the Social Democrats, for their part, were in the ascendancy. Within the women's movement, these developments were interpreted in part as a sign that the socialist aware­ ness created by the war had produced a revolutionary situation in which the vote could be used to liberate women.

Writing in Der Kampf, Adelheid Popp described the coming revolution in terms which signified the triumphant inter­ action of theory and suffrage:

The hour has come. . . we can cherish the hope that, through the entry of women into political life, and through their cooperation in legis­ lation, needs will be eliminated which now exist and which press especially hard on women. . . The machine has destroyed the earlier ideal of feminity. It has created the econom­ ically productive woman. . . The sufferings of the war have sharpened the mintal capability of of women and awakened and s ■ lengthened their own

87 "Die Frauenmobilisierung," p. 2.

88 Macartney, Habsburg Empire, p. 832. 169

political interest. . . The great time has now begun, in which the word of the women will be heard.89

89 Adelheid Popp, "Die Frau in neuen Staat," Der Kampf. XI (November, 1918), 731-32. CHAPTER V

THE AUSTRIAN "REVOLUTION," 1918-1920

If those’in the women's movement chose to believe that

a genuine social revolution was occurring, they did so with

some reason. In 1918 they and other Austrians experienced

an upheaval unparalleled in modern Austrian history. With

the conclusion of the fighting the centuries-old Habsburg

Monarchy collapsed and a number of independent successor

states rose to take its place in Central Europe. In Austria itself the efforts of Emperor Charles to preserve his realm came increasingly to naught and on November 11, 1918 he was

finally induced to "renounce any participation in the busi­ ness of State.

The democratization of Austrian life and the rise of the Social Democrats to power accompanied the destruction of the Monarchy. On October 21, with the final collapse of the

Monarchy underway, the German-Austrian delegates of the old imperial Reichsrat met at the Social Democrats' suggestion

^Macartney, Habsburg Empire, p. 833,

170 171

as a Provisional National Assembly to consider the fate of

rump Austria. Those attending heard Victor Adler propose

that a German-Austrian state be created on the principle of

national self-determination. Ultimately, he said, this

state would enter into a Danubian federation with its

neighbors or would be joined by Anschluss to a greater

Germany. In the meantime a Constituent National Assembly

would be elected on the basis of universal, equal and direct

suffrage, in order that a fully democratic constitution 2 might be written.

The situation was such that the Christian Socials, Pan-

Germans and other parties present accepted the Social Demo­

cratic proposals unanimously. To the Christian Socials and

Pan-Germans the Anschluss idea offered the best possibility

of preserving Germanic domination in Central Europe. More­

over, sentiment for democratization, with which the Social

Democrats were most closely associated, was sweeping the

area. In many minds the Habsburg system had led to an overly

ambitious foreign policy and then to war. During the war itself support for democratization had been gathering in the

2 Stenoqraphische Protokolle über die Sitzungen der Provisorischen Nationalversammlung fdr Deutschdsterreich, 1918-1919 (Vienna: Verlag der üsterreichischen Staats- druckerei, 1918-1919), I, 5-9. German-Austria was the name first given to the new state by the proponents of Anchluss. 172 face of the revolutions in Russia and the pressures of Allied propaganda. After the collapse of Tsarist Russia the Allies had tended to portray the war as a conflict between two systems— the dictatorial, military monarchies of Central

Europe and the free democracies of the West.^

Most of the delegates at the Provisional National

Assembly had also come to believe that Austria's precarious economic position demanded democratization. The new state was a small, mountainous one of some 6h million people, nearly one-third of whom lived in the capital of Vienna.

Even in the best of times, foodstuffs had been brought in from the eastern provinces of the Monarchy to supply the needs of the city. But now the flow of these goods had been all but shut off by lack of supply and postwar terri­ torial disputes involving Austria and the successor states.

This basic problem was exacerbated in turn by the unwilling­ ness of Austrian peasants to release their foodstuffs for consumption in Vienna. With nowhere else to turn, Austria was dependent upon the victors for support, a fact which

3 Otto Bauer, The Austrian Revolution, trans. by H. J. Stenning (London: Leonard Parsons, 1925), p. 55; Mary Macdonald, The Republic of Austria, 1918-1934 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1946), pp. 2-3. 173 was underlined by an Allied blockade of the former Central

Powers in the immediate postwar months.^

It was widely believed in Vienna that the Allies would be more inclined to treat Austria favorably if she adhered to the Wilsonian principles of national self-determination and democratic government.^ Therefore a temporary consti­ tution for German-Austria which had been drawn up by the

Social Democrat Karl Renner was adopted by the Provisional

National Assembly at its second meeting on October 30.

Under the terms of this constitution the Provisional Assembly retained the ultimate legislative powerAn Executive

Council (Vollzuqsausschuss) selected by it would assume those powers formerly held by the Emperor and would also appoint state secretaries to carry on the actual business of state.^

The Social Democrats, for their part, shared the common feeling that the new state needed a broadbased national

^Strong, Austria (October 1918-March 1919), pp. 186- 213.

^G. D. H. Cole, A History of Socialist Thought, Vol. IV, Part I, Communism and Social Democracy, 1914-1931 (5 vols., London: Macmillan & Co., Ltd., 1956), pp. 225-26.

^Charles A. Gulick, Austria from Habsburg to Hitler (2 vols.; Berkeley: University of California Press, 1948), I, 57. 174 government at the hour of its birth. Otto Bauer, a leader of the Party, described the situation of Austria and her neighboring successor states in this respect:

The governments formed at this juncture were at first entirely without the customary material instruments, such as the machinery of adminis­ tration and a military force. Only through their moral authority could they assert themselves, exercise control over the administrative machinery of the fallen Monarcny, and create a national defence force. If the moral authority of the new governments was to be strong enough to grapple with these tasks. . . it was essential that the new governments should be composed of represen­ tatives of all sections of the people.^

Accordingly, the Social Democrats did not try to take advantage of their ascendancy by claiming a disproportionate share of high offices in the new government. Rather, a coalition was formed in which the three major parties divided responsibility. Of the Socialists in that coalition,

Renner became Chancellor and Karl Seitz was chosen as one of the three presidents of the Executive Council. At the ministerial level, Victor Adler was appointed Secretary of

Foreign Affairs and Ferdinand Hanusch became the Secretary of Social Welfare. Upon Adler's death on November 11 he was replaced at the Foreign Ministry by Otto Bauer. Social

7 Bauer, The Austrian Revolution, p. 54. 175

Democrats were also appointed, as Under Secretaries of the O Interior and War. This government continued until October

17, 1919, when it resigned after the signing of the Treaty of St. Germain between the Allies and Austria. A second coalition of essentially the same persons was then formed and lasted until July 7, 1920. By then cooperation among the three parties had become impossible, so it was agreed to form a "proportional" (Porporz) cabinet in which repre­ sentation was divided according to the number of delegates each party had in the Constituent Assembly. This arrange­ ment continued until the elections for the first National

Assembly were held on October 1, 1920.^

In November, 1918, the death of Victor Adler cleared the way for the final emergence of Otto Bauer and old ele­ ments of the wartime Left within the Party. With the collapse of the Monarchy and the creation of the successor states the Left had gained new credibility, since this in conjunction with Anschluss had become their solution for

^Ibid., p. 55.

9 Ibid., pp. 204-15. 176

the nationality question.Now they moved to the fore­

front of the Party, joined there by their hero Friedrich

Adler whom the revolution had released from prison.

The women’s movement, for its part, persisted in inter­

preting these many developments as the onset of a genuine

social revolution. As Therese Schlesinger put it:

It has become clear that the war, with all its horrors and its frightful conclusion, has signified nothing else than the collapse of a social order that has lived too long and the beginning of a new era.

Contributing to this view were the entry of Social Demo­

crats into the government, the apparent involvement of the masses in events of those years and most especially the

promise of truly democratic elections for the Constituent

Prior to the war Bauer had supported the Social Democratic contention that the Monarchy should be trans­ formed into a federation of autonomous nationalities. By 1918, however, he had become convinced that the dissolution of the Habsburg domains was imminent and that the counter­ revolutionary forces supporting the crown would seize upon the creation of such a federation as the means to maintain the Monarchy. He therefore came out instead for the inclusion of rump Austria in a greater Germany. Robert Kann, The Multinational Empire (2 vols.; New York: Columbia University Press, 1950), II, 170-71, 174-75.

^^Therese Schlesinger, Die Geistige Arbeiterin und der Sozialismus (Vienna: Verlag der Wiener Volksbuchhandlung, 1919), p. 2. 177

National Assembly. As Adelheid Popp wrote, "The vote is only a weapon with which the struggle for the complete transformation of society may be served. The hegemony of 12 the male sex. . . will be eliminated."

In the weeks preceding the elections the press was filled with speculation concerning the anticipated impact of the female vote. Since women constituted a clear majority of the voting population, many believed that they

1 o would play a decisive role in the outcome of the election.

Richard Weiskirchner, the Christian Social mayor of Vienna was quoted as saying, "The poor candidates must offer them­ selves to women. The fate of our country lies in large part in the hands of women." The liberal Neue Freie Presse echoed this latter sentiment.In many quarters it was believed that woman suffrage could only benefit the

12 Adelheid Popp, Frauen der Arbeit, schliesst euch an ! (Vienna: Verlag der Wiener Volksbuchhandlung, 1919), p. 2. 13 A lower life-expectancy for men, and the number of male war deaths in particular, gave women 5 2.16% of the voting population, or 1,853,892/3,554,242. In Vienna the gap was wider still, with women comprising 593,065/1,072,822 or a majority of 113,308. Robert Danneberg, Die politischen Parteien in Deutschflsterreich; die Wahlen im erster. Jahrzehnt der Republik (Vienna: Verlag der Wiener Volksbuchhandlung, 1927), p. 3; "Die Wëhlerinnen," Neue Freie Presse, January 28, 1919, p. 1.

^“^"Die WShlerinnen, " NFP, p. 1.

"Die nSchste Wahlkampf," p. 1. 178 clericals. As a party the Christian Socials shared this view, and they sought to have compulsory voting (Wahlpflicht) incorporated into the national election code. Although this attempt failed, they succeeded in having it adopted in the provinces of Tirol and Vorarlberg where they held their greatest majorities.

The Social Democratic women, for their part, approached the February election in a spirit of vindication. At long last their suffrage strategy would prove itself, and a socially aware working class and its allies would elect a parliament in which the groundwork for emancipation could be laid. As an indication of the importance whicn the women's movement placed on the election, a special news­ paper for women. Die WMhlerin. was created to "provide enlightenment" for workingwomen oefore they went to the 17 polls. The first issue of this paper revealed the continu­ ing belief in the efficacy of suffrage. In the family and at work, it was noted, women always had to take a back seat

^^"Wahlzwang fur die Frauen," AZ, December 8, 1918, p. 1; Danneberg, Die politischen Parteien, p. 3. 17 "Was will 'Die Wahlerin?’" Die Wëhlerin, December 5, 1918, p. 1. 179 to men. They were paid less, suffered legal injustices and had no rights in the marriage. Therefore, the author con­ cluded :

You nave to make use of your increased influence so that suffrage for all men and women will be achieved and through that the centuries-old curse of interdiction and illegality which afflicts the female sex will be lifted.18

In the election itself voter interest proved high. Of those women eligible to vote 84% cast ballots, compared with

87% for men. Yet because of their overall numerical strength, women retained their voting majority.The actual election results failed to give the Social Democrats a clear mandate, however. Of the 159 seats under contention, the

Social Democrats won 69 with 40.4% of the total vote, the

Christian Socials won 53 seats with 35.9% of the vote, and the Pan-Germans and other parties took the remaining 27 seats with 18.4% of the vote.^O

The reaction of the women's movement to these results is symptomatic, because it reveals a rather desperate attempt

^^"Frauen und MSdchen der Arbeiterklasse," Die WShlerin, December 5, 1918, p. 2.

^^Danneberg, Die politischen Parteien, p. 7. 20 Gulick, Habsburg to Hitler, I, 690. 180 to maintain established dogma in the face of countervailing reality. In the Assembly itself, the Social Democrats were dependent on the swing vote of middle-class Pan-Germans for a majority. On key social issues such a majority could be difficult to muster, given the widely divergent philosophies of these groups. Nevertheless, the women's movement jubi­ lantly interpreted the eleccion results as a great victory for Social Democracy and a testament to the maturity of women voters who had not fallen for the clerical line. Since the tabulation of the vote had not included a breakdown by sex, this latter conclusion seemed a safe one to make. In one sense, however, the joy of the women's movement at receiving as much as forty percent of the vote acknowledged the minor­ ity status of Social Democracy in Austria, which the women had never before been wont to do.

The self-congratulatory manner in which the women's movement regarded the election is revealed by the following quote from the Arbeiterinnen-Zeitung:

The first appearance of women at the ballot box has brought the Social Democratic Party a great, overwhelming victory. All fears regarding the women's vote have bee^n eliminated, they haven't voted black, . . . /clerical/ . . . but rather 181

Social Democratic. The agitation of Social Democracy among women has been very success­ ful. 21

Articles from the Arbeiter-Zeitung entitled "The Overwhelm­ ing Victory of the Social Democrats" and "The Victory of

Woman Suffrage" indicated that the Party leadership shared this view. Moreover, a dangerous tendency to take the women's vote for granted was also implied:

The key women's vote may be attributed to Social Democracy and the war. . . The woman has demon­ strated her unity with socialism; it is straight­ away a revolution of the woman. . . Socialism is unrestricted among w o m e n . 2 2

Women have selected socialism without exception from purely idealistic motives and have demon­ strated thereby, how great their strength of character is.23

And from Der Kampf the statement that, "... from the results of the election, it can be said that the fear of 24 women voting clerical en masse did not materialize."

^^"Wahl in die Nationalversammlung," AnZ, February 18, 1919, p. 1.

22 .. "Uberwaltigende Sieg der Sozialdemokraten," AZ, February 17, 1919, p. 1. 23 "Der Sieg des Frauenwahlrechts," AZ, February 24, 1919, p. 3. 24 Fritz Roger, "Einige Lehren aus der Statistik der Wahlen für die Nationalversammlung," Der Kampf, XII (September, 1919), 604. 182

In fact such claims were grossly overinflated. Insofar

as women were concerned, it became clear rather rapidly that

no overwhelming victory had been won. While socialist

awareness did seem to be gaining ground among a considerable

minority of the workingwomen, there was no guarantee that

such awareness would be sustained or be extended to a majority

of the female population. Nor for that matter was it clear

that a real appreciation of women's problems existed among

the members of the Government.

Social legislation under the coalition governments can in turn be divided into three general periods. These dis­

tinctions, as drawn originally by the Austrian economist Karl

Pribram,help to place the actions of the Government and the Constituent Assembly in proper perspective. The first period extended from the opening of the revolution to

March, 1919. During this time rapid action was required in order to make sure that demobilization procedures and the conversion to a peacetime economy did not degenerate into chaos. The second period ran from July, 1919, and covers the time when Soviet uictatorships in Hungary and Bavaria

25 Cited in Gulick, Habsburg to Hitler, I, 177. 183

and growing radicalism at home threatened the revolution with

Bolshevism. Unusual radical legislation was passed at this time in the belief that a vigorous social policy offered the best defense against domestic violence. Yet the reformers had also to contend with the attitudes of the Allies and a conservative peasantry. The third period extended from

August, 1919 to the final collapse of coalition government in

October, 1920. With the Bolshevist threat largely passed, this period saw retrenchment in the form of the withdrawal or dilution of the earlier radical measures.

In general it may be said that those Social Democrats in the Government failed to consider the special problems of women other than perfuctorily. Certainly they were under great pressures because of a variety of urgent problems, not the least of which was derived from Austria's dependence on

the victorious Allies. Nevertheless, the impression is created that a maximum effort to improve the position of women was never undertaken. Instead of a revolution, working­ women received the benefits of what one expert has called a

^^Ibid. 184

"mild social policy.

Specific government legislation on behalf of women was passed in all three periods under the coalitions. This legislation, however, merely had the effect of restoring pre­ war protections or extending them somewhat. On December 19,

1918 the longstanding Social Democratic goal of the eight hour day was achieved. Ferdinand Hanusch, whose ministry sponsored most of the social legislation, considered the measure to be an employment relief device, however. ° The women's movement scored a victory by having one of its pet provisions, i.e., free Saturday afternoons for women and children under sixteen, written into the bill. But this was widely considered to be an error, since it led to a drop in production by depriving skilled workers of apprenticed help during the final four 29 hours of the forty-eight hour work week.

On May 14, 1919 the prohibition of nightwork for women was reestablished. Meanwhile, several laws regulating female

27 Max Lederer, Grundriss des üsterreichischen Sozial- rechtes (Vienna: Druck und Verlag der üsterreichischen Staatsdruckerei, 1929), p. 30.

^^Ibid.. p. 33. 29 Gulick, Habsburg to Hitler, I, 197. 185

and child labor in certain industries were also passed and a

few female factory inspectors were appointed. With respect

to benefits for pregnant women and mothers who were working, 30 the wartime scale of December 3, 1917 was allowed to stand.

Considering the goals of the women's movement, this sum total

of legislation on behalf of workingwomen would seem to belie

the standard claim that their position was "essentially

improved" thereby.

The relative ineffectiveness of government measures with

respect to the woman question may be drawn even more clearly

by examining the indirect consequences of other legislation.

While such legislation was not openly discriminatory, in

the final analysis it made possible a diminution of the

women's position. In order to understand this, one must first

take note of the attitudes held by workingmen toward their

female counterparts during the postwar period.

Favorable sentiment in the factories evaporated over­

night with the return of peacetime and the granting of woman

suffrage. The women had been amply paid for their wartime

sacrifices with the vote, it was felt, and workingmen slid

^^Lederer, Grundriss, pp. 34-35, 402.

31 Ibid., p. 403. 186

32 rapidly back into their old patterns of prejudice. Among those veterans returning to reclaim their old jobs anti­ woman feelings were even stronger. These men viewed the war­

time women workers as usurpers or temporary replacements at best. On November 1, 1918 a typical incident occurred which illustrated this feeling. A delegation from the Provisional

Assembly went out to a barracks in Vienna to persuade the soldiers there to support the government. The soldiers assented, but demanded in return rapid demobilization and the 33 immediate cessation of all women's war work. One year later, the resentment had not yet abated. As reported in the

Arbeiterinnen-Zeitung, women were still being received "sus­ piciously, " "mistrustfully" and "hostilely" ("argwohnlich,"

"misstraulich," "feindselig”) in the factories by male workers. Usually the workingmen doubted the women's intelli­ gence and physical capabilities or feared wage competition, an exact refutation of certain wartime attitudes.

32 Olga Kroger, "Mann und Weib," AnZ, June 17, 1919, pp. 2-3. 33 "Die Tâtigkeit der Provisorischen Nationalversamm­ lung, " NFP, November 2, 1918, p. 4. 34 Josef Babioni, "Das Arbeitsverhâltnis zwischen Frauen und Manner in der Industrie," AnZ, December 18, 1919, p. 3. 187

In at least two major cases these negative feelings led

to the diminishing effect of government legislation. The

first of these, the unemployment problem, falls within the first period of legislation when authorities were under intense pressure to act quickly. Unprecedented numbers of ex­ factory workers were streaming back from the army to reclaim their old jobs. As a result, many thousands of workingwomen who frequently needed an income just as much as did men found themselves out of work. In this category were included widows, wives of disabled veterans, young single girls and the traditional category of women whose husbands did not earn enough to support their families. While some women returned to their homes willingly, many others were forced out by angry 35 veterans. From July, 1918 to July, 1919 the number of women seeking factory jobs in Vienna alone climbed from 1,851 to

11,033.36

During the war Die Gewerkschaft and other journals had worried over what would happen when returning veterans reclaimed their jobs from the women. On February 5, 1918 a Women's Work

Commission (Kommission für Frauenarbeit), composed of repre­

35 Leichter, Frauenarbeit, pp. 16-17.

^^Ibid., p. 17. 188 sentatives from leading women's organizations, had been created within the imperial Social Welfare Ministry (Ministerium für soziale Fursorge) to prepare for this and related postwar 37 problems. No real solutions had been suggested in either case, however, perhaps because there were none. The Com­ mission, for example, proposed that unemployed women be retrained in basket weaving and other handicraft skills.

Hanusch, for his part, did not consider the problem of female unemployment separately, except to recommend that those women who had found employment in the war industries should "return to domestic work to che greatest extent pos­ sible. Rather, his first priority was ro defuse agitation among the veterans by getting them relocated. On November 4,

1918 the Provisional Assembly passed into law his program for

37 Documents relating to this obscure body may be found at the Allgemeine Verwaltungsarchiv in Vienna under the desig­ nation: k.k. Kriegsministerium für soziale Fursorge, Samrael- akt 8599 and 13. 38 Leichter, Frauenarbeit, p. 16. On January 31, 1919 a peaceful demonstration of more than one hundred unemployed workingwomen gathered before the Parliament building to protest their situation. A second supporting demonstration of more than six hundred followed. The Pan-German Franz Dinghorer, one of the three presidents of the Executive Council, promised the protestors that he would relate their plight to the other members of the Council. On February 3, however, the Provisional Assembly adjourned without having done any­ thing. "Bin Frauendemonstrationszug vor dem Parlement," NFP, January 31, 1919, p. 4. 189 dealing with general unemployment. The heart of the program lay in the creation of District Industrial Commissions

(Industrielle Bezirkskommissionen) with broad powers to attack unemployment at the local level. The keeping of records of those shops where large layoffs had occurred, the formation of labor exchanges, the transportation of workers to new jobs and, most importantly, the administration of relief— all came within the purview of the district com- 39 missions.

Each commission was composed of four to eight members divided equally between the employers and the workers.

While the regulations governing the commissions were in no way aiscriminatory toward w o m e n , ^ 0 ^ale domination among the workers was such that women were largely excluded from the decision-making process. Given the prevailing sentiment at the local level, it is reasonable to assume that they were slighted on occasion when it came to securing jobs. Although the employment picture did improve for women during the early

1920's, such a change was due primarily to better economic

3Q Gulick, Habsburg to Hitler, I, 202-03. 40 I. " "Soziale Fürsorge und Ubergangswirtschaft," Oster• reichischer Metallarbeiter, November 22, 1918, p. 204. 190 conditions and had little to do with unemployment machinery.

Similarly, women were excluded in another important instance which involved, in a hypothetical sense at least, the potential reshaping of society along socialist lines.

Again the problem was prejudice at the local level, and again the regulations had no provision for counteracting it. During the second phase of legislation when the Bolshevist threat was most keenly felt, Hanusch authored and the Constituent

Assembly passed a genuinely radical measure. This was the

Factory Councils (Betreibsrâte) Act of May 15, 1 9 1 9 . This act authorized the formation of workers' councils in the factories and empowered these councils with three main functions: (1) the social function, or local responsibility for seeing that social legislation relating to housing, working conditions, cooperatives, etc., was put into effect,

(2) the trade union function, or the enforcement of the terms of collectively-bargained contracts and the conclusion of additional contracts for individual shops, and (3) the mana­ gerial function, or the participation in the control over

^^"Die Errichtung von Betreibsrâten," AZ, April 25, 1919, p. 4. 191

42 industrial production and management.

In Otto Bauer's words, this act made substantial 43 "inroads into the capitalist system" by allowing the workers a greatly expanded share in economic decision­ making. In a nascent sense at least, here lay the basis for a real socialist alternative to that system. Revolutionary hopes were connected to it accordingly. ^4 The act was received by the women's movement, for its part, as "the most valuable law to date."^^ And yet, women were not allowed to participate in the councils. At meetings and in the press, movement leaders began to complain about the exclusion of women workers from the councils. Repeatedly, they stressed the point that a social revolution was impossible without women taking part--all to no avail.Both in the government and at the local level little or nothing was done

42 Gulick, Habsburg to Hitler, I, 202-03.

^^Bauer, The Austrian Revolution, p. 138. 44 Gulick, Habsburg to Hitler, I, 202. 45 Emmy Freundlich, "Bericht über die am 30. Oktober 1919 abgehaltene Frauenreichskonferenz," AnZ, December 18, 1919, p. 5.

^^Ibid.; Emmy Freundlich, "Die Frau nach errungener Gleichberechtigung," AnZ, October 7, 1919, p. 3. 192 to break the pattern.

The defeat of parliamentary activities on behalf of women by other parties and certain deputies outside the government reveals most clearly that nothing like a social revolution was underway in Austria. For these deputies contemplated actions which would have opened the door to truly revolutionary changes in the position of women. The first such effort involved three attempts by enlightened liberals and Social Democrats to revise the marriage code.

For more than fifteen years liberal marriage reform leagues and individual deputies had pushed for such revision 47 without success. A particular point of contention during this period had been the stringent Church-inspired pro­ visions of the Civil Code which prohibited any and all divorce. Liberal discontent over this blanket proscription increased substantially during the war as thousands of young people rushed into ill-advised and often incompatible marriages. It was to save these young people that two liberals advanced their proposals for reform within one month after the war. To support their cases, they claimed

‘^^Sollen wir noch lânger die Fessel des Klerikalismus traqen??? (Vienna: Verlag des Eherechtsreformvereins, 1908). 193 that some two hundred thousand unhappily married Austrians were obtaining citizenship in Hungary, where divorce was permissible.^^

In December, 1918 Dr. Joseph Roller, the State Secre­ tary for Justice, offered a marriage reform proposal in the

Provisional Assembly. Briefly stated. Roller only sought to establish legally the principle that marriages could be dissolved at the request of the husband under conditions of 49 extreme incompatibility. At the same time, a broader set of proposals was offered by Dr. Julius Ofner, a liberal deputy who had been associated with the marriage reform movement for many years. Like Roller, he too sought to establish the divorce principle legally. But Ofner also wanted to establish obligatory civil marriage and specific grounds for divorce. If a man had been separated from his wife for three years or more, he could petition a court for a legal divorce. At that time the judge would order a reconciliation. In the event that the reconciliation also failed, a divorce would be granted. Personal guilt in such cases would be established according to the individual

4-ft "Reform der Eherechts," NFP, January 9, 1919, p. 6. 49ibid. 194 circumstances of each case. Ofner also suggested that a marriage could be dissolved if a husband had left his wife

c n and remarried in a foreign land.

While Roller and Ofner were steering their bills through the Provisional Assembly, clerical forces were busy mounting a fierce counterattack. From pulpits, public rostrums, in the clerical press and on the Assembly floor,

Christian Social spokesmen denounced the measures in the usual tones, i.e., as immoral, irreligious and bound to destroy the family.On January 24, 1919 the Roller bill, by far the milder of the two, came up for a vote in the

Assembly and was defeated by ten votes, 52/62, by a clerical- peasant alliance.In the face of this defeat, Ofner decided to wait for a more opportune time to present his proposal to the Assembly for a vote.

The defeat of the Roller bill also made the rejection of the Social Democratic initiative, the most extensive of the three, a foregone conclusion. On November 27, 1918

^^Julius Ofner, "Die Ehereform," NFP, January 16, 1919, p. 2.

^^"Der Generalsturm gegen die verlassenen Frauen," A Z , January 23, 1919, p. 1. 5 2 "Die Ablehnung der Ehereform," NFP, January 25, 1919, p. 1. 195

Albert Sever, a Social Democrat from Lower Austria, proposed that obligatory civil marriage be established and that certain grounds for divorce be recognized in all marriages, including Catholic ones. These grounds were: adultery, six years or more of proven incompatibility, including at least one year of attempted reconciliation, the presence of danger to the life or health of one of the partners, and specific cases of physical ill-treatment on the part of one or both of the partners. Other provisions permitted remar­ riage for all persons and decreed the elimination of forced 53 clerical celibacy. Thus Sever, unlike his liberal con­ temporaries, sought to give the woman a real measure of protection under Austrian marriage law. His bill, however, never made it out of committee, and similar Social Demo­ cratic efforts over the next fifty years suffered the same 54 fate or were killed on the assembly floor. As in future cases, well-organized public demonstrations in support of

53 Die TStigkeit der sozialdemokratischen Abgeordneten in der Provisorischen Nationalversammlunq der Republik Deutsch- dsterreich, Oktober 1918-Februar 1919 (Vienna: Verlag der Wiener Volksbuchhandlung, 1919), pp. 33-34; "Ehereform," AnZ, January 7, 1919, p. 5. 54 Gabriele Proft, "Die Frau als Volksvertreterin," Handbuch des Frauenarbeit in Osterreich (Vienna: Kammer für Arbeiter und Angestellte, 1930), p. 546; Leitner, "Frau sein in ôsterreich," March 29, 1972, p. 9. 196

55 marriage reform failed to have an effect.

On another vital social issue, fraught with the poten­ tial of revolutionary change, the hopes of the women's move­ ment were frustrated. During the immediate postwar period a great deal of discussion occurred in the Social Democratic camp on the question of school reform. Naturally, all

Social Democrats could agree on the need to eliminate clerical influence from the schools and to provide access to higher education for the children of the proletariat.^^

In this context curricular reforms were considered and the concept of the "unity school" (Einheitsschule) was discussed.

In this type of school, workingclass children would no longer be shunted into vocational training at age eleven.

Rather, they would remain in the same classroom with middle- class children for the first eight years, at which time a career choice which could involve further education would be

55 "Eine Massendemonstration für die Eherechtsreform," AnZ, May 30, 1919, p. 3.

55 Therese Schlesinger, "Die Schule unserer Kinder," Die Wühlerin, February 5, 1919, p. 4; Marie Boch, "Der Sieg der Sozialdemokratie verbürgt den Frauen die voile Gleich- berechtigung," Die Wühlerin, February 13, 1919, p. 2. 197

57 made on the basis of interest and merit.

The women's movement sought to amend the unity school concept by winning acceptance for the principle that women should be granted full participation at all levels of instruction. Therese Schlesinger was particularly active in this respect, calling for an end to segregation by sex in the schools and for diversified curricula which would provide higher level subjects of interest and value to girls.For the most part her plea fell on deaf ears, however. The school reform of September 17, 1919 in Social

Democratic Vienna only produced a token attempt to broaden curricula. While girls were admitted for the first time to the middle schools (Mittelschulc) . they remained in segre- 59 gated classes. The "unity school" concept itself was not

57 Max Lederer, "Die Schulreform und das Proletariat," AZ, July 19, 1920, p. 1; Hugo Winkelhüfen, "Moderne Schulung," AZ, August 30, 1920, p. 2.

^^Schlesinger, "Die Schule," p. 4; Die Tâtigkeit des Verbandes der sozialdemokratischen Abgeordneten in der Kon- stituierenden Nationalversammlunq der Republik Deutsch- flsterreich, 1919 (Vienna: Verlag der Wiener Volksbuchhand­ lung, 1919), p. 55; "Die hôhere MSdchenschulbildung in der deutschflsterreichischen Republik," AnZ, February 17, 1920, p. 2. 59 "Die Schulreform in Wien," AZ, September 17, 1919, p. 1; Konstituierenden, p. 45. 198 introduced nationally until 1927, and then without some basic reforms which the women's movement had wanted.

With respect to another important question, that of establishing a legal foundation for the principle of equal pay for equal work, almost nothing was done. Although this issue had been a major plank df all the women's move­ ments for many years, the level of support that could be mustered among the Assembly's deputies did not even justify a serious attempt at change. To be sure, many speeches were made and articles written on the subject by the movement's leaders,in the face of near total opposition from the leadership of all parties. Middle-class and Social Demo­ cratic deputies shared a fear of the inflationary impact of the measure on consumer spending and production costs.

Among the rank and file workingmen, the rekindled fear of wage competition played its role. According to their view, the forced imposition of equal pay provisions would result in a general lowering of wages by hardpressed or unscrupulous employers.

^^Kaplan, "Die Volkschule," pp. 117-18.

61 "Die Frauen in der Konstituierenden Nationalver- sammlung," AnZ, October 5, 1920, pp. 2-3. 199

Taken in sum, the coming of democracy and a true parlia­ mentary system did not make possible the achievement of those goals which the women's movement had hoped for and expected. In this context it is instructive to examine the parliamentary activity of the Social Democratic women them­ selves during the immediate postwar period. The elections of February, 1919 had sent seven representatives from the women's movement into the Constituent Assembly. They were

Adelheid Popp, Therese Schlesinger, Eamy Freundlich, Anna

Boschek, Gabriele Proft, Amalie Seidel— all from Vienna-- and Marie Tusch from Klagenfurt. Only one prominent

Christian Social woman, Hildegard Burian, had won a seat; and none of the nominated liberals did.^^

"Das Ergebnis der Wahlen," NFP. February 17, 1919, p. 1; "Die Nationalversammlung," AnZ, March 4, 1919, p. 1. For the 1919 election there were twenty-seven electoral districts, including seven in Vienna. In addition to those who won, the Social Democrats offered female candidates unsuc­ cessfully in the commercial Inner City district of Vienna and eleven of the remaining nineteen provincial districts. On the Christian Social slate were included Hildegard Burian and another woman in Vienna and nine additional women in the provinces. The various liberal and Pan-German parties, of which there were thirteen in Vienna alone, put up thirty- three female candidates in the city and twenty in the provinces. Prominent liberal losers included Marianne Hainisch, founder and President of the Confederation of Austrian Women's Associations (Bund der ôsterreichischen Frauenvereine) and Helene Granitsch, author and President of the National Organizations of Women (Reichsorganisationen der Frauen). "Wahlblatt der Neuen Freie Presse," NFP, January 14, 1919, pp. 5-10; "Das Ergebnis der Wahlen," p. 1. 200

From the beginning the Social Democratic women deputies found that they were shunted aside by their male counterparts, who were themselves caught up on the pressing business of nation-building. "The comrades are over­ burdened. . . they can dedicate no special attention to women" described the situation well.^^ As a result, the presence of the women in the Assembly vias largely symbolic.

They were the minority of a minority who hoped to accomplish revolutionary goals. Given their isolation, their parlia­ mentary activity consisted primarily of reminding the assembled male deputies through speeches to remember the position of women when considering legislation. Adelheid

Popp, for example, used a budget debate to call unsuccess­ fully for reform of the penal system for women, improved 64 chiid care and reform of the marriage end abortion laws.

In only one case did the Social Democratic women deputies have actual responsibility for the management of a major piece of legislation. As they admitted themselves,

"Certainly, with the exception of the KausgelhiIfinnengesetz,

^^"Zur Frauenkonferenz," AnZ, July 1, 1919, p. 1.

64 "Die Frauen in der Konstituierenden Nationalver­ sammlung, " p. 2. 201 no law had been created in the Constituent National Assembly which represents an accomplishment of women above all.

The HausqehiIfinnengesetz was a law governing the employment of female domestics (HausqehiIfinnen). Under the terms of the old law the employer determined the terms of employment for domestics. Consequently, most domestics worked very

long hours under demanding conditions for low pay. Now the HausqehiIfinnengesetz of 1920 stipulated better working conditions, time off for vacations and sick leave, and the payment of welfare benefits.All told it was a significant, albeit single, victory for the women's movement.

Although the parliamentary system was not meeting the stated needs of the women's movement nationally, one might expect that such was not the case in Vienna where, after the municipal election of May 4, 1919, the Social Democrats 67 commanded a permanent majority. Very few Austrian problems of the interwar period can in fact be discussed

GSibid.

^^"Das HausgehiIfinnengesetz," AnZ, March 2, 1920, p. 1. 67 At that time 100 delegates of the 165 elected to the City Council (Gemeinderat) were Social Democratic. "Die Frauen und die Reform der Wiener Gemeindeverwaltung," AnZ, June 15, 1920, p. 5. 202 without some consideration of the relationship between "Red

Vienna" and the rest of the country. With respect to the woman question, however, this is not the case. To begin with, the adversary relationship between the city and out­ lying provinces was not finalized until mid-1920 or later, when what little that remained of cooperation between the

Social Democrats and the Christian Socials on the national level broke down. And the legal consolidation of the capital as a separate entity was not completed until

December, 1921.^^ Moreover, solutions to the basic problems of women could only be found within the whole of Austrian society.

Nevertheless, there were several secondary measures taken in Vienna which served to mitigate somewhat the inferior status of women. A total of sixteen Social Demo­ cratic women were represented on the City Council

CGemeinderat). Under the terms of the new municipal charter, greater emphasis was put on decentralized government. Social

Democratic women sat on all committees except one, that of

Technical Opportunities. Half held seats on welfare and social policy committees, and during the 1920's city working-

^^Bauer, Austrian Revolution, pp. 217-21. 203

59 women benefitted directly from many municipal programs.

Massive public housing, community kitchens and washrooms,

child care centers, parks, welfare services and insurance

benefits--all improved the position of the Viennese

workingwoman relative to that of her provincial counterpart.

At the national level, however, the relationship

between the movement and the Party reaffirmed the fact that

little was being done to change the basic social position of

women. Among the Party leaders, caught up in matters of

state, the tendency was to take the women for granted and

to forget about their special problems. That tendency was

especially evident following the "overwhelming" victory in

the election of February, 1919. For example, several

important articles on key facets of the revolution contained

no reference to women. Included here were "Problems of the

Social Revolution," by Max Adler; "The Next Tasks of the

Workers' Councils," whose leader was Friedrich Adler; an

article on Party Day 1919 which discussed "important question^’

before the Party; and a report from the Trade Union Congress

69 "Die Frauen und die Reform der Wiener Gemeindever­ waltung, " Part II, AnZ, June 29, 1920, p. 2; "Was bedeutet die Gemeinderatswahlen für die Frauen?" Der Sozialdemokrat, I (May, 1919), 9. 204

70 entitled "The Factory Councils and Their Tasks."

The attitude of the trade union leadership had already

been revealed during the war by Anton Hueber's "extrawurst"

statement. On March 12, 1918 Die Gewerkschaft had published

an article entitled, "A Call to Battle," which had contained

the observation that, "The fulfillment of the following

collective minimum demands of the Social Democratic working

class in the sociopolitical area will signify a revolution 71 in the way of social policy." No mention of women was

then made. Now, however, during the postwar period, even

the wartime friends of the women deserted them. Failing to

mention women were three articles in the metalworkers' paper--"The New Time," "On a Newer Basis," and "On the

Path to the Future.

70 Max Adler, "Problème der sozialen Revolution," AZ, March 30, 1919, p. 1; "Die nSchsten Aufgaben der Arbeiterrâte," AZ. July 1, 1919, p.’ 1; "Der Parteitag," AZ, November 14, 1919, p. 3; "Der Betriebsrâte und ihre Aufgaben," AZ. December 24, 1919, p. 1. 71 "Eine Kampfansage, " Die Gewerkschaft. March 12, 1918, p. 1.

^^"Die Neue Zeit," Osterreichischer Metallarbeiter. November 9, 1918, p. 1; "Auf neuer Grundlage," Osterreich­ ischer Metallarbeiter, November 9, 1918, p. 3; "Auf dem Wege in die Zukunft," Osterreichischer Metallarbeiter. November 22, 1918, p. 1. 205

While a lack of concern characterized the attitude of the working-class leadership toward women, the rank and file were sometimes open and active in their hostility.

Ironically, the achievement of two longstanding political goals of the woman's movement and the Party during the immediate postwar period— legalization of open political activity by women and final union of the movement with the

Party--allowed rank and file prejudice to be arrayed directly against the women. By November 5, 1918 the

Provisional Assembly had officially abolished Paragraph 30 73 of the Law of Association. This action cleared the way in turn for the Party and the movement to collectivize organizationally. On December 14, 1918 a conference of

Viennese Social Democrats voted to introduce collective organization into their jurisdiction during January, 74 1919. Throughout the next year local branches elsewhere followed suit. At the Frauenreichskonferenz on October 30,

1919 those changes which had been put into effect were

73 "Der Umsturz," AnZ, November 5, 1911, p. 1.

74 "Wer agitiert mit?" Der Sozialdemokrat, I (January, 1919), 18. 205

accepted by the women's movement, and formally legitimized by the entire Party at Party Day immediately thereafter.

According to the provisions of the new organizational

statutes, the former "free" women's organizations were dis­ banded in favor of general membership in the Party. Women were to be assigned seats on Party committees at the local, district and provincial levels in proportion to their

numbers. In place of the Frauenreichskomitee a new Women's

Central Committee (Frauenzentralkomitee) attached to the

Executive Committee of the Party was created. All financial matters became the responsibility of the regular Party apparatus. Male and female members were to pay equal dues of eighty heller monthly, with an additional twenty heller going into the election fund. Disbursements for Party work

from these and other revenues were decentralized and controlled by the regular leadership at the local level. As

a partial return for their dues, all female Party members were to receive the Arbeiterinnen-Zeitung twice monthly and 76 free of charge.

75 Protokoll des Parteitages 1919, pp. 111-14.

^^"Zum Parteitag," AZ, October 5, 1919, p. 3. 207

The efl Jt of these provisions was to make the activ­ ities of the women's movement subject to an unprecedented degree of male control. And the fears of those in the movement concerning collective organization were quickly realized. Charges of neglect and discrimination appear with regularity in the women's press from 1918-1920. In local

Party activities women were ignored or discouraged from participating. In particular, it was charged, local leader­ ship failed to support the continuing effort to educate and 77 build socialist awareness among the mass of workingwomen.

On the vital money issue, many members of the movement were convinced that they were not receiving a proportional share of disbursements. With respect to the Arbeiterinnen-

Zeitung, suggestions were made from within the Party that the size of the paper be reduced to four pages and that the tone of its rhetoric be moderated. It was believed by the proponents of these suggestions that such changes would reduce the cost of publication of the paper and also expand

"Was nun?" AnZ, June 29, 1919, p. 4; "Die politische Frauenorganisation," AnS, August 5, 1919, p. 2; "Berichte- Linz," AnZ, September 7, 1920, p. 7.

78 Adelheid Popp, "Die Frauen in der Parteiorganisa- tion," Der Sozialdemokrat, I (February, 1919), 10-13. 208

its circulation--two prime objectives for a Party-financed

paper. But to those in the women's movement it was a case 79 of debilitation. Finally, at a conference of the League

of Young Workers (Verband der jugendlichen Arbeiter) in

October, 1919, an unsuccessful attempt was made to effect a

separation of the League into male and female branches.

According to the proponents, serious work could not be

accomplished in the presence of women, who were quarrelsome

and unappreciative of the need to sacrifice their own 80 interests to the general will.

It was especially unfortunate that these traditional

attitudes reasserted themselves so strongly during the

immediate postwar period. For this was a time when the

women's movement was in fact undergoing a very substantial

expansion. At long last really significant numbers of

workingwomen were signing up with the movement. From a war­

time high of 41,800 in late 1918, membership shot up to

110,000 one year later. This represented more than one-third

of the total number of workingwomen, based on 1910 figures.

79 "Die Verhandlungen der Frauenreichskonferenz," AnZ, December 7, 1920, pp. 4-7.

^^Gerda Brunn, "Mannliche und weibliche junge Arbeiter," A Z , October 5, 1919, p. 7. 209

Following a temporary decline to 76,709 in 1920, membership continued to grow throughout the ensuing decade until a high of 221,500 was reached in 1928.^^

Clearly, increasing numbers of workingwomen did now believe that Social Democracy offered the best prescription for the postwar situation. Whether they accepted the idea of the social revolution which the movement advocated is another question entirely. In any event, this impressive rise in membership remained but a sterile victory as long as the Party retained its minority position in national politics and workingmen continued to display traditional prejudices.

As a whole the movement responded to its difficulties with the Party in loyal fashion. Much energy and time was spent at the outset making sure that the collective organization principle would be fully accepted by Social

Democratic women. In the name of class solidarity, the motion to accept collective organization was carried unani- 82 mously at the Frauenreichskonferenz of 1919. At the same

^^Popp, Weq, p. 92; Firnberg and Rutschka, Die Frau in Osterreich, p. 23.

^^Freundlich, "Bericht über die am 30. Oktober 1919 abgehaltene Frauenreichskonferenz,"p. 7. 210

time, however, movement leaders called upon the Party

repeatedly to include women at the local level and to take

a stronger stand on the question of building socialist 8 3 awareness among workingwomen. At the Party Day of 1919

the women asked for and won the Party's approval for dif­

ferent colored membership cards and chits for male and

female Party members, in return for the payment of dues. 8 4r

In this way, it was hoped, the amount of the women's con­

tributions to the Party and thus the amount of the disburse­

ments due them could be identified exactly.

In spite of their recruitment successes, a note of

disillusionment and frustration coupled with a new sense of

reality began to pervade the women's movement during the

postwar period. Because of the disappointments they had

encountered with respect to the reformation of society and

the activities of the Party, those in the movement and their allies came at last to realize that the socialist theory of women's emancipation and the winning of woman

83 "Was nun?" AnZ, p. 4; "Die politische Frauenorgan- isationen," AnZ, August 5, 1919, p. 2.

"Zum Parteitag," AnZ. October 21, 1919, p. 6. 211 suffrage did not guarantee emancipation itself— at least within the time sequence which they had imagined.

It is clear from their writings that the women were coming to feel that much more time and effort would be required before emancipation became a reality. Emmy

Freundlich wrote "For the present the political equality of women is but a directive for the future. We have won this right, but we have not yet won equality.From Felix

Popp, Adelheid's son, came the following: "The marriage form can only be changed if the Socialists receive a majority. . . The revolution in private life is completely necessary if the woman is to cease being the beast of burden for the man."^^ From Gerda Brunn:

Proletarian women know that their position today is worse than ever before. . . Under these conditions neither active and passive suffrage nor legal equality with the man will produce an essential change. Women will first be able to breathe freely when the whole of humanity is freed.87

8^Freundlich, "Die Frau nach errungener Gleichberechti- gung,"p. 5.

^^Felix Popp, "Die Arbeiterinnen und die Wahlen," AnZ, September 7, 1920, p. 3.

^^Gerda Brunn, "Der erste Mai und die Frauen," AnZ, April 20, 1920, p. 3. 212

Those in the Party remained largely oblivious to the growing frustration within the women's movement. Throughout

1920, meetings of the Social Democratic women continued to be marked by complaints of indifference on the part of the

Party leadership. At a special provincial conference held in Linz on September 7, 1920, "almost everyone complained that, since the joining. . . /of the movement with the

Party/. . . leading comrades do not concern themselves with the women and ignore their work." The reply of Marie Koch, who had come from the Frauenzentralkomitee in Vienna, represented the movement's official position on the question. The fault did not lie in the collective organ­ ization form itself, she said, but rather with the male membership of the Party. Extensive education work would be 88 needed to overcome their prejudice. But the complaints continued unabated at the Frauenreichskonferenz of November, 1920.89

Increasing disenchantment among the women's movement, which was reflected in a drop from 110,000 to 76,709 members during 1920, was accompanied by a slide in Austrian society

^^"Berichte-Linz," p. 7.

89 "Die Verhandlungen der Frauenreichskonferenz," pp. 4-7. 213 toward the Christian Socials and bourgeois government. The recession of the war into the background, the return of a measure of industrial prosperity, the defeat of the

Bolshevist attempts in Bavaria and Hungary, and the failure of the coalition to govern effectively--all these made 90 possible a resurgence of Christian Socialism. Given the majority position of women among the electorate, it certainly would have been wise for the Party to begin cultivating the membership of the movement and those women both within and outside the working class as well. But the

1919 election had convinced the Party that the women were in its pocket and so existing patterns continued.

New national elections were set for October 17, 1920, to coincide with the promulgation of the completed constitu­ tion of the Austrian republic. Since the continuation of a coalition was no longer possible, the outcome of the election would determine which party would seize the upper hand. Or, in Felix Popp's view, "This election will decide— 91 shall our society be capitalistic or socialistic?" When

^^Bauer, The Austrian Revolution, p. 222.

91 Felix Popp, "Die kommenden Wahlen," AnZ, September 21, 1920, p. 2. 214

the returns came in it was evident that the Christian

Socials had won a significant victory. Their mandates in

the Assembly rose from 53 to 82, while those of the Social

Democrats fell from 69 to 66. This represented an increase in total votes for the Christian Socials from 1,068,382 to

1,204,606 and a drop for the Social Democrats from 1,211,814 to 1,022,606. Or, to put it another way, the Christian

Socials won a majority in 15 of the 25 electoral districts, while the Social Democrats won in 10. The Pan-Germans, for their part, increased their representation in the Assembly Qp from 24 seats to 26.

It was also clear that women voters had played a central role in bringing about these results. In every election district but one (Obersteier) they outnumbered male voters. Although a breakdown of voting results by sex was only made for the Viennese districts, even these results are highly revealing. To begin, the predominance of women voters was greatest in Vienna, totaling 54.6% as compared

^ Bauer, The Austrian Revolution, pp. 220-21. A dis­ crepancy exists between Bauer's figures and those of Robert Danneberg, who lists the Christian Social and Social Demo­ cratic totals for 1920 as 1,245,531 and 1,072,709 res­ pectively. Robert Danneberg, Die Entwicklungsmftglichkeiten der Sozialdemokratie in Osterreich {Vienna: Verlag der Wiener Volksbuchhandlung, 1924), p. 3. 215 with 5 3% for the country as a whole. In terms of actual voter participation these figures shrank to 52.8% and 51.1% respectively. And in four of the seven electoral districts of Vienna, the Social Democratic bastion, the majority of 93 women voted Christian Social.

While the statistics were and still are incomplete, observers were quick to conclude that the female vote had been the biggest single reason for the Christian Social victory. According to Robert Danneberg, a rising young

Social Democrat and himself a staunch supporter of the women, the results showed that the Christian Socials had 94 achieved "the greatest success" among women voters. The initial reaction of the movement and the Party to the election results was predictable enough. The movement adopted an attitude of subdued vindication, pointing to the dangers inherent in neglecting educational work among women. Too many women, they said, had believed the lies of

93 Robert Danneberg, "Wie haben die Frauen gewâhlt? Der Kampf (August, 1921), 339.

94 Ibid., 341. 216

95 the Christian Socials. Meanwhile a rather bitter editorial in the Arbeiter-Zeitung gave the first reaction of the Party:

The change in the votes for the Social Democrats and the Christian Socials, and thereby the small change in the mandates, may be ascribed overwhelmingly to the change in the voting of the female voters. One may probably assume that more women than men voted in Vienna and while the relation of Social Democratic to Christian Social votes among the male voters remained un­ changed, it has changed considerably among the female. The Christian Socials have the female voters to thank exclusively for their s u c c e s s . ^ 6

To its credit, however, the Party leaders rapidly put this petulance behind them and drew the obvious conclusion from the election. The Party simply could not afford any longer to neglect women if it aspired to national leader­ ship. During Party Day 1920, which followed within three weeks of the elections. Party Secretary Ferdinand Skaret spoke for the new awareness:

I don't deny that women's organizations have been retarded in their development and ex­ tension in many local and district organi­ zations through union with the men's organi-

95 The "lies" which the Social Democratic women referred to were the Christian Social charges that Social Democracy intended to destroy the family and allow sexual permissiveness. Protokoll des Parteitages im Jahre 1920, p. 121; "Nach den Wahlen," AnZ, October 19, 1920, p. 1.

96 "Die Wahlen in die Nationalversammlung," AZ, October 18, 1920, p. 1. 217

zations. But that is not the fault of union itself, but rather in many ways that of the lack of unity and shortsightedness of many of our male comrades.

Some believe that women should only remain loosely attached to the main Party. But the election results have shown the fallacy of that. We see that we have been extraordin­ arily neglectful in the area of women's organizations and have not given them the at­ tention which was required. In this area we must do much more than we have done, in order that we bring in all those indifferent prole­ tarian minds, which attribute their economic position to us; so that they no longer stand on the side of our enemies.

Under the impact of this new thinking the Party leader­ ship responded better to women during the 1920's. Party programs, such as the famous Linz Program of 1928, came out strongly for radical reforms which, if enacted, would have revolutionized women's social position. In 1923-24 a new paper. Die Unzufriedene (The Discontented), was started and the Arbeiterinnen-Zeitung became Die Frau.

Both changes were sanctioned by the Party and together they represented an attempt to appeal to a wider circle of women. Among the proletariat, however, the same unshake- able prejudices continued unabated. A majority of working­

97 Protokoll des Parteitages 1920, p. 175. 218 men and women continued to believe that the woman belonged in the home--much as they do today. CHAPTER VI

THE COMMUNIST "ALTERNATIVE"

The suffrage strategy of the Social Democratic women's

movement had been unable, in sum, to effect broad emanci­

pation in Austria in those postwar years. Essentially, what the Social Democratic women had mounted was a political effort which had tried to achieve revolutionary changes in a conservative society through the vehicle of

the vote. Even before the disappointments of the postwar years were finally known, some supporters of women's rights believed that more radical measures would be needed to effect emancipation. Those who accepted the view were chiefly members of the Social Democratic Left who had broken with the Party. Through the Austrian Communist Party

(Kommunistische Partei Deutschfisterreichs) they sought to provide those means.

The Communist Party grew out of left wing opposition to the war and what was viewed to be Social Democratic collaboration in it. Unlike a majority of the Left, those who later became Communists were not content to express

219 220 their protests through the normal Party channels of the press and Party meetings. Rather, they sought a separate forum and they also wished to forge an association with the international Leninist Left. Both of these approaches ran counter to Party discipline, but then the prestige of

Victor Adler and the ideal of Party unity held little awe for them.

As early as the winter of 1915-1916 a secret "Action

Committee of the Left Radicals" (Aktionskomitee der Links- radikalen) was formed by minor figures in the newly re­ activated Karl Marx Association (Karl Marx Verein).^ The

Association itself, which had originally been founded in

1911, was an education and discussion club of the left wing. Included among its non-Left-Radical members were

Friedrich Adler, Robert Danneberg, Max Adler, Therese

Schlesinger and Gabriele Proft. The Left Radicals met secretly to plan their own strategy and, in violation of

Party discipline, sent Franz Koritschoner to represent them at the second conference of the international Left at

Hans Hautmann, Die Anfânge der linksradikalen Bewegunq und der Kommunistischen Partei Duetschdsterreichs, 1916-1919 (Vienna; Europa Verlag, 1970), pp. 3-4. 221

Kienthal, Switzerland at the end of April, 1915.^ By May

of the following year they were ready to begin calling their

own strikes, but their attempts went largely unanswered by

the Austrian working class.

It was the great strike of January, 1918 that gave the

Left Radicals their first major boost and their first major

defeat. In response to the Bolshevik Revolution in

Russia, they had formed the first Austrian workers' council

on December 30, 1917 as an alternative to parliamentary methods of achieving power and reforming society.^ During

the January strike other workers' councils sprang up

simultaneously at the local, district and provincial level,

in what has been interpreted as an expression of working- class disgust over the failure of the main Social Demo­

cratic Party to take a stronger stand on the war.^ These

apparent opportunities for the Left Radicals to place them­

selves at the head of a militant working-class movement were

2 May, Passing, I, 295. 3 Hautmann, Anfânge, p. 17.

4 Um Fried.e. Freiheit und Recht, pp. 12-14. 222 dissipated just as rapidly, however, by strong action on the part of the authorities and the Party. When certain

Left Radicals such as the Jewish Bolshevik Michael Kohn-Ebner went too far and advocated that the working class take matters into its own hands, police arrested the entire Left 5 Radical leadership and put it into prison. At the same time the leadership of the main Party regained most of its lost credibility with the workers by issuing a strong anti­ war statement which threatened upheaval if the war were not stopped.^ The combined impact of these developments seriously undercut the insurgents.

Thereafter the actions of the Left Radicals only added to the violent and irresponsible image which had begun to characterize them during the January strike. Although a significant minority of the Austrian working class remained radicalized, the Left Radicals were unable to win the support of more than a fraction of them. They were reduced to a small coterie of intellectuals lacking a mass follow- ing- With the end of the war they tried to give their struggling "movement" new impetus by declaring their complete

5 Hautman, Anfânge, pp. 25-27.

Um Friede, Freiheit und Recht, pp. 45-46. 223 separation from the Social Democratic Party. On November

31, 1918 they formed the Austrian Communist Party under the leadership of Karl Steinhardt and Elfriede and Paul

Friedlander.^ But already at its birth the Party was dis­ credited by violence. On November 12 members of the Red

Guard shot up the Parliament building during the ceremonies proclaiming the Republic. Thereafter, those on the radical left were viewed as "putschists" by most of the working

Q class. Subsequent attempts by Communists to influence the fledgling defense corps of the Republic only added to 9 this impression.

Rapidly it became clear to the Comifiunists that their only remaining chance for power lay in their ability to place themselves at the head of the workers' council move­ ment, where radical influence remained strong for several months. The March, 1919 council elections in Vienna saw

181 Communists elected; this out of a total of 45 3

7 Hautmann, Anfânge, p. 43.

^Ibid. 9 Bauer, Austrian Revolution, pp. 105-09. 224

10 members. With the formation of the Bela Kun dictatorship

in neighboring Hungary on March 21 and the importation of

Hungarian agents over the border, the Communist danger

seemed very real. The government counterattacked with a

spate of social legislation, in particular the Factory

Councils Act of May 15, 1919.^^ At the same time Friedrich

Adler, the hero of the Left, assumed the leadership of

the council movement. He refused a Communist invitation to

join with them and instead began to guide the council move- 12 ment toward the Social Democrats. Within a few months

the government's actions and those of Adler had successfully

defused much of the radicalism of the workers. With the

collapse of the Kun regime in July, the government victory was nearly complete.

It was during this period of rapidly declining fortunes

that the Communists paid their first serious attention to

the woman question. The impulse came from Elfriede Fried-

lander, who founded a new woman's paper. Die Revolutionâre

^^Hautmann, Anfënge, p. 102.

11 See above, pp. 190-91 for an explanation of the Factory Councils Act. 12 Bauer, Austrian Revolution, pp. 103-05; Gulick, Habsburq to Hitler, I, 71-81. 225

Proletarierin, on February 8, 1919. The articles which she and others wrote for the paper are distinguished by their trenchant critiques of Social Democratic efforts to improve the lot of women. Alternative proposals which were supposed to overcome the deficiencies in the Social Democratic approach were also advanced.

The value of woman suffrage as a device for social reform was immediately questioned in Die Revolutionâre

Proletarierin, for example. A lead editorial in the opening issue accepted the winning of the vote as a sign of real political progress. But it went on to point out that

Austrian women were still dependent on a bourgeois parli­ amentary system of government. No new social system would be created through a parliamentary national assembly, as was evident in the failure of marriage reform— The Red 13 Republic cannot be created by means of the ballot box."

Later issues continued to hit away at the shortcomings of suffrage and the inability of the Social Democats to sub­ stantially change the position of women. To believe other-

13 "Die Frauen und die Nationalversammlung," Die Revolutionâre Proletarierin, February 8, 1919, p. 2. 226 wise was a deception, it was stated.The same themes were

also played out in the paper of the Communist Youth.

In associated areas the criticisms of the paper were

equally blunt. On the school reform question, the obser­ vation was made that the "unity school" concept which the

Social Democrats supported could never be fully implemented in the type of capitalist society which they were willing to keep.^G With respect to the attitude of the male working- class leadership, a tendency toward hypocrisy was singled out and pilloried:

With his mouth a man can speak of equality for women hundreds and thousands of times. He can even provide suffrage in the national assembly, yet in his heart remains the unexpurgated scorn and belittling of females. . .

To counteract this attitude, which was that of the rank and file, from exercising sway in the Communist Party as it had among the Social Democrats, a set of rules was proposed

^'^"Die Befreiung der Frau, " ibid.. March 5, 1919, p. 1; "Die Demokratie," ibid., March 22, 1919, p. 1^______15 "Der Schwindej^der Demokratie," Die Kommunistische Juqend, Marclr-l','^X919, p. 3. — 15 "Bürgerliche und proletarische Schulreform," RP, March 15, 1919, p. 3.

^^"Mann und Frau," ibid■, March 22, 1919, p. 2. 227 which would insure participation by women in planning and 18 agitation at the local level. Through such means, it was believed, the fundamental obstacle of rank and file intrac­ tability would be overcome.

In the main Die Revolutionâre Proletarierin looked to the workers' councils as its lever of revolution. Once the councils had become supreme a socialized society would follow, featuring full equality for women through a revolu­ tionized marriage form, equal education, community welfare programs, open access to all vocations and equal pay for 19 equal work. Aside from the oft-repeated statement that rank and file attitudes must change, no means were suggested to deal with this basic problem. In any event, with their influence declining steadily, the Communists were left in the very weak position' of only being able to call upon the workers to seize power thrx^^gh^j^^e^crHMTdil^Tland to open up the councils^bo-womShT^In neither case was their call obeyed,

Meanwhile, changes were occurring within the Communist

Party itself. In May Dr. Ernst Bettelheim, a suspected

"Die Frauen in der kommunistischen Partei," ibid., April 12, 1919, p. 2. 19 "Die Arbeiterratswahlen und die proletarischen Frauen," ibid., April 5, 1919, p. 1. 228

emissary of Kun's, arrived in Vienna to "rejuvenate" the

Party. The purge of the Priedlanders followed quickly and

a Directory from the left wing of the Communist Party,

including Koritschoner, Karl Toman and Dr. Johannes 20 Wertherin was created. During the next six months little

was done with respect to the woman question, but another

negative incident in June brought further discrediting of

the Party. On that occasion Koritschoner, Toman and 130

others were arrested on the night before a scheduled dis­

ruption involving the one Communist batallion of the

Republican defense c o r p s .

In conjunction with the ousting of the Priedlanders,

Die RevolutionSre Proletarierin and Der Weckruf, the old Party

paper, were replaced by Die Rote Pahne on July 25, 1919. At

first Die Rote Pahne failed to take note of women, but this

changed after the December, 1919 Party Day, when two women

Communists pleaded successfully for the creation of a 22 "central office for women"s propaganda." Thereafter the new paper carried a regular column entitled "Prom the

20 Hautmann, Anfânge, pp. 105-08.

^^Ibid., p. 113. 22 Ibid■, p. 135. 229

Women's Movement" ("Aus der Frauenbewegung").

For the most part the pieces which appeared in Die Rote

Fahne repeated earlier themes. The failures of the Social

Democrats and parliamentarianism and the need to create a new society through the workers' councils were repeatedly 23 mentioned. The drift toward the Christian Socials in 1920 was taken as an indication that Social Democracy had failed 24 the working class. One particular theme was stressed much more in 1920 than it had been before. In the face of failures at home and the consolidation of Russian primacy among the communist movements, Austrian Communists began to look increasingly to Moscow and the Third International for inspiration. The new position of Russian women under 25 the Bolsheviks was held to be the ideal to emulate.

23 "1st eine kommunistische Frauenbewegung notwendig?" Die Rote Fahne, January 4, 1920, p. 5 ; "Was hat die demokrat- ische. Republik den Frauen gebracht?" ibid., February 22, 1920, p. 4. 24 "Die Verelendung der Frauen in der demokratischen Republik," ibid., October 17, 1920, p. 4. 25 "Die Stellung der Dritten Internationale zur kommun­ istischen Frauenbewegung," ibid., February 1, 1920, p. 3; "Genosse Lenin über die Befreiung der Frauen," ibid., May 1, 1920, p. 4. Under Bolshevik marriage and family laws, which cul­ minated in the Family Code of October, 1918, church mar­ riages became private affairs and the equality of the sexes. 230

But no amount of outside inspiration could conceal the

fact that the Austrian Communist Party had lost touch with

the workers at home. Thereafter it continued to represent

a noisy minority which had no real control over the course of

events. With respect to the woman question the Party con­

tinued to level telling criticisms, of the Social Democrats

and the Christian Socials, without being able to offer or

implement an effective program of its own. In sum, its

significance for the women of Austria remained entirely

academic.

liberalized marriage and divorce proceedings, abortion and the equality of illegitimate children were all guaranteed legally. In addition, the independence of all members of the family was established legally and paternal authority was significantly reduced. Basil Dmytryshyn, USSR: A Con- cise History (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1965), pp. 126-27. CHAPTER VII

CONCLUSIONS

To put it directly, the emancipation of Austrian women as envisioned by the Social Democratic women's movement was impossible during the period under study. In order for it to occur, revolutionary changes in the basic institutions of

Austrian life— the family and the home, the schools, the vocations and the political system— would have been required.

More importantly, such changes in all but a dictatorial society could only have come from an equally profound trans­ formation of popular attitudes--a transformation that lay beyond the realm of possibility.

Winning the support of workingmen for the cause of emancipation is perhaps the best example of this type of transformation. Both doctrine and common sense suggested to the Social Democratic women that the support of this group was vital. Yet rank and file opposition, as seen in Party affairs and the hostile reception accorded women in the factories, was as strong in the postwar period as it had ever been. With the temporary exception of the war itself, the pull of tradition combined with the fear of wage

231 232

competition to override the efforts of the women and their

supporters. Moreover, rank and file attitudes mirrored

those of the rest of male society, in type if not degree.

And so it remains today, attesting to the intensity and

durability of social conservatism in Austria.

As the Social Democratic women's movement got underway,

its adherents tended at first to overlook these hard realities. Instead of facing their dilemma squarely, they

looked to the socialist theory of women's emancipation for

a solution. According to the theory, the necessary entry of women into the factories would serve to overcome the prejudice of workingmen and that would be achieved in con­ junction with the victory of the proletariat. While it was natural for those of Marxist heritage to embrace such a belief, the Social Democratic women maintained it beyond a reasonable point. It was only after the war that the problem of rank and file attitudes was faced directly by the movement as a whole.

The Social Democratic women were attracted, however, by more tangible, easily grasped questions of political organ­ ization and growth. Such an orientation was in keeping with their activist temperament. In the course of their political involvement, which coincided with the tenor of 233 international trends and the activities of the Party, they came to place an overweening emphasis on woman suffrage as the operative means of achieving emancipation. In the minds of Adelheid Popp and her colleagues, the vote was invested with powers which it never actually had. What was for Bebel only a means of expediting the creation of a socialist society became for the Social Democratic women a guarantee of emancipation and therefore the solution of the woman question.

The inherent fallacy of the reliance on suffrage was revealed immediately in postwar Austria and thereafter.

With the exception of Vienna and a few other urban centers like Wiener-Neustadt and Klagenfurt, the Social Democrats were consistently unable to mount the majorities needed for the passage of their program. Between the first and second coalition governments led by Karl Renner (1918-1920), whose selection reflected negative reaction to the war, and the

Bruno Kreisky government of 1971, the Party failed to win a working plurality in a single national election.

The relationship of the Party leaders to the women's movement is difficult to assess. To be sure, the leaders did speak out on behalf of the women on numerous occasions in the Reichsrat and at meetings of the Party. The im- 234 pression persists, however, that they could have been more energetic in their support of the women's movement. During

Victor Adler's time, rigid gradualism stipulated a low priority for the women and this encouraged the rank and file to undervalue them. Once the revolution had begun, highly placed Social Democrats in the government and the Party paid scant attention to the women's social goals and their complaints about ill-treatment at the local Party level.

This was in violation of the class solidarity doctrine which the Party had always embraced and, as the 1920 election demonstrated, against political interests as well.

The women's movement had more success when it came to energizing workingwomen. In this respect their efforts bore fruit and Bebel's theory was in part vindicated. The entry of women into the factories did have the effect of raising the self-esteem and socialist awareness of a significant number of them. To a considerable extent the stimulation of the workingwomen was brought on by the war, as indicated by the numerous police reports which attest to the intensity of their feelings. But once again the overlying limitations of the democratic approach robbed this notable success of much of its practical meaning, in the absence of a firm majority for reform among the whole society. Moreover, 235

present day analyses of workingwomen's mentality such as that of IFES indicate that a certain amount of backsliding has occurred. ^

The fact that the Social Democratic women's movement was unable to bring about emancipation does not mean that the Communists would have been successful. To be sure,

Elfriede Fried lander and others brought needed perspective by identifying the shortcomings of the Social Democratic approach. But it is equally clear that the Communists them­ selves had no solution to offer. To begin with, their own tactical blunders and effective government counteraction excluded them entirely from the centers of power. Thus their significance, with respect to women at least, was hypothetical ojily. But even in this sense, it is doubtful that they could have improved the position of women. For their approach was not that of Lenin, whose government could decree marked reforms for women. Rather, the Austrian

Communists favored the workers' councils as the basic govern­ ing institutions; councils within which rank and file attitudes would nrevail.

^See pp. 9-10, 14-15 for a review of the IFES report. 236

All of this does not suggest, however, that the Social

Democratic women's movement in Austria was devoid of

positive meaning. By the very fact of its existence, the

movement provided the nucleus of what may someday become a

successful drive for emancipation. Unlike the liberals,

Adelheid Popp and her colleagues in Austria posited the

ideal of full social and economic equality for women. On

a personal level, their continued efforts in the face of

ridicule and adversity provided an inspiring example for

contemporaries and successors. Austrian Social Democrats

point with pride today to their tradition of endurance and

sacrifice— and the early women's leaders are a major part

of that heritage.

Finally, experiences like that of the Social Democratic women's movement provide a lesson which.was lost on many

suffragettes, but which current supporters of women's rights have taken to heart, i.e., political equality is no sub­ stitute or guarantee of full emancipation. In the years since they received the vote, the position of Austrian women has not improved very much. As Otto Bauer noted after the revolution with benefit of hindsight:

The political revolution has dethroned the emperor, eliminated the Herrenhaus, destroyed privileged voting in the provinces and the 237

districts. All political privileges are done away with. All persons without distinction of class, condition and sex are now citizens with equal rights.

But the political revolution is only a half revolution. It abolishes political oppression, but allows economic exploitation to continue. . The political revolution was the work of power; the social revolution can only be the result of constructive organized work. The political revolution was the work of a few hours; the social revolution must be the result of bolder, but also more prudent work of many years.

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Osterreich im Jahre 1918: Berichte und Dokumente. Vienna: Verlag für Geschichte und Politik, 1968.

Popp, Adelheid. Erinnerungen aus meinen Kindheits- und Müdcheniahren, aus der Agitation und anderes. Stutt­ gart: Verlag von I.H.W, Dietz, 1915.

Gedenkbuch 20 Jahre flsterreichische Arbeiter- innenbewegung. Vienna: Verlag der Wiener Volksbuch- handlung, 1912.

______. Der Weg zur Hflhe. Vienna: Verlag der Wiener Volksbuchhandlung, 1929. 243

Pribram, Karl. Zur Entwicklung der Lebensmittelpreise in der Krieqszeit. Tübingen: Verlag von J.C.B. Mohr, 1917.

Reichsgesetzblatt für das Kaiserthum Osterreich. Vienna: Aus der k.k. Hof- und Staatsdruckerei, 1867.

Riehl, Anton, ed. Das allgemeine bürgerliche Gesetzbuch. Vienna: Carl Konegen Verlag, 1886.

Statutuen der Arbeiterinnen-Bildungs-Vereines in Wien. Vienna: Genossenschafts-Buchdruckerei, 1890.

Wolf, Gertraud. Der Frauenerwerb in den Hauptkulturstaaten. Munich: Verlagsbuchhandlung Oskar Beck, 1916.

Zetkin, Clara. Die Arbeiterinnen- und Frauenfrage der Gegenwart. Berlin: Verlag Vorwürts, 1894.

______. Zur Geschichte der proletarischen Frauenbe- wegung Deutschlands. Frankfurt a.M.: Verlag Roter Stern, 1971.

4. Pamphlets

Adler, Victor. Das allgemeine. gleiche und direkte Wahlrecht und das Wahlrecht in Osterreich. Vienna: Verlag von Ludwig Breitschneider, 1893.

Bauer, Otto. Der Weg zum Sozialismus. Vienna: Verlag der Wiener Volksbuchhandlung, 1921.

Clemens-Simon, J. Reform im Prinzip der Arbeit, des Lohnes, der Strafe und der Frauen-Rechte. Vienna: Verlag Freiherr Tend 1er, 1848.

Der Frauentag. Vienna: Verlag des Frauenreichskomitees, 1911.

Frauentag, 1914. Vienna: Verlag des Frauenreichskomitees, 1914. 244

Freund lich, Einniy. Die Frauenfrage. Vienna: Verlag von Robert Danneberg, 1912.

Warum leiden wir auch im Frieden Not? Vienna: Verlag der Wiener Volksbuchhandlung, 1921.

Krieg und Absolutismus: Friede und Recht--Zwei Parlaments- reden von Karl Seitz und Karl Renner in der Budget- debatte der Osterreichischen Abgeordnetenhauses vom 14. und 16. Juni 1917. Vienna: Verlag der Wiener Volksbuchhandlung, 1917.

Orel, Anton. Die Frauenfrage. Vienna: Karl Vogelsang Verlag, 1920.

Popp, Adelheid. Die Arbeiterin im Kampf urns Dasein. Vienna: Verlag der Wiener Volksbuchhandlung, 1911.

______. Frauen der Arbeit, schliesst euch an I Vienna: Verlag der Wiener Volksbuchhandlung, 1919.

Scharf, Adolf. Die Frau im Spiegel des Rechtes. Vienna: Verlag der Wiener Volksbuchhandlung, 1925.

Schlesinger, Therese. Die geistige Arbeiterin und der Sozialismus. Vienna: Verlag der Wiener Volksbuch­ handlung, 1919.

. Was wollen die Frauen in der Politik? Vienna: Verlag der Wiener Volksbuchhandlung, 1909.

Sollen wir noch ISnger die Fessel des Klerikalismus tragen??? Vienna: Verlag des Eherechtsreformvereins, 1908.

Um Friede, Freiheit und Recht! Der JSnneraufstand des inner- flsterreichischen Proletariats. Vienna: Verlag der Wiener Volksbuchhandlung, 1918.

5. Articles

Adler, Victor. "Die erste Frauenkonferenz." Victor Adler's Aufsâtze, Reden und Briefe. 3. vols. Vienna: Verlag der Wiener Volksbuchhandlung, 1922, I, 138-41. 245

"Die Frau in der Organisation." .^ufsâtze. I, 142-45

"MMnnerwahlrecht und Frauenwahlrecht." AufsStze, I, 147-48.

_ . "Parteibericht nach Hainfeld." AufsStze, I, 106-09.

Danneberg, Robert. "Wie haben die Frauen gewâhlt?" Der Kampf. XIV (August, 1921), 338-42.

Freundlich, Emmy. "Frauenrecht und Kinderschutz." Der Kampf. Ill (April, 1909), 311-13.

Popp, Adelheid. "Die Frau im neuen Staat." Der Kampf, XI (November, 1918), 729-32.

______. "Die Frauen in der Parteiorganisation." Der Sozialdemokrat. I (February, 1919), 10-13.

Proft, Gabriele. "Adelheid Popp." Werk und Widerhall: Grosse Gestalten des Osterreichischen Sozialismus. Edited by Norbert Leser. Vienna: Verlag der Wiener Volksbuchhandlung, 1964, pp. 92-6.

Schlesinger, Therese. "Frauenarbeit und Politik." Der Kampf. I (April, 1908), 310-12.

______. "Krieg und Einzelhaushalt." Der Kampf. VIII (November-December, 1915), 411-14.

. "Zur Industrialisierung der Frauen." Der Kampf. IX (January, 1916), 27-32,

* 6. Newspapers

Arbeiter-Zeitung, 1907-1920.

Arbeiterinnen-Zeitunq, 1893-1920.

Die Frau, 1963, 1969.

*A11 papers cited were or are published in Vienna. 246

Die Gewerkschaft, 1907-1920.

Die Icommunistische Jugend, 1919

Kurier. 1972.

Neue Freie Presse. 1918-1919.

Osterreichischer Metallarbeiter. 1910-1920.

Die Revolutionare Proletarierin, 1919.

Die Rote Fahne, 1920.

Die Wâhlerin. 1918-1919.

B. SECONDARY SOURCES

1. Published Manuscripts

BOlke, Grundula. Die Wand lung der Frauenemanzipationstheorie von Marx bis zur Ratebewegung. Berlin: Spartakus Gmb.H., 1972.

Brügel, Ludwig. Geschichte der flsterreichischen Sozial- demokratie. 5 vols. Vienna: Verlag der Wiener Volksbuchhandlung, 1922-1925.

Cole, G.D.H. A History of Socialist Thought. 5 vols. London: Macmillan & Co., Ltd., 1953-1960.

Deutsch, Julius. Geschichte der Osterreichischen Gewerk- schaftsbewegung. 2 vols. Vienna: Verlag der Wiener Volksbuchhandlung, 1922.

Engels, Friedrich. The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State. Introduction by Eleanor B. Leacock. New York: International Publishing Company, 1972.

Gulick, Charles A. Austria from Habsburg to Hitler. 2 vols. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1948. 247

Handbuch der Frauenarbeit in Osterreich. Vienna: Kairaner für Arbeiter und Angestellte, 1930.

Hautmann, Hans. Die AnfSnge der linksradikalen Bewegung und der Kommunistische Partei Deutschflsterreichs, 1916-1919. Vienna: Europa Verlag, 1970.

(Hippel, Theodor von). Über die bürgerliche Verbesserung. Berlin: Vossischen Buchhandlung, 1972.

Das luncre Mâdchen und die iunge Frau in unserer Zeit. Hanover: Vorstand der SPD, 1959.

Kann, Robert A. The Multinational Empire. 2 vols. New York: Columbia University Press, 1950.

Kapfhammer, Franz. Man und Frau in der Lebensordnung.. Vienna: Bundesministerium für Unterricht, 1955.

Kunstmann, Antje. Frauenbefreiung— Privileg einer Klasse? Starnberg: Werner Raith Verlag, 1971.

______. Frauenemanzipation und Erziehung. Starnberg: Werner Raith Verlag, 1971.

Lederer, Max. Grundriss des Osterreichischen Sozialrechts. Vienna: Druck und Verlag des Osterreichischen Staats­ druckerei, 1929.

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Macdonald, Mary. The Republic of Austria, 1918-1934. New York : Oxford University Press, 1946.

Marwick, Arthur. The Deluge: British Society and the First World War. London: The Bodley Head, 1965.

May, Arthur J. The Passing of the Hapsburg Monarchy. 1914- 1918. 2 vols. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1966.

Merfeld, Mechtild. Die Emanzipation der Frau in der sozial- istischen Theorie und Praxis. Hamburg: Rowohlt Verlag, 1972. 248

Die Mitqlieder des flsterreichischen Nationalrates, 1918- 1968. Vienna: Osterreichische Staatsdruckerei, 1958.

Myrdal, Alva, and Klein, Viola. Die Doppelrolle der Frau in Familie und Beruf. Cologne: Keipenheuer und Witsch, 1950.

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Riedl, Richard. Die Industrie ôsterreichs wâhrend des Krieges. Wirtschafts- und Sozialgeschichte des Weltkrieges. Edited by James T. Shotwell. Osterreichische und Ungarische Serie. Vienna: Verlag Hfilder-Pichler-Tempsky, A.G., 1932.

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Thünnessen, Werner. Frauenemanzipation; Politik und Liter- atur der deutsche Sozialdemokratie zur Frauenbewegung, 1853-1933. Frankfurt a.M.: Europâische Verlagsanstalt, 1959."

Ward le, Ralph M. Mary Wollstonecraft: A Critical Biography. Lawrence: University of Kansas Press, 1951. 249

2. Pamphlets

Die Frauen-Hilfsaktion Wien. Vienna: Verlag Gerlach und Werdlung, 1916.

Fünfzig Jahre Frauenwahlrecht. Bad Godesberg: Vorstand der SPD, 1968.

Gleichberechtiqung--nur auf dem Papier. Vienna: Presse- dienst des Osterreichischen Gewerkschaftsbundes, 1971.

Problème der alleinstehenden Frau. Bonn: Vorstand der SPD, 1955.

Vierzig Jahre internationaler Frauentag. 1910-1950. Vienna: Verlag der Wiener Volksbuchhandlung, 1950.

Articles

Adler, Emmanuel. "Das Arbeitsrecht im Kriege." Die Regelung der Arbeitsverhâltnisse im Kriege. Edited by- Ferdinand Hanusch. Wirtschafts- und Sozialgeschichte des Weltkrieges. Edited by James T. Shotwell. Osterreichische und Ungarische Serie. Vienna: Verlag Hôlder-Pichler-Tempsky, A.G., 1927, pp. 19-170.

Hübel, Ernst. "Die Arbeitsverhâltnisse in der Textil- industrie." Regelung. pp. 263-303.

Kaplan, Rosa. "Die Volkschule." Frauenbewegung, Frauen- bildung und Frauenarbeit in Osterreich. Vienna: Verlag des Bund der osterreichischen Frauenvereine, 1930, pp. 107-19.

Lersch, Philipp. "Vom Wesen der Geschlecter." Die Frau: Mutter und Hausfrau in der modernen Gesellschaft. Edited by Franz Kapfhammer. Vienna: Bundesministerium .für Unterricht, 1956, pp. 26-36.

Pluskal-Scholz, L. "Anna Boschek." Werk, pp. 92-96. 250

Richter, Annette. "Emmy Freundlich." Werk, pp. 183-89.

Roger, Fritz. "Einige Lehren aus der Statistik der Wahlen für die Nationalversammlung." Der Kampf, XII (September, 1919), 604-05.

Rosenfeld, Siegfried. "Die GesundheitsverhSltnisse der industriellen Arbeiterschaft ôsterreichs wâhrend des Krieges." Regelung, pp. 419-40.

"Vereinsgesetz." Reichsgesetzblatt für das Kaiserthum Osterreich. Vienna: Aus der k.k. Hof- und Staats­ druckerei, 1867, Nr. 134, p. 65.

Was bedeutet die Gemeinderatswahlen für die Frauen?" Der Sozialdemokrat, I (May, 1919), 3-4.

"Wer agitiert mit?" Der Sozialdemokrat, I (January, 1919), 18-19.

4. Unpublished Doctoral Dissertations

Huttl, Edith. "Die Frau in der Osterreichischen Sozialdemo­ kratie." Unpublished Ph.D. dissertation. University of Vienna, 1949.

Kancler, Emma. "Die Osterreichische Frauenbewegung und ihre Presse." Unpublished Ph.D. dissertation. University of Vienna, 1947.

5. Interviews

Jochmann, Frau Nationalrat Rosa. Interview held at the Haus der SPÔ, Vienna, May 17, 1972.

Muhr, Frau Bundesrat Rudolfine. Interview held at the Haus der SPG, Vienna, June 8, 1972.