LMT #145: The Vorwärts House, Vienna, Austria – Berthold Unfried

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Berthold Unfried
Associate Professor at the Institute of Economic and Social History, University of Vienna (Austria) 

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There are many places, sites, where memories of Austrian social democracy crystallise. But, in a broader sense, the Viennese municipal housing estates of the interwar period have undoubtedly become one of these main ‘monuments”. The “Vorwärts” (“Forward”) building on Wienzeile in Vienna was the movement’s headquarters from 1910 to 1934, frequented by the great figures of the international Labour movement. Occupied during the “austrofascist” and the subsequent “national socialist” period from 1934 to 1945, it became the home of the party newspaper Arbeiter-Zeitung after 1945.

The history of this building condenses the history of the social democratic movement, first in the ancient Austria of the Habsburg monarchy, then in the First and Second Austrian Republics. The early years of the 20th century brought a dramatic rise for the social democratic Labour movement in Austria. Universal suffrage was won, and in 1907 the Social Democrats entered the Austrian parliament as the strongest party. Membership numbers rose sharply. In 1909, the party decided on an organisational reform that was to form the basis for its development into a modern mass party. The year of organisational reform also saw the decision to purchase the building at Rechte Wienzeile 97 and convert it into a headquarters for the party and trade union organisations. The brothers Hubert and Franz Gessner were commissioned with the architecture of the building. A disciple of the famous architect Otto Wagner and a friend of Victor Adler, the leader of Austrian social democracy in the Habsburg Monarchy, Hubert Gessner was the “house architect” of social democracy until 1934. Gessner placed a three-storey building in the style of the Wagner School on top of the existing structure. A simple, almost smooth, only slightly grid-like façade design enriched by red tiles covering the ground floor façade, and a lattice balcony on the second floor, it transitions into a stepped gable, which is crowned by a metal tambour and flanked by stone figures on high pedestals and flagpoles, lending it a monumental character.

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The larger-than-life figures of a male and female worker, created by the renowned sculptor Anton Hanak, tower freely into the sky with flagpoles at their sides – a gift from the metalworkers’ union – expressing the Promethean pathos of the Labour movement of the time and giving the building’s design a touch of programmatic architecture.

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With its spacious, bright rooms and glass domes, the finished building was considered a model of modern industrial architecture.

The party, its newspaper Arbeiter-Zeitung and the trade union commission moved into its new home in July 1910. The building had ventilation and a central vacuum cleaning system – underlined its character as a model workplace in which the working conditions demanded by the Labour movement for the working class were already being realised. Light, air, green – the central wing of the printing building adjoined a garden courtyard – practicality and cleanliness were the keywords used by the Arbeiter-Zeitung to characterise the new building. In addition, the building was idyllically located on the banks of the Wien River. When the Arbeiter-Zeitung inaugurated the party headquarters with this fiery appeal, the Labour movement, although shattered by the same national quarrels which also shattered the Habsburg monarchy – 1910 was also the year of the final break between German and Czech social democracy in Austria — had not yet suffered serious setbacks after years of growth, and its optimistic self-perception as an avant-garde on the line of progress remained unbroken.The construction of the building – the “castle of the Labour movement” – seemed to anticipate the construction of a socialist future – so practical and at the same time heroic and beautiful.

The house on the Wienzeile was not only the headquarters of the Austrian Labour movement, but also a fixed point in the topography of international socialism. The great figures of the Labour movement frequented this place. First there were the leaders of the “Little International” of the various national social democratic parties of the many peoples of the monarchy. This International was in the process of disintegrating in 1910: the Czech party leaders Antonín Němec and Bohumír Šmeral, the Polish party leader Daszyński, the Hungarians Garami and Szabó. The leaders of the SPD, those of the “Second International”, whose congress was supposed to take place in Vienna in August 1914. Victor Adler, one of the great old men of the “Second International”, was in contact with almost all of them. After the war, which, a few years only after “Little International”, destroyed the “great” International, this was the seat of the “Vienna” or “Two-and-a-Half” International, which in the years 1919–1923 once again attempted to bridge the divide in the international Labour movement. After this attempt failed, Fritz Adler moved to London in 1924 as secretary of the “Socialist Workers’ International” (SAI).

The house on the Wienzeile was always a home and transit point for emigrants: before 1914, Vienna was an important location for Russian social democratic emigration. The Bolsheviks were prominently represented by Lenin, Trotsky (who was not yet a Bolshevik at the time), Bukharin, Yoffe and Ryazanov. Stalin also spent the longest stay abroad of his life (almost two months) in 1913 near the imperial castle of Schönbrunn, a quarter of an hour away from the Wienzeile. The emigrants were in contact with the Austrian party leaders, whose help they often had to call upon. When war broke out in 1914, Victor Adler intervened directly with the Minister of the Interior on behalf of both Trotsky and Lenin. The latter had been arrested near Krakow and was released on Adler’s intervention. On the morning of 3 August, Trotsky, together with Ryazanov and (the Menshevik) Abramovič, went to the Vorwärts house to discuss what the Russian emigrants should do. Victor Adler took Trotsky to the head of the political police who dropped a hint to instantly leave Austria-Hungary in order to avoid arrest. The following month, after his release, Lenin visited Victor Adler at his office in the Vorwärts building to thank him for his intervention.

The 1920s were the heyday of social democracy in Austria. The republic was founded in 1918 under its leadership. Its headquarters were now an important site for decisions on the country’s politics. Two men shaped the inner workings of the building, which was the most important part of their lives. Friedrich Austerlitz, the undisputed master of the Arbeiter-Zeitung newspaper for almost four decades, resided on the second floor. As leader of social democracy in the new small nation state of Austria, Otto Bauer resided in the party headquarters from 1918 to 1934. He was not only the political leader of the party but also its theorist.

On the morning of 12 February 1934, fighting broke out in the city of Linz between the armed militia of the Social Democratic Party, the Schutzbund, and the police. When news of the outbreak of fighting in Linz had already arrived, only two police guards were guarding the entrance to the building on Wienzeile. The English journalist G.E.R. Gedye, who sympathised with the Social Democrats, arrived at noon, when the trams in Vienna had already stopped running, and entered the party headquarters unmolested. At half past eleven, when a power cut was supposed to signal the start of the general strike, the printing presses also came to a standstill. The staff of Vorwärts were only informed of the events through rumours – a symptom of the confusion in which the February 1934 civil war began. In the early afternoon, the building was occupied by the police and the austro-fascist militia. The social democratic organisations based there were dissolved and their assets confiscated. However, the confiscation yielded relatively meagre results, as the report on the seizure of social democratic party assets notes: “the party was in a steady downward spiral …” The building was seized, but the Vorwärts publishing house remained in place as a structure for producing propaganda for the authoritarian state. Workers’ newspapers continued to be printed in the building in line with the regime’s agenda. Even after 1938, the printing house continued to produce old titles with content adapted to the new times. The Social Democratic Party archives were also confiscated. The provisional administrator had them transported to a paper mill to be pulped. There, at the last moment, they were secured by officials from the State Archives. In 1991, after fifty years in exile, these archives returned to the building. The extensive library of the party secretariat, the last relic reminiscent of the old party, remained in the building, astonishingly even throughout the entire NS-period. All that remained of the party headquarters was its physical shell – for its soul went elsewhere, into the domestic resistance, whose first leadership in 1934 was formed by former editors of the Arbeiter-Zeitung, and into emigration, which from 1938 onwards became the last resort for many.

After 1945, the party did not move back into the Vorwärts building. The building had survived the massive bombings of Vienna intact. It entered its final era as the headquarters of the editorial office and printing plant of the Arbeiter-Zeitung. During the occupation period (1945-1955) and the first decade of the Second Austrian Republic, the party organ of the newly founded Socialist Party of Austria (SPÖ) was a mass-circulation newspaper of national importance with a wide reach. With the rise of the tabloid press, a period of decline began for party newspapers, which even the traditional social democratic party newspaper was unable to escape. A  century after its founding, the Arbeiter-Zeitung had to cease publication. Parts of the complex, including the old printing works and adjacent structures, were demolished. The question arose as to how to use the listed main building.

A great historical cycle of the Social Democratic movement had visibly come to an end. Yet this did not just mean death. Rather, the movement itself had become history which was now studied in the building, transformed into a Research and Documentation Centre of the Austrian Labour movement. There was a certain logic in dedicating the building – once the living centre of the movement – to preserving and researching its past. It now contains the party archive, personal papers of leading Social Democratic figures and a large research library based on the ancient Vorwärts library. From the outset, one room of the building had been set aside for an archive of the movement; the party always took care to document its history. This was a matter for the party secretaries. Fritz Adler in particular developed a love for the profession of archivist, which was to fill his twilight years. The party archives have had a very eventful history since then. In 1934, most of the party archives in the building were confiscated. Conscientious officials from the state archives saved them from destruction at the last minute. It was only in 1989 that the individual parts of the party’s archival memory have been reunited under the roof of the Vorwärts building. Thus, the building’s function shifted from being a centre of active political struggle and publishing to becoming a place of scholarly research and of memory. What was once a vibrant political headquarters turned into a historical monument. Thus, while one epoch ended, a new chapter began: the transformation of the site of a centenarian political movement into a historical research centre. The “House of the Party” turned into a “House of History.” The two stone figures on top of the building still are turning their gaze steadfast, perhaps no longer towards a bright future of socialism, but towards a society profoundly changed by nearly one and a half centuries of social-democratic activity.

_{Facade of the Vorwärts Building (Vorwärts-Gebäude), the former headquarters of the Vorwärts-Verlag publishing house, located at Rechte Wienzeile 97, Vienna, Austria. Photograph by Thomas Ledl, April 27, 2014. Source: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vorw%C3%A4rts-Geb%C3%A4ude#/media/Datei:Wienzeile_Vorw%C3%A4rts_Verlag.jpg}

Translation: Yasmin Getirana

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Berthold Unfried. “Vorwärts”. Das Haus an der Wienzeile”, VGA Dokumentation 4/95

Gedye G.E.R., Die Bastionen fielen. Wie der Faschismus Wien und Prag überrannte, Wien (1948)

Krupskaja Nadežda, Erinnerungen in: Kutos Paul, Russische Revolutionäre in Wien 1900-1917, Wien 1993

Trotzki Leo, Mein Leben. Versuch einer Autobiographie, Berlin 1930

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Cover image credit: Association for the History of the Labour Movement, Vienna

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