Kitabı oku: «Civl society»

The Civil Society and the Bourgeoisie

Ernst Bruckmüller

Summary: The modern formulation of the “civil” or “civic” society describes the common commitment of people in areas outside of their family and professional spheres – and usually outside of politics. “Citizens’ initiatives” can aim at influencing politics and the administration and, in special cases, even at changing the political system (as the občanské forum 1989 – citizens’ forum – did in the Czech part of former Czechoslovakia). This essay poses the question of the extent to which previous concepts of the bourgeoisie and “bourgeois society” have anything in common with the modern phenomena of the civil society. This is because, as a rule, civil-society activity takes place within the framework of legal possibilities, such as the right to personal freedom, the right to carry on a business, the freedom to practise a religion and express oneself, freedom of the press, freedom of association and assembly, the right to petition, etc. that were achieved by “bourgeois” visionaries, pioneers, revolutionaries, and politicians.

Citizen society, civil society, and the bourgeoisie

Today, when one speaks about the civil society or citizen society, one usually means the involvement of people in a great variety of areas outside of actual “politics” as well as their family and professional spheres. This involvement expresses itself in many ways in local, regional, and superregional initiatives in the fields of culture, the environment, the third world, care and support for asylum seekers, etc., but “civilian initiatives” can also have influencing politics and the administration as their goals. In authoritarian states, the civil society can even develop into a powerful movement to change the political system.¹ It is worthwhile remembering the občanské forum (citizens’ forum) in the Czech part of what was once Czechoslovakia that was established on 19 November – only two days after the beginning of the Velvet Revolution in Prague.² The terms “bourgeois society” and “civil society”, as well as občanské forum, are oriented towards mature, actively interested citizens who are prepared to become involved.

The following considerations deal with the question of the extent to which former concepts of the bourgeoisie and “bourgeois society” of the 19^th and early 20^th centuries have anything to do with the modern manifestations of the civil society. In modern democratic constitutional states, civil-society activity usually takes place within the framework of the legal possibilities achieved by “bourgeois” visionaries, pioneers, revolutionaries, and politicians. The central freedoms of the civil society include the right to personal freedom, the right to carry on a business, the freedom to practice a religion and express oneself, freedom of the press, freedom of association and assembly, and the right to petition. These are complemented by the protection of the private sphere (domiciliary right) and confidentiality of correspondence – although this is something that most of our contemporaries have voluntarily done away with by using the internet.

However, there is a conceptual problem in German that most other languages are not aware of. The German word “Bürger” denotes both the (fully entitled) inhabitant of a pre-modern city and the (fully entitled) citizen. French, on the other hand, differentiates between “citoyen” (citizen of a state) and “bourgeois” (inhabitant of a town, with its root in “bourg” that can mean a market or – in the form of “fauxbourg” – a suburb). English recognises the “citizen”, as well as the “burgher” (city resident), and, in Italian, we have the “cittadino” and the “borghese”. It is obvious that they have their roots in the Latin “civis” and the “civitas” connected with it, and the Germanic-late-Latin “burgus”, which originally only meant a fort but was later expanded to include “civil” settlements, markets, and cities.³ Slavic languages also differentiate between the citizen (“državljan” in Slovene) and town resident (“meščan” in Slovene – and very similar in Russian).

However, “zivile”, with its roots in the Latin “civis”, has remained alive in German alongside the local word. It was originally used as a contrast to the military but soon came to denote a certain – “civilised”, non-violent, equitable – behaviour when dealing with other people. Borrowed from the French “civil” (from the Latin “civilis”) in the 16^th century, it meant middle class, patriotic, national, and public.⁴ During the Enlightenment in the 18^th century, “zivilisiert” – in the sense of enlightened, non-violent, good behaviour – was added although the old bourgeois concept of “Ehrsamkeit” (respectability) and its inherent factors of being of legitimate birth and upright behaviour still resonated.

The behaviour required a juridical standardisation: In 1789, the great Austrian enlightener Gottfried van Swieten (1733–1803, son of the famous doctor Gerard van Swieten) defined the “bourgeois society”, as opposed to a “horde of wild people”, by “those principles of their affiliation” that there can be “no right without obligation, and no obligation without right.”⁵ The “civil society “(= society of citizens) therefore needed a “civil law” as a basis. This was codified at the time and came into force as the “General Civil Code” (ABGB) in the year 1812.⁶ The term “citizen” was first encountered in legislation during the reign of Joseph II. The ABGB also assumed a common citizenship of the residents of those Habsburg (Austrian) countries in which the ABGB was put into effect (but not in Hungary!).

But was society – not only in Central Europe but throughout the continent – so advanced that it could be interpreted as a society of people with equal rights? Feudal dependencies actually still existed in most regions. In no way could those living in rural areas, who made up the majority of the population at the time, be considered as being members of this new general bourgeois society. In 1789, the French Revolution asserted the abolishment of all feudal bonds in Europe with the victory of its slogan of “Liberty, Equality, Fraternity”. A few years previously, Joseph II had at least done away with serfdom in his “Austrian monarchy” (from 1781, first of all in Bohemia), but the farmers still had to rely on the manorial lords for their land and property. This dependence continued in the Austrian Empire until 1848; it was considered a component of the “state constitutions”, meaning that these conditions were not included in the AGBG (they were not regarded as a lease!)

The genesis of the “bourgeois society” in the Habsburg monarchy

Where can we look for the core of the new “bourgeois society”? It originally was comprised of men who were not dependent on domiciliary rights and not subjected feudally – therefore, first and foremost, townspeople. They were “citizens” in the traditional sense of possessing the civil rights of a town and being the subject of a monarch (and not a noble lord!). A new, educated bourgeois configuration, dominated by civil servants, buts also including writers, professors, teachers, and scientists – many of them in civil service (and more than a few ex-Jesuits after the repeal of their order in 1773) – developed out of this old urban bourgeoisie in the years after the reign of Maria Theresa and Joseph II. In addition, the emerging supra-regional market (and the almost equally significant market in the rapidly expanding residence city itself) resulted in considerable entrepreneurial growth, the prosperity of which formed the foil against which the bourgeois culture of the Biedermeier period could later develop. This new entrepreneurship was usually favoured by a state factory charter; i.e., it was possible to run a business without adhering to the restrictions and stipulations that the individual guilds, associations, and professional societies had formerly prescribed. This shows that the new educated bourgeoisie and new entrepreneurship were both the products of the state in the making!

Entrepreneurship, which was not regulated by a guild, and for which the name of “fabricant” was soon introduced to distinguish it from “master craftsman”, originally had no connection to the new educated classes. The entrepreneurs only gradually achieved some of the social standing that the intelligentsia had already claimed for itself. The state, which needed both, awarded outstanding members of the two groups with titles of nobility.⁷ These peerages (from a simple “von” to “knight” – or “baron” at the most) characterised the “second society” with their upper-class lifestyle who ranked behind the traditional high nobility but combined their sophisticated modes of behaviour with scientific, artistic, and literary interests. Schubert was honoured in these circles, and this is also where Grillparzer and Bauernfeld socialised. Grillparzer’s close ties were due to his uncle Joseph Sonnleithner’s connections. These circles were also the principal clients for painting which, along with music and theatre, rapidly blossomed in the Biedermeier and pre-March periods. Its master artists Friedrich von Amerling, Moritz Michael Daffinger, Josef Danhauser, Peter Fendi, Josef Kriehuber, and Ferdinand Georg Waldmüller created many portraits of members of this society.

The “second society” and the middle classes

The “second society” can be considered the leading group of the new bourgeois class that referred to itself as middle class. As early as in 1770, a rhyme typifying the self-awareness of the new middle class made the rounds:

“No-one’s lord, and no-one’s slave

That is the right of the middle-class”

The middle class therefore found itself between the ruling system (sovereign, bureaucracy, military, and nobility) and those who were still subjected to feudal domination – the mass of the farmers, as well as those dependent on domiciliary rights, apprentices, labourers, messengers, servants, and maids. In an anonymous document published in Leipzig in 1843 “Pia desideria of an Austrian Writer”, Eduard von Bauernfeld described all the intellectually active segments of society, “Professors, academics, artists, fabricants, tradesmen, economists, and even civil servants and clerics”, as belonging to the middle classes that were urgently demanding that censorship be relaxed and a general change in the political situation:

“… the Viennese have changed; they have become desperately serious. Here, as everywhere else, industry has set up its throne; a people that forms trade associations no longer has time to deal with what they prefer most: fried chicken, the Theatre in the Leopoldstadt, and the music of Strauss and Lanner.”⁸

With the Lower Austrian Trade Association (1839), the Inner Austrian Trade Association in Graz (1839), the Juridical-Political Reading Circle (1841), and the Concordia Writers’ Club (1844), the still-young middle-classes created new, modern organisational forms – ultimately also discussion forums in which, in spite of censorship and the police, certain demands on the state were also formulated.

Numerous problems were waiting to be solved – the farmers’ demands to abolish the feudal system, the growing need of the lower classes, and the national discontent that was becoming increasingly pressing, as well as the paralysis of the government that had been playing absolutism without a monarch (since the death of Franz I). Ferdinand I (1835–1848) was only nominally in power.

1848 – “… bourgeois revolution” –?

The long-expected revolution erupted on 13 March 1848 – it was a reaction to the Parisian February Revolution as well as Kossuth’s inflammatory speech in the Hungarian Parliament that was meeting not far from Vienna in Pressburg (Bratislava) at the time. Bourgeois circles prepared several petitions to be presented to the court, but the demands were expressed most clearly in the petition that the students formulated in the Aula and handed over to the Lower Austrian State Parliament on 13 March. The first success came soon after the first shots had been fired and the first people had been killed (“the fallen of March”). Metternich, the hated symbolic figure of the old regime, was overthrown on the same evening (the fact that he had already been disempowered was not known outside of court circles).

The Revolution quickly chalked up other victories. Freedom of the press, arming the people (national guards and the Academic Legion), and the promise of a constitution were announced on 15 March. When the so-called Pillersdorf Constitution was enacted on 25 April, it seemed as if the majority of the bourgeois demands had actually been fulfilled. But, the constitution, which was modelled on the Belgian version, had its weaknesses. It had been issued, or imposed, from above and allowed for a two-chamber system and an absolute veto from the monarch.

The “storm petition” of 15 May opposed this and especially the extremely restrictive electoral procedure that had been proclaimed on 9 May. The so-called May Revolution was borne mainly by students, craftsmen, and labourers whose situation had not improved since March. This led to the “bourgeois” revolution finding itself in a decision-making crisis. What was more important – especially for the members of the upper middle-class: the expansion of personal and political rights or the preservation of the Habsburg Empire? Faced with these alternatives, quite a few the dissatisfied bourgeois citizens remained silent. Or – like Franz Grillparzer in early June in his famous poem on Field Marshall Radetzky (“Good luck, Commander! Get it done! […] Austria is on your side”) – came out in favour of the nation state, the military, and ultimately, on the side of the counterrevolution.

However, the Austrian Reichstag assembled before the victory of the counterrevolution – this was the first elected parliament in the Western sector of Habsburg Monarchy (elections to the lower house had been held previously in Hungary – but only entitled members of the nobility had taken part). The election resulted in a clear bourgeois majority: approximately 55 per cent of the 383 representatives belonged to this class. Almost one quarter – 92 – were farmers. They considered the question of the constitution relatively unimportant; their main concern was with the agrarian reform to abolish the landlord’s primary ownership and resulting contractual obligations on the part of the farmer as well as the landlord’s jurisdiction and police force. This was actually passed by the Reichstag at the end of August and made the farmers fully entitled citizens. The differences between citizens and labourers, property owners and those without possession, intensified during these debates. When the empty state coffers caused the Minister of Labour to cut former subsidies, this resulted in mass demonstrations by the workers who were bloodily dispersed by the bourgeois National Guard (“Prater Battle”, 23 August 1848). It proved impossible to overcome this split.

The rest is well known: The Croat Banus Jelačić invaded Hungary, leading to war between that country and the imperial army. When it was planned to send troops from Vienna to Hungary, the October Revolution broke out and ultimately led to the military conquest of Vienna by the emperor’s forces on 31 October. This was followed by numerous arrests and executions.

But, similar to the retarding element before the catastrophic last act of a tragedy, the Reichstag assembled once again – this time, in Kremsier (Kroměňiče) in Moravia in the imposing castle of the Archbishop of Olmütz (the imperial family had been housed in his residence in Olmütz since October 1848). Here, the exclusively “German” liberals were isolated in a Czech environment and there was no danger of a popular uprising for this parliament. However, the Reichstag performed extremely positive work until its dissolution on 7 March 1849 – a draft for a constitution was agreed on: it not only proclaimed the principle of the sovereignty of the people and civil liberties, but also aimed to solve the problem of the coexistence of the different language groups in the multinational state. At the same time as the dissolution of the parliament, Prince Felix Schwarzenberg’s government proclaimed its own constitution (once again: imposed from above) dated 4 March 1849. The parliamentary representatives who were thought to be radical were arrested, and several were sentenced to death (including the “Preacher of the Revolution”, Anton Fuster, Dr Josef Goldmark, Dr Ernst (von) Violand, and the “liberator of the farmers” Hans Kudlich, who – like many others – was able to flee in time).⁹

The struggles for independence in Hungary – with Russian help – and Italy had been crushed by the summer of 1849.

Neo-absolutism – restoration or bourgeois control?

In contrast to the old form of absolutism, neo-absolutism was characterised by resolute government. Agrarian reform was quickly introduced. Now the “Empire of Austria” became a genuinely unified state for the first time, having been given a unified administration, a unified customs territory, and a unified (private) legal sphere. The decision-making authority was concentrated on the young Emperor Franz Joseph. The bureaucracy became the pillar of this new system of rule. It could be said that, as compensation for political codetermination, the German-Austrian, bourgeois-bureaucratic element was de facto given control not only of the bureaucracy but of all people living in the empire. Seeing that, after 1848, the German-Austrian bourgeoisie developed into the beneficiaries and bearers of the counterrevolution, Habsburg centralism, and concept of large national state, their memories of the “bourgeois” revolution were later relatively insignificant. At the same time, a slow change in the German bourgeoisie’s traditional feeling of cultural superiority led in the direction of an increasingly radical German nationalism (and increasingly radical antisemitism) in which, finally, anticlericalism remained the sole remnant of the once liberal heritage.¹⁰

The entrepreneurs also profited from the new unified state. During the Revolution, they had already taken the side of the government and military. The most important thing for them was the preservation of greater Habsburg Austria, with equal rights throughout the country and a uniform customs and currency area. If the counterrevolution guaranteed that the bourgeoisie would achieve their goal, and this was threatened by the Revolution, they would inevitably become an ally of the restoration. One small example:

On 27 March 1848, Giuseppe Miller-Aichholz, a Viennese wholesaler from Trentino, wrote to his father (in Italian) in Cles that the behaviour in Milan and Venice was hair-raising, that they had broken their oaths and were unfaithful traitors. In June, he travelled to Innsbruck as a member of a community committee to beseech the emperor to return to Vienna. On 13 August, he enthusiastically told his father about Radetzky’s victories over the Lombards and Piemontese. In March 1849, Miller was a member of the deputation of Viennese citizens chosen to thank the young Emperor Franz Joseph for the constitution and dissolution of the Reichstag. Only a few days later, he travelled to the war theatre in northern Italy, together with other councillors, to present Radetzky with the diploma making him an honorary citizen of Vienna. This put an impressive seal on the alliance between the upper classes and the army.

The brief reign of the liberal bourgeoisie

Initially, the “German” bourgeoisie only dominated in Austria in the form of the bureaucracy.¹¹ However, simultaneously with the retraction of “civil” liberties, the entrepreneurial upper classes were granted considerable freedoms. The state’s difficult financial situation increased the possibilities of the financial bourgeoisie to have an influence, seeing that the state needed a tremendous amount of money to develop the new court and administration system with its countless new civil servants. At the same time, the expenses for the army and (new!) gendarmery remained high.¹² And they increased even further when Austria occupied the Romanian princedoms during the Crimean War and stationed an army in Galicia. These politics led to a state of permanent hostility with Russia, without being able to win the liberal Western powers (England and France) as allies. Finally, after the defeat near Solferino in 1859, the Emperor was informed that there could only be new loans for the highly-indebted state with parliamentary representation – at least for a control of the state’s finances. In this way, the unwilling Emperor was forced to establish representative bodies from the individual parliaments and imperial Reichsrat that were principally intended to act as the taxpayers’ controllers of the state’s non-transparent expenditure policies.

The voting rights for the communities and individual parliaments, which were legislated within the framework of the “February patent” in 1861, from which the representatives in the Reichsrat were to be elected were quite clearly tailored to satisfy the interests of the bourgeoisie. Seeing that it was, in principle, a matter of controlling finances, the right to vote was linked to the tax payments: each person who paid a direct tax (property, trade, building, or income tax) in the communities was entitled to vote. However, only the top two-thirds of community voters, and those in the cities who paid taxes amounting to more than 10 guilders annually, were entitled to vote for the parliaments. Those in possession of an education patent – teachers, professors, priests, doctors, engineers, and attorneys, as well as captains in coastal regions – were also eligible. The aim was to ensure that community councils, parliaments and the “Reichsrat” were dominated by “property and education”.

It was not until 1867 – after the defeat at Königgrätz – that these representative bodies were given more responsibilities and all citizens were given the five fundamental constitutional rights (“December Constitution”) that had long been demanded by the liberal bourgeoisie: independence of the judiciary, the separation of justice and the administration, and a clear definition of the positions of the parliament and (imperial) government. This resulted in the introduction of the first government to be made up almost entirely of men from the bourgeoisie – the “citizens ministry”. To provide a balance to so much bourgeois culture, its head, the Minister-President, was “Carlos” Prinz Auersperg, the “first cavalier of the empire”. The bourgeois ministers actually did particularly good work. Here, I should mention the passing of the Elementary School Law that was presented to the Reichsrat by the Minister of Education Hasner Ritter von Arta (1818–1891). In the years before 1875, the representatives of the bourgeoisie, German, centralistic liberalism developed considerable problem-solving competence in areas that, in the future, would make “civil-society” commitment easier. These included the Cooperatives Law (1873), which complemented the freedom of association in the area of economic activity that had been attained in 1867. The liberals also simplified the self-organisation of workers through the coalition freedom. However, after several confessional laws, its creative powers became paralysed around 1875. The liberals became the defenders of the already-achieved legal and material possibilities, but they lost their role in the forefront of bourgeois society. They truly became conservative.

The weaknesses of the bourgeoisie of the Habsburg monarchy

The stock exchange crash of 1873, and the prolonged economic crisis that followed, shattered faith in the supposedly so beneficial power of the free market, as well as in liberal politics. This was further aggravated by shameless corruption in the circles of the liberal parliamentarians who had been rewarded with shares in railway companies for passing various railway laws.¹³

The antiliberal criticism targeted the bourgeois liberals as politicians who cashed in on their office who exploited farmers, small tradesmen, and labourers, and even deprived them of their political rights. Did they not benefit from this state, whose authoritarian orientation was, in fact, extremely advantageous to the bourgeoisie, which (from a theoretical perspective) was so strongly focused on independence and personal freedom – insomuch as the state provided the bourgeoisie with everything they needed, like a gigantic common market, protection of property and parliamentary budget control? This criticism went hand in hand with those antisemitic positions that continued to live on among many Catholics as a result of the church’s condemnation of Jews as the “murderers of Christ”. In the Catholic “Vaterland” newspaper from 20 December 1871, the liberal economic laws (abolition of the guilds, freedom of trade, mobilisation of peasant property, abolition of usuary laws, etc.) were criticised as tearing down “all the barriers” that protected the Christian people to the benefit of the Jews. “The workers and craftsmen are moving into the factories, property into the hands, houses into the possession, and the people’s wealth, into the pockets, of the Jews (…).¹⁴

The defensive position taken by bourgeois liberalism from around 1875 was also connected with the numerical relationships. From around 1870, it would have probably been possible to circumscribe the largest section of bourgeoisie with those who were entitled to vote in cities and industrial locations. Later, the extension of the electoral law made this increasingly less likely. If it can be assumed that “bourgeois” presupposes a certain income, the statistics on personal income tax, which were introduced in 1896, provide a first approximation. At the time, around 6.5 per cent of all employed people were taxpayers. The 33 per cent (or about 300,00 wage earners) who had an income of more than 2400 crowns must certainly be classified as middle-class. Assuming that an average bourgeois household was made up of 4 people, the middle classes consisted of at least 1.2 million people or about 4.6 per cent of the total population of the Austrian part of the empire that totalled around 26 million in 1900. The prominent liberal politician Ernst von Plener (1841–1923) also referred to the small size of the Austrian middle classes during the debate on universal suffrage in 1905/06 – according to his calculations, while 3.4 per cent of the Austrian population was subject to income tax, the figure was 9 per cent in Prussia and as high as 13 per cent in Saxony.¹⁵

This picture changes if the Western half of the Habsburg monarchy (Cisleithania) is compared with the territory of the Republic of Austria. Of course, this is due to the fact that, after the collapse of the monarchy, the most important bourgeois centre, the metropolis of Vienna, came to lie on its territory.

Around 1900, about a quarter of all taxpayers lived in Vienna and they earned almost exactly one third of all taxable income in old Austria. The dominance of Vienna among the higher income brackets emerges even more clearly: In 1907, only a quarter of the low-bracket taxpayers lived in Vienna, but this rose to 45 per cent among the “rich” (over 12,000 crowns annual income) and close to 52 per cent among the “very wealthy” (over 40,000 crowns annual income). This shows that more than half of all top incomes were assessed in Vienna!¹⁶

If one considers the comparatively small number of bourgeois existences, it comes as almost no surprise that these classes were relatively weak in the overall system of the monarchy. The strength of these groups was diminished even more by three additional problems:

1 1 The not especially large bourgeois classes were divided into a few metropolitan (especially Viennese) configurations and many groups in small and medium-sized towns with few parallels in connection with wealth, culture, and political positions. The dense network of large medium, and small large, towns that existed in Germany (and England) was missing. This differentiation was further increased by the fact that, although the Viennese bourgeoisie clearly dominated the economic sphere, it did not take the lead in the cultural and political life of the monarchy – as was the case with the Parisian bourgeoisie for example. This is because, on the one hand, the Viennese bourgeoisie was consciously German – this hindered any identification on the part of this leading bourgeoisie with the non-German middle-classes and on the other hand, it was strongly perceived to be “Jewish” – and this created a considerable gulf between the liberal upper classes and the increasingly antisemitic middle and lower classes. This perception also prevented the identification of the – mainly German-national (or: Christian social) – antisemitic medium and small towns with the liberal bourgeoisie in Vienna.17

2 2 The ongoing democratisation of the political life that ultimately led to universal suffrage for men in 1906 undermined the hardly resilient, precarious domination of the German-Austrian bourgeoisie even more. The nationalistic, antisemitic, and socialist mass movements threatened the bourgeois positions and contributed to “bourgeois” changing from being another word for “progressive” to a metaphor for cautious, security conscious, progress sceptical, and defensive to the demands for further political modernisation. It is possible that democratisation did not reach old-Austria too late, but too early – before the “gentrification” of society that needed to precede a modern democracy.

3 3 The bourgeoisie increasingly differentiated itself into middle classes oriented on national languages. In this way, any individual “national” bourgeois configuration became automatically involved in a war on several fronts: Against the agrarians (nobility and farmers), and their strong ability to enforce themselves in the political system, against the increasingly strengthened workers’ movement, against the specific other national movements, against the petit bourgeois – usually antisemitic – criticism from the cities, and, possibly even against the state.

However, what made all these bourgeois classes stick together until 1914/18 was that they were obviously able to participate in the economic boom and earn considerable wealth. As Roman Sandgruber put it so appropriately, the decades before 1914 were a “dreamtime for millionaires”.¹⁸ Although old-Austria had introduced a “progressive” income tax in 1896, the highest rate only lay at 5 per cent! A person who had a good hand for making money could become fabulously wealthy. This was still accompanied by a certain faith in advancement and security, and in the progress of technology and science. And the forms of propriety, civility, everyday culture, summering in the country, stays in the renowned spas – in short, a supernational bourgeois culture – remained across all of the borders separating nationalities and religions. In general, the middle classes progressed upwards economically, and it is possible that this positive material development among the non-German bourgeoisie could have made it possible to smooth the national contours and develop a new consensus at some time.

1918 – the end of the bourgeois world?

However, a global conflagration that the Habsburg monarchy would not survive was ignited in Vienna in 1914. Not only the monarchy collapsed in 1918; this was also the fate of the secure world of the bourgeoisie – the world of solid, traditional business relationships between Reichenberg, Prague, Prossnitz, Vienna, and Budapest; between Lemberg and the Balkans, Trieste and Alexandria. The common market and unified state crumbled. What happened to the middle classes at the time? The traditional security strategies of the middle classes (even the lower ones) proved to be deceptive. Neither being in possession of securities (especially government bonds) nor a tenement building and neither having a high-level position in the state administration nor in the private service sector offered protection against suddenly losing one’s wealth – going as far as putting one’s very survival in question – in the wake of the inflation that occurred during and after the war. Even those extremely cautious people of private means who did not fall for war bonds lost as much as three or four fifths of their fortunes.¹⁹

But this rupture did not affect all bourgeois classes in the same way. Of course, almost all of those in possession of Austrian (and Hungarian) bonds suffered certain financial losses. However, just how quickly the Czechoslovakian redevelopment bonds issued immediately after the foundation of the state in 1918 were oversubscribed is astonishing – the Czech bourgeoisie obviously still had sufficient financial reserves, which they had withheld from old-Austria, that they willingly put into the hands of their own (!) new state. In words that have often been quoted, Otto Bauer – the Austrian Social Democrat who is considered one of the leading thinkers of the left-socialist Austro-Marxist faction – expressed that the main losers as a result of the change were the members of the German-Austrian, and particularly Viennese, bourgeoisie:

“… The same process of currency devaluation…has pauperised broad layers of the old bourgeoisie. At first, this fate hit the men of private means… and, with them, the house owners were expropriated… The higher civil service was also depressed by the devaluation of the currency… It was the old Viennese patriarchate, the top strata of the Austrian intelligentsia, large sections of the middle and lower classes, who had become impoverished by the devaluation of the currency. They had actually been the ruling class of the Habsburg monarchy. They were the bearers of Austrian patriotism, of old-Austrian traditions. They had provided the Habsburg monarchy with its civil servants, with its officers. For a century, they had been the bearers of a specifically Austrian culture, Viennese literature, Viennese music, and Viennese theatre. They are the ones who were really defeated in the war. It was their empire that collapsed in October 1918. And they lost their wealth together with their empire…”²⁰

However, rent control in particular enabled impoverished middle-class people to maintain a standard of living that would have been impossible in a completely free housing market.²¹ Leisure and summer holiday habits had also hardly changed. On the contrary – immediately after the war, people often sought refuge in the summer retreats in the silent hope that the farmers would still be able to find some food for them. The lack of capital also did not lead to a significant buyer’s market for summer holiday homes – this is also evidence of a quite astonishing continuity.²²

Material deprivation – political disorientation?

The inflation destroyed a great deal of capital, especially when investments had been made in state securities (and here once again – especially in war bonds.) There is hardly a bourgeois biography in which this fact is not mentioned, seeing that it affected almost everyone belonging to this class in any way at all.²³ The rent-control legislations that, de facto, expropriated the property owners had a similar effect – Otto Bauer already provided an accurate description of this. Up until 1914, it had been a common security strategy for members of the middle classes to own an apartment building to provide for their old age. Heinrich Röttinger (1869–1952), who retired from his final position as Director of the University Library in 1933, had an annual income of more than 16,000 crowns in 1914; only 34 per cent came from his salary (which still amounted to 5400 crowns), while 36 per cent came from renting and 15 per cent from his investments. Not untypically, the last two items were reduced to zero after 1918, partly due to devaluation and partly to the systematic disposal of property and securities. This was the first time that the government official had to rely entirely on his salary.²⁴

Experiencing insecurity was a central shock for the highly developed desire for security felt by the members of the bourgeoisie of the late monarchy, which Stefan Zweig portrayed so lovingly in his writing.²⁵ The inflation resulted in civil servants losing more than 85 per cent of their real income (1920: civil servants received 14 per cent of the peacetime purchasing power and, in 1925, their salaries were still only about 56 per cent of what they had been before the war).²⁶ This material loss of position was underlined by the levelling of incomes during the inflationary period: In March 1922, a coal deliverer earned 1300 times as much as he did in 1914; for a hairdresser, this was only 400, for a university professor 214, a court councillor 124, and for an assistant doctor only 100 times as much. At the same time, a skilled worker in the metal, sugar, or electrical industry earned up to 1.8 million crowns, while the salary of a ministerial councillor was only 1.5 million crowns.²⁷ Although the wage gap widened again after the stabilisation of the currency (autumn 1922), the relations remained completely different from traditional concepts. By no means, had the labourers become “rich” – they still earned very little compared to their counterparts in other countries.²⁸ Nevertheless, the perception of the levelling for the affected “bourgeoisie” meant precisely the loss of the social advantages that had previously defined being “bourgeois”.

In the first years after the war, the feeling of material deprivation became mixed with the experience of social powerlessness due to the dominance of the left wing in the streets and political process: “Supported on the streets and with the means of trade union struggle, assured of the Bundeswehr recruited from their ranks, social democracy is able to allow itself the tremendous luxury of leaving all responsibility to the bourgeois parties, seeing that, in reality, it remains dominant, even if there is a bourgeois cabinet. However, the pillars of the old regime – the citizens and farmers – are leaving the field, intimidated, uncertain of their own destiny…” ²⁹

The experience of persistent material deprivation continued for quite a few “bourgeois” even after “bourgeois” coalitions had taken over the government. The Geneva Protocol for the Reconstruction of Austria of 1922 forced an extensive reduction in the number of civil servants. It was proclaimed that the number of public employees was to be “reduced” by the round number of 100,000. By the end of 1925, 83,386 had actually retired or been dismissed, in addition to 10,000 who had worked for the Southern Railroad Organisation. The total number reached about 50 per cent of those still active, i.e., about one third of all the people employed in public service had been affected by these measures. In the following years, there was only a slow decrease in the number of public employees. However, this was then accelerated as a result of the collapse of the Creditanstalt Bank and the enormous costs for its reorganisation that were covered by the state. In 1926, around 200,000 people were employed in government administration, federal enterprises and the railroads; this decreased to 166,000 in 1933 (this later increased slightly due to the number of soldiers and police officers hired).³⁰ The succession of bank failures that followed after the stabilisation crisis of 1924 had a similar effect. The Association of Banking and Savings Institute Officials had 24,500 members in 1924; this reduced to 11,000 in 1926 and even further to 7,700 in 1931.³¹

A high percentage of the bourgeois groups who had been hit hardest by the collapse of the monarchy, inflation, rent control legislations, budget restructuring, and bank failures lived in Vienna. The fact that “republic” lacked the positive connotation the word generally has for us today for these impoverished members of the bourgeoisie who were unsure of their status is unpleasant, but it is not incomprehensible. What is less comprehensible is that the “bourgeois” parties and governments showed so little commitment to the interests of their clientele. The radical pay cuts that the employees of the Creditanstalt were expected to accept as a result of the bank’s crisis even prompted Otto Bauer to speak in the main committee of the National Council. He stated that although he had actually nothing against such cuts, he would like to be permitted to state that, by doing this, the bourgeois parties were sawing off the branch they were sitting on.³² It seems possible that this approach was an expression of certain antisemitic currents among the Christian Socials and Greater Germans (bank directors were frequently Jews) and, in connection with this, probably also an attempt to gain popularity by attributing guilt to, and taking massive action against, bank directors and officials.³³

The memoirs of Alexander Spitzmüller (1862–1953) offer a wide range of material for this behaviour – especially on the part of the Christian Socialists: In spite of his clearly Catholic stance, the one-time state official, then bank director (of the Creditanstalt), Austrian Trade Minister, and the last joint Finance Minister of the Austro-Hungarian empire, always remained an outsider for the Christian Socialists. He never received the thanks due to him for the energy he invested as governor of the Austro-Hungarian Bank (until its liquidation at the beginning of 1923) and as head of the Creditanstalt during the crisis of 1931/32; quite the contrary, everything possible was undertaken to hinder him in carrying out these arduous tasks.³⁴ Spitzmüller’s memoirs are not the only case. Those of Hans von Loewenfeld-Russ, who, as a highly respected nutritionist, not only served the monarchy but also the young republic with unwavering loyalty, described the blockade of any further public career by the Christian Social Party as the result of a statement he made in the cabinet that seemed to expose him as sympathising with the Social Democrats.³⁵

Entrepreneurial circles, therefore, started looking for alternatives early on. They supported the Heimwehr as a military force against the Republican Schutzbund of the Social Democrats. The management of the “Alpine” conglomerate in Styria, in particular, promoted the various Heimwehr organisations. Here, the management attempted to weaken the social democratic unions by supporting a “yellow” Heimwehr union. Bourgeois frustration became particularly evident in the results of the Vienna municipal and province election of 1932, when the Christian Socialists suffered severe losses to the National Socialists.

End of the bourgeoisie?

Despite the often-invoked losses and cuts – that occur in every memoir – the end of the monarchy did not (yet) mean the end of the bourgeois world. This did not happen until 1938, when the Jewish bourgeoisie (or, more precisely, the bourgeoisie of Jewish descent, because this had nothing to do with religious beliefs) were robbed of all their assets.³⁶ As Peter Melichar once expressed in a conversation, the “aryanisation” files contained the most complete material on the cultural history of the (so-called Jewish) middle classes of the interwar period. The “aryanisations” undoubtedly created a much more profound break in the continuity of the bourgeois world that could be followed up to this point and now came to an end, destroyed by flight and, in the worst cases, by deportation to Theresienstadt and Auschwitz.

The major ruptures that took place in 1918, 1938, and 1945 can therefore be interpreted as three stages on the path to the post-bourgeois era – in the first, the Austrian bourgeoisie lost much of its economic power, and then – in the second starting 1938 – large sections of this bourgeoisie (the large Jewish portion) lost their property, homeland, and – all too often – their lives. In the third, after 1945, the former Great German-Liberal bourgeoisie experienced a similar – albeit nowhere near as catastrophic – deprivation.

Let us therefore assume that those classes that dominated “bourgeois” society in the 19^th century largely lost their livelihoods in 1918, 1938, and 1945. Did the end of fascism, national socialism, and communism bring about a renaissance of the bourgeoisie? There are continuities in quite a few families, as well as enterprises, but family companies in particular tend to be unable to continue operating as such after a few generations. The bourgeoisie cannot be reconstructed as an economically, intellectually, and culturally dominating class in the style of the German-liberal bourgeoisie of the second half of the 19^th century.

I return to the statements about the civil society made at the beginning of this essay. Put in a nutshell, the question is: How many traditional bourgeoisie does a democratic, civil society of free “citizens” need if it is to function successfully? Was the great crisis of 1914–1918 so catastrophic because it hit the bourgeoisie so severely? And was the inability of the new states to offer the “old” bourgeoisie of the monarchy a suitable new home one of the (several) reasons for the relatively rapid downfall of the order in 1918/19? And: Is a democratic “civil society” possible without social groups that – whether they consider themselves “bourgeois” or not – still represent the canon of values that were characteristic of the “classical” bourgeoisie: a high level of esteem for the self-determined individual, as well as personal achievement and efficiency, combined with the belief in the proficiency of free associations and participation in the self-administration of the community, an optimistic, science-based concept of human development, coupled with a deep distrust of all ready-made solutions prescribed “from above”?

On the other hand, many things that the bourgeoisie of the 19^th century strived, and paved the way for such as developing the possibilities for education, promoting technical advancement, and improving the material opportunities and living standards of broader levels of society, had actually been realised when the bourgeoisie came to an end so that, today, many more people live a more “bourgeois” life than in the long-past age of the bourgeoisie. And they also have many more opportunities for “civil society” commitment.

1 https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zivilgesellschaft (accessed 3. 11. 2020).

2 https://www.bing.com/search?q=obcanske+forum&form=PRUSEN&pc=EUPP_UE12&mkt=enus&httpsmsn=1&msnews=1&rec_search=1&refig=64bde755d3b54d88bbd2f1cb325b839e&sp=2&qs=SC&pq=obcanski+forum&sk=HS1&sc=3-14&cvid=64bde755d3b54d88bbd2f1cb325b839e (accessed 3. 11. 2020).

3 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burgus (accessed 3. 11. 2020).

4 https://de.wiktionary.org/wiki/zivil

5 The van Swieten citation, after: Ernst Wangermann, Aufklärung und staatliche Erziehung, Vienna 1978, p. 79.

6 There is a wide range of literature on the ABGB. Here, I only refer to: Walter Selb, Herbert Hofmeister (eds.), Forschungsband Franz von Zeiller (1751−1828). Beiträge zur Gesetzgebungs- und Wissenschaftsgeschichte. Vienna – Graz – Cologne 1980.

7 Unless otherwise indicated, the author refers to his Sozialgeschichte Österreichs, 2^nd ed., Vienna – Munich 2001.

8 Anonymous (Eduard von Bauernfeld), Pia desideria eines österreichischen Schriftstellers, Leipzig 1842, p. 16.

9 Wolfgang Häusler, Schubumkehr. Von der Tradition der demokratischen Revolution 1848 zu Deutschnationalismus und Antisemitismus, in: Österreich in Geschichte und Literatur 64, 2020, no.1, pp. 4–8, here p. 9.

10 Häusler, Schubumkehr, passim, sees the failure of the bourgeois revolution as the reason for this.

11 Waltraud Heindl published the most important works on Austrian bureaucracy in the 18^th and 19^th centuries: Gehorsame Rebellen. Bürokratie und Beamte in Österreich 1780 – 1848, Vienna – Cologne – Graz 1991; and: Josephinische Mandarine. Bürokratie und Beamte in Österreich vol. 2, 1848 –1914, Vienna 2013.

12 Fundamental information on these problems: Harm-Hinrich Brandt, Der österreichische Neoabsolutismus. Staatsfinanzen und Politik 1848 – 1860, 2 vols., Göttingen 1978. The resulting discussion is documented in: Harm-Hinrich Brandt (ed.), Der österreichische Neoabsolutismus als Verfassungs und Verwaltungsproblem, Vienna – Cologne – Weimar 2014.

13 Ernst Bruckmüller (ed.), Korruption in Österreich (Austriaca), Vienna 2011.

14 Cited after Häusler, Schubumkehr, p. 9.

15 Speeches by Ernst Frh. v. Plener 1873–1911, Stuttgart – Leipzig 1911, 987 (Speech in the Upper House on 2 December 1905).

16 Joseph von Friedenfels, Die individuelle Bewegung der Personaleinkommensteuer-Zensiten und die Höhe ihres Einkommens in den Jahren 1906 – 1908. In: Mitt. d. k. k. Finanzministeriums, no. 1 1913; Beiträge zur Statistik der Personaleinkommensteuer in den Jahren 1903 bis 1907, Vienna 1908.

17 John W. Boyer, Political Radicalism in Late Imperial Vienna. Origins of the Christian Social Movement 1848 –1897, Chicago-London 1981 (unchanged paperback edition, Chicago 1995).

18 Roman Sandgruber, Traumzeit für Millionäre. Die 929 reichsten Wienerinnen und Wiener im Jahr 1910, Graz – Vienna 2013.

19 Ernst Bruckmüller, Das österreichische Bürgertum zwischen Monarchie und Republik. In: Zeitgeschichte 20/1993, no. 3/4 (Schwerpunkt: Bürgertum) pp. 60–84. In particular, Ernst Bruckmüller – Elisabeth Ulsperger: Friedrich Pachers Einschätzung der materiellen Situation vor und nach dem Ersten Weltkrieg, in: Zeitgeschichte 20/1993, no. 3/4 (Schwerpunkt: Bürgertum), pp. 104–112.

20 Otto Bauer, Die österreichische Revolution, Wien 1923 (now in: Bauer, Werkausgabe, vol. 2, Vienna 1976), S. 755 f.

21 “Es läßt sich nicht zahlenmäßig nicht abschätzen, wie weit der Verarmung-sprozeß fortgeschritten ist. Aber als Tatsache kann er nicht verleugnet werden, wenngleich der äußere Anschein nicht die ganze Wirklichkeit merken läßt weil der Mieterschutz der breiten Masse des Bürgertums die Behauptung ihrer Wohnung und damit des äußeren Rahmens ihrer Existenz ermöglicht...” (It is impossible to quantify how far the impoverishment process has progressed. But it cannot be denied that it is a fact, although the external appearance does not reveal the whole reality, seeing that rent control has made it possible for the broad mass of the bourgeoisie to maintain their apartment and, thus, the outer appearance of their existence.) Das österreichische Wirtschaftsproblem. Denkschrift der österreichisch-deutschen Arbeitsgemeinschaft (Edited by Bruno Enderes, Karl Herrmann, Benedikt Kautsky, Rudolf Kobatsch, Hermann Neubacher, Edmund Palla, Erich Seutter-Lötzen, Gustav Stolper and Max Tayenthal), Vienna 1925, p. 21 f.

22 Marie-Theres Arnbom, Friedmann, Gutmann, Lieben, Mandl, Strakosch. Fünf Familienporträts aus Wien vor 1938, Vienna – Cologne – Weimar 2002.

23 It would be tedious to list the numerous examples. Friedrich Engel-Janosi never forgot to refer to the “wisdom” of the economist Schumpeter that a crown is a crown, cf. F. Engel-Janosi, ... aber ein stolzer Bettler, Graz 1974, 71: “Die Besuche österreichischer Finanzgrößen bei den Eltern hatten schon ihre Spuren in Gestalt voluminöser Pakete von Kriegsanleihen hinterlassen, sie erwiesen sich später als vorzüglich geeignet zu Tapezierungszwecken. (...) Man mußte wirklich ein so bedeutender Nationalökonom wie Professor Schumpeter sein, um dem Zauber der Formel ‘Krone ist Krone’ so völlig zu verfallen ...” (The visits Austrian financial stars made to my parents left their traces in the shape of voluminous packets of war bonds that later proved themselves to be ideal for wallpapering. (…) One would really have to be such an important economist as Professor Schumpeter to completely fall for the magic formula that ‘a crown is a crown’.).

24 Marija Wakounig, Konsumverhalten des Wiener Bürgertums im 19. und 20. Jahrhundert, in: Jahrbuch des Vereins für Geschichte der Stadt Wien 44/45, 1989, pp. 154–86, here p. 174.

25 Stefan Zweig, Die Welt von Gestern. Erinnerungen eines Europäers (Frankfurt/M. 1970).

26 Arnold Madlé, Die Bezüge der öffentlichen Angestellten. In: Julius Bunzel (ed.), Geldentwertung und Stabilisierung in ihren Einflüssen auf die soziale Entwicklung in Österreich (Schriften des Vereins für Sozialpolitik 169, Munich – Leipzig 1925), pp. 131–136. As a comparison, workers and employees received around 75 per cent of their real pre-war wages in 1925.

27 Siegfried Strakosch, Der Selbstmord eines Volkes. Wirtschaft in Österreich, Wien – Leipzig – Munich, 1922, p. 50 f.

28 Franz Haber, Österreichs Wirtschaftsbilanz. Ein Vergleich mit der Vorkriegs­zeit, Munich 1928, p. 95.

29 Strakosch, Selbstmord, p. 110.

30 Ernst Bruckmüller, Sozialstruktur und Sozialpolitik, in: Erika Weinzierl – Kurt Skalnik (eds.), Österreich 1918 – 1938, vol., 1, here pp. 406–407.

31 Bruckmüller, Sozialstruktur und Sozialpolitik, p. 406.

32 Alexander Spitzmüller, “...und hat auch Ursach, es zu lieben.” Vienna – Munich – Stuttgart – Zürich 1955, p. 71.

33 On the Creditanstalt crisis: Spitzmüller, as well as Dieter Stiefel, Finanz-diplomatie und Weltwirtschaftskrise. Die Krise der Creditanstalt für Handel und Gewerbe, Frankfurt/M. 1989. On the application of the enabling act for the war economy, cf. Peter Huemer, Sektionschef Rudolf Hecht und die Zerstörung der Demokratie in Österreich, Vienna 1975.

34 Spitzmüller, ibid., p. 371 ff.

35 Hans Loewenfeld-Russ, Im Kampf gegen den Hunger. Aus den Erinnerungen des Staatssekretärs für Volksernährung 1918–1920, Isabella Ackerl (ed.), Vienna 1986, p. 331 ff.

36 Exemplary for the banking sector: Peter Melichar, Neuordnung im Bankwesen. Die NS-Maßnahmen und die Problematik der Restitution (Veröffentlichungen der Österreichischen Historikerkommission. Vermögensentzug während der NS-Zeit sowie Rückstellungen und Entschädigungen seit 1945 in Österreich, vol. 11, Vienna – Munich 2004); Peter Eigner – Peter Melichar, Enteignungen und Säuberungen – Die österreichischen Banken im Nationalsozialismus, in: Dieter Ziegler (ed.), Banken und “Arisierungen” in Mitteleuropa während des Nationalsozialismus (Geld und Kapital, Jahrbuch der Gesellschaft für mitteleuropäische Banken- und Sparkassengeschichte, Alois Mosser, Alice Teichova, Richard Tilly (eds.), 2001, Stuttgart 2002, pp. 43–118.