Culture and Politics in Red Vienna: Introduction

Abstract

Culture and Politics inRed Vienna Introduction JUDITH BENISTON* The filmDas Notizbuchdes Mr Pirn/ Mr Pirn sTrip to Europe (1930) tellsthe story of an American journalist who visits Vienna in order to investigate rumours that a decade of Socialist rule has brought the city to the brink of collapse. It is a welcome assignment for the reporter, since his daughter Phyllis happens to be living in the Austrian capital and has formed a romantic attachment to a young Socialist. Das Notizbuch des Mr Pirn is structured around competing and contradictory narratives. While notes taken during an interview with a right-wing journalist ? a convenient device in a silent film ? tell of economic and cultural decline, of the very great damage that the empowerment of the workers has done to 'das sch?ne alte Wien' [beautiful old Vienna], this account and its nostalgia for 'das goldene Wienerherz' [the golden heart of Vienna] are repeatedly juxtaposed with images of capitalist exploitation, militarism, extreme poverty and grim living conditions in the pre-1918 period. The charges against the Socialist administration are then refuted, almost point by point, as Phyllis and her fianc? show their visitor (who, like that other American archetype, Homer Simpson, hails from Springfield, USA!) around the new Vienna, notably taking him to Karl-Marx-Hof in order to disprove the claim that the showpiece of the municipal house building programme is already in need of repair. Only after Mr Pirn has been knocked down by a car and finds himself in the position of owing his life to a blood transfusion from the man whom he had previously called a fool for putting the good of others before his own well-being is he completely won over. Following this symbolic event, the anti-Socialist narrative is effectively abandoned in favour of a celebratory Cooks Tour of the achievements of 'Red Vienna' that includes shots of Gemeindebauten and Siedlungen, of dental clinics and layettes presented to new mothers, of workers' libraries and educational institutions, of modern schools and kindergartens, of swimming pools I am grateful to Wolfgang Maderthaner at the Verein f?r Geschichte der Arbeiter bewegung inVienna and to Sylvia Wurm-Mattl at theWienbibliothek im Rathaus for assist ance and advice, and to the following institutions for providing access to archive materials: the Film Archiv, Austria; the Wien Museum; and the J?disches Museum,Vienna. 2 Introduction and sports facilities, and culminates in footage of the many thousands of workers who every year paraded along the Ringstrasse as part of the May Day celebrations. Made by the Social Democrats as propaganda for the national elections in 1930 and directed by Frank Ward Rossak, Das Notizbuch desMr Pirn endeavours to create a virtuous circle: it thematizes the motif of Red Vienna proudly displaying its achievements to the outside world and winning the plaudits of even hyper-capitalist America, using that fiction (and the reality it reflects) as a means to drum up electoral support at home. Although the City Council was keenly aware that, all around the world, attitudes towards the viability of democratic Socialism would be significantly influenced by the success or otherwise of the Viennese experiment, the primacy of the domestic agenda over foreign approval is ironically signalled at the end of the film, when the young couple reveal that they did not wait for her father's blessing and have already been married for several months. While the radicalism of, in particular, municipal taxation, housing and welfare policy depended on maintaining an absolute majority inmunicipal elections and therefore needed wide public assent within the city, the Party leadership also chose, perhaps ill advisedly, to foreground its achievements in the capital in national elect ion campaigns, where for much of the period a few hundred thousand more votes would have given the Social Democrats an overall majority.1 As is suggested in Das Notizbuch des Mr Pirn, the huge amount of negative publicity generated by its opponents helped tomake Vienna's Socialist administration intensely image-conscious and aware of the need for effective communication with those it served and with the wider world. Anyone who engages with the culture and politics of Red Vienna is faced with a wealth of...