Sport and Social Difference in Vienna around 1900: On the Historical Significance of Otto Herschmann

Abstract

This paper presents the influential Austrian sports publicist, official and athlete Otto Herschmann (1877–1942). He created a unique contemporary document with his book Viennese Sport in 1904. This book is a key text for understanding the political and social condition of sport in Vienna in its constituent phase. Despite this, the book has been virtually unrecognized even in the relevant literature. The study examines the social and political situation of sport in the central European metropolis of Vienna around 1900, focusing primarily on the class relations of sporting practices. The overall question is how British sport diffused into the stratified society of the Habsburg Monarchy. The main sources are Herschmann’s book and contemporary newspaper reports which are contextualized with the relevant secondary literature. The theoretical framework of the study is provided by Bourdieu’s reflections on the differentiation of the ‘semi-autonomous field of forces’ of sport, as he set them out in the two texts Historical and Social Preconditions of Modern Sport and Program for a Sociology of Sport. Overall, it becomes apparent that there was no uniform, linear establishment practice of sport in Vienna around 1900.