Red Vienna: experiment in working class culture, 1919-1934. - Helmut Gruber
From 1919 to 1934, the Socialist government in Vienna sought to create a comprehensive working-class culture, striving to provide a foretaste of the socialist utopia in the present. In Red Vienna, Gruber critically examines the impact of this experiment in all areas of life, from massive public housing projects and health and education programs to socialist parades, festivals, and sporting events designed to create a "new" working class.
Red and Black Vienna
I had the good fortune of getting airfare and a lovely flat in Vienna for two weeks, June 16-27, in exchange for doing a talk related to my book Paths toward Utopia (PM Press, 2012) as part of the Unsocial Sociability exhibition at Kunstraum Lakeside, Klagenfurt, Austria. As usual, getting to know a city is, for me, all about walking for hours without knowing where I'll end up, and in the first of my many strolls, including right outside the front door of my flat, I noticed an unusual amount of anarchist/autonomist/antifa street art. So began my obsession of taking snapshots of a good amount of what I chanced on, though far from all of what I saw.
Unused farm land occupied in Vienna
Asylum seekers occupy a church in Vienna
Frustrated at the lack of help from the local or national government, being kept in terrible conditions, and frequent threats of deportation, 100 asylum seekers have occupied a church in Vienna – 27 of whom are now on hunger strike. Despite the possibility of alternative accommodation being found they are refusing to leave due to so many disappointments in the past.