43 Facts About Otto Bauer

Otto Bauer was one of the founders and leading thinkers of the left-socialist Austromarxists who sought a middle ground between social democracy and revolutionary socialism.

Otto Bauer was a member of the Austrian Parliament from 1907 to 1934, deputy party leader of the Social Democratic Workers' Party from 1918 to 1934, and Foreign Minister of the Republic of German-Austria in 1918 and 1919.

Otto Bauer was born in Vienna, son of the wealthy, politically liberal Jewish textile manufacturer Philipp Bauer and Katharina Bauer, nee Gerber.

Otto Bauer completed elementary school in Vienna, and high school in Vienna, Merano and Reichenberg.

Otto Bauer went on to study law at the University of Vienna and received his doctorate in 1906.

In 1900 Otto Bauer began to be politically active in the Social Democratic Workers' Party, as the Social Democratic Party of Austria was called before 1945, and became a member of the Free Association of Socialist Students.

Otto Bauer attracted attention when in 1907, at only 26 years old, he submitted the 600-page work.

Otto Bauer entered the House of Deputies in the 1907 election and at the request of party leader Victor Adler became secretary of the Club of Social Democratic Deputies in the Reichsrat.

In 1907 Otto Bauer co-founded and until 1914 was editor of the Social Democratic monthly Der Kampf, of which he remained co-editor until 1934.

In 1914 Otto Bauer met and fell in love with Helene Landau, a married academic and journalist who was ten years his senior.

Otto Bauer took part as a platoon commander in the heavy fighting at Grodek, saved his company from being wiped out at the battle of Szysaki, for which he was awarded the Military Cross of Merit 3rd Class, and on 23 November 1914 was taken prisoner of war by the Russians during a "spirited" attack that he had ordered.

Otto Bauer was allowed to read Russian, English, and French newspapers due to his privileges as an officer, and he did not have to engage in physical labor.

Otto Bauer was formally in army service until 31 October 1918.

On 12 November 1918 the party proposed that Otto Bauer succeed Viktor Adler as Foreign Minister of German-Austria.

Otto Bauer was then appointed to the position by the State Council.

Otto Bauer was one of the most outspoken proponents of the belief in a future with Germany.

At the SDAP party congress on 31 October and 1 November 1918, Otto Bauer stated that from the national standpoint as Germans and from the international standpoint as Social Democrats, they must demand union with Germany.

The Provisional National Assembly voted in favor of the union on 12 November 1918, and on 25 December Otto Bauer addressed a to the victorious powers saying that union with Germany was the only and correct way forward.

Otto Bauer conducted confidential unification negotiations from 27 February to 2 March 1919 with German Foreign Minister Ulrich von Brockdorff-Rantzau, whose representatives in Austria warned internally against joining Germany with the small bankrupt state.

Otto Bauer did not inform his government colleagues of the warning until weeks later and initially nominated Franz Klein, who was known to be an ardent supporter of unification, as head of the delegation to the peace talks at St Germain.

From March to October 1919 Otto Bauer served with Ignaz Seipel of the Christian Socialists on the socialization commission appointed by Parliament.

Otto Bauer's successes were due to the fact that in the course of the post-war economic boom that lasted for about two years, the revolutionary fervor of the working class had diminished considerably.

The SDAP, at Otto Bauer's insistence, left the coalition with the Christian Socialists.

The original push for a new platform had come from Otto Bauer, who was one of the main participants in its development.

Otto Bauer presented it to the party membership in a fiery speech at the SDAP's 1926 convention in Linz, from which the program took its name.

Otto Bauer thought that the Schutzbund and the SDAP would certainly lose.

Otto Bauer supported the Social Democratic underground with his Foreign Office of the Austrian Social Democrats through both his words and his actions.

Otto Bauer's work helped establish the Revolutionary Socialists of Austria under Joseph Buttinger as the successor to the SDAP in 1935.

In 1938, with Nazi Germany's Anschluss of Austria, Otto Bauer emigrated to Brussels, where at the end of March his foreign office merged with the leadership of the Revolutionary Socialists, which had fled Austria, to form the Foreign Mission of the Austrian Socialists.

Joseph Buttinger led AVOES, while Otto Bauer was a prominent member and the editor of the newspaper.

Otto Bauer always praised Germany as a "haven of spirit and progress".

When Karl Renner declared in favor of the Anschluss with Germany because he thought that Nazism would be temporary and no worse than Chancellor Kurt Schuschnigg's authoritarian system, Otto Bauer thought that he was correct.

Kreisky noted that Otto Bauer always considered and felt himself to be German.

On 5 July 1938, at the age of 56, Otto Bauer succumbed to a heart attack in Paris.

Otto Bauer was buried in the Pere Lachaise cemetery opposite the monument to the fighters of the Paris Commune of 1871.

Otto Bauer's ideas were characterized by a mixture of objective analysis, Marxism and other era-specific influences:.

Otto Bauer provided political analyses in many areas, such as his insight that the world was between two world wars at the end of the 1930s and his reflections on rationalization and faulty rationalization.

Otto Bauer's analyses were not followed by guidance for political action.

In terms of historical materialism and in light of the dire economic conditions in Austria in the 1920s, Otto Bauer was convinced that the objective conditions for revolution merely had to be allowed to mature, since it was certain that they would come about.

Opponents accused Otto Bauer of having fled the country in the course of the February 1934 uprising.

In 1914 Otto Bauer rented an apartment in a middle-class building at the corner of Gumpendorfer Strasse 70 and Kasernengasse 2 in Vienna's 6th district of Mariahilf and lived there until he fled Austria in 1934.

Otto Bauer's son Martin, born in 1919, was a successful animator and film producer in Austria who was responsible for numerous remarkable television commercials in the 1950s and 1960s.

Otto's sister Ida Bauer became known as a patient of Sigmund Freud, who wrote a famous case history about her in which he referred to her by the pseudonym "Dora".