Kostas Raptis

From imperial to Red Vienna: The First World War crisis and its aftermath

No other European capital city was confronted with such a crisis in First World War and its aftermath as Vienna did. The paper deals with the impact of the War on the life, function, social character and political role of the city, which was the epicenter of the collapse of the Habsburg Empire, the second largest state in 1914 Europe with a population of 53 millions and in the aftermath of the war was transformed to the capital city of the small and according to many contemporaries not viable Republic of Austria. Between mainly 1917 und 1919 extreme food-, coal-, accommodation- and other shortages, hunger, cold, undernourishment, tuberculosis, as well as hyperinflation stigmatized the every day life of the great majority of the Viennese population. Through the traumatic experience of defeat, dissolution and the revolutionary circumstances the city’s population found an at least temporary way out of the crisis by voting for the Social Democrats and contributing to the founding of a social welfare municipal and federal city-state, well-known as red Vienna.