Karl Lueger’s rise to Mayor of Vienna

The ‘Aulic Councillor of the Revolution’, as Victor Adler was known, was opposed by the ‘Colossus of Vienna’, Karl Lueger. As leader of the Christian Social Party, the latter drew his support from the small-scale traders who, particularly after the stock market crash of 1873,  felt themselves increasingly threatened by capitalism. Lueger relied on anti-capitalist, anti-industrial and, above all, anti-Semitic propaganda. His extreme polarizing rhetoric was directed against those in power, liberals, capitalists and aristocrats. In the hostile image of the ‘capitalist Jew’ he saw the root of all evil. Many of the Jews living in Vienna had become established members of the educated and professional middle classes.

Lueger’s authoritarian and anti-Semitic style of leadership – which Adolf Hitler also emulated and whose fatal consequences are well known – brought him victory in the 1895 election and thus the office of Mayor of Vienna. But he was only able to take up the office in 1897 after a number of repeated elections, since Emperor Franz Joseph had repeatedly refused to confirm his appointment because of his radical anti-Semitism.

Towards the end of the nineteenth century, the influence of the mass parties increasingly obliged Emperor Franz Joseph to acquiesce to the wishes of the population. Moreover, the conflicts between the various nationalities within the Empire became more and more aggressive. The Monarchy had become unstable, in terms of both foreign and domestic policy, and this was ultimately to lead to the outbreak of the First World War.