Lectures / 04/11/2009 4:46 pm

Red Contra Black in Late Imperial Vienna: Was Karl Lueger the True Architect of the Modern Austrian Political System?

The biographical details of Karl Lueger’s life are well known and not particularly complex, but the impact of his political career is less clearly understood.  Karl Lueger was one of the most significant Mayors in the modern history of the city of Vienna, but he also launched a massive re-structuring of Austrian political life, a pattern of change that lasted many decades after his death.   Lueger's seizure of political power in Vienna in 1895 was an important component of the construction of a modern, competitive party system in Austria, for it challenged the state to allow room for new social movements that would eventually call into question the legitimacy and autonomy of what might be called the "liberal absolutism" of 1867.  

The lecture will be held in English.