Editor-in-chief | Julius Braunthal |
---|---|
Categories | Political magazine |
Frequency | Weekly |
Founder |
|
Founded | 1929 |
First issue | February 1929 |
Final issue | 10 February 1934 |
Country | Austria |
Based in | Vienna |
Language | German |
Der Kuckuck (German: The Cuckoo) was a weekly leftist political magazine which was published in Vienna between 1929 and 1934. It was one of the publications affiliated with the Austrian Social Democratic Party (SDAP). The magazine is known for its use of high-quality photographs. [1] [2]
Der Kuckuck was established by Siegfried Weyr and Julius Braunthal, a member of the SDAP, in February 1929. [3] Braunthal also edited the magazine. [3] [4] The inauguration of Der Kuckuck was announced in Der Kampf , another publication of the SDAP. [3]
Der Kuckuck was headquartered in Vienna and came out weekly. [5] The magazine had 16 pages and a format of 43x32 cm. [5] The weekly targeted the working class readers to offer them an alternative instead of mainstream tabloid weeklies. [2] [3] It featured short illustrated articles on politics, art, culture, technology and sport. [3] [6] It also published serialized novels. [5] Der Kuckuck covered articles on sports, but these articles were limited to the sporting activities of the working class. [7]
Many Austrian and international photojournalists worked for Der Kuckuck such as Hans Popper, Nikolaus Schwarz, Edith Suschitzky, Rudolf Spiegel, Ferdinand Hodek, Willi Zwacek, Leo Ernst, Albert Hilscher, Lothar Rübelt, Bruno Völkel, Ernst Kleinberg, Tina Modotti, Paul Wolff, Willy Riethof, Hans Casparius, Martin Imboden [1] and Edith Tudor-Hart. [8] Overtime the magazine became known for its photomontages [9] and introduced the concept of worker’s photography. [10] The editors regarded the worker's photography as a weapon of the workers' struggle. [10] Der Kuckuck organized photographic contests among its readers to "reflect human life in all its manifestations." [10]
Der Kuckuck was also distributed in Germany and had higher levels of readership. [6] It was banned by the newly elected Nazi government in 1933. [6] In Austria Der Kuckuck managed to sell 50,000 copies in its first year. [1] However, its circulation began to decrease partly due to the decrease in the popularity of the SDAP. [1] The circulation of Der Kuckuck was just 29,000 copies in 1932. [1] Both the SDAP and its publications, including Der Kuckuck, were banned in February 1934. [1] [10] The last issue of the magazine appeared on 10 February 1934. [1]
In 1995 Stefan Riesenfellner and Josef Seiter published a book on Der Kuckuck entitled Der Kuckuck. Die moderne Bildillustrierte des Roten Wien (German: Der Kuckuck. The modern picture magazine of Red Vienna). [5]
Engelbert Dollfuß was an Austrian Fatherland Front politician who served as Chancellor of Austria between 1932 and 1934. Having served as Minister for Forests and Agriculture, he ascended to Federal Chancellor in 1932 in the midst of a crisis for the conservative government. In early 1933, the so called "Selbstausschaltung des Parlaments" happened, which made the Austrian parliament unable to govern. Suppressing the Socialist movement in February 1934 during the Austrian Civil War and later banning the Austrian Nazi Party, he cemented the rule of authoritarian conservatism through the First of May Constitution. Dollfuss was assassinated as part of a failed coup attempt by Nazi agents in 1934. His successor Kurt Schuschnigg maintained the regime until Adolf Hitler's Anschluss in 1938.
Karl Renner was an Austrian politician and jurist of the Social Democratic Workers' Party of Austria. He is often referred to as the "Father of the Republic" because he led the first government of German-Austria and the First Austrian Republic in 1919 and 1920, and was once again decisive in establishing the present Second Republic after the fall of Nazi Germany in 1945, becoming its first President after World War II.
The Heimwehr or Heimatschutz was a nationalist, initially paramilitary group that operated in the First Austrian Republic from 1920 to 1936. It was similar in methods, organization, and ideology to the Freikorps in Germany. The Heimwehr was opposed to parliamentary democracy, socialism and Marxism and fought in various skirmishes against left-wing and foreign groups during the 1920s and 1930s. Some of its regional groups also opposed Nazism while others favored it. In spite of its anti-democratic stance, the Heimwehr developed a political wing called the Heimatblock that was close to the conservative Christian Social Party and took part in both the cabinet of Chancellor Carl Vaugoin in 1930 and in Engelbert Dollfuss' right-wing government from 1932 to 1934. In 1936 the Heimwehr was absorbed into what was at the time the only legally permitted political party in Austria, the Fatherland Front, and then later into the Frontmiliz, an amalgamation of militia units that in 1937 became part of Austria's armed forces.
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. He was a member of the Austrian Parliament from 1907 to 1934, deputy party leader of the Social Democratic Workers' Party (SDAP) from 1918 to 1934, and Foreign Minister of the Republic of German-Austria in 1918 and 1919. In the latter position he worked unsuccessfully to bring about the unification of Austria and the Weimar Republic. His opposition to the SDAP joining coalition governments after it lost its leading position in Parliament in 1920 and his practice of advising the party to wait for the proper historical circumstances before taking action were criticized by some for facilitating Austria's move from democracy to fascism in the 1930s. When the SDAP was outlawed by Austrofascist Chancellor Kurt Schuschnigg in 1934, Bauer went into exile where he continued to work for Austrian socialism until his death.
The Christian Social Party was a major conservative political party in the Cisleithanian crown lands of Austria-Hungary and under the First Austrian Republic, from 1891 to 1934. The party was affiliated with Austrian nationalism that sought to keep Catholic Austria out of the State of Germany founded in 1871, which it viewed as Protestant and Prussian-dominated; it identified Austrians on the basis of their predominantly Catholic religious identity as opposed to the predominantly Protestant religious identity of the Prussians.
The Fatherland Front was the right-wing conservative, nationalist and corporatist ruling political organisation of the Federal State of Austria. It claimed to be a nonpartisan movement, and aimed to unite all the people of Austria, overcoming political and social divisions. Established on 20 May 1933 by Christian Social Chancellor Engelbert Dollfuss as the only legally permitted party in the country, it was organised along the lines of Italian Fascism and was fully aligned with the Catholic Church and did not advocate any racial ideology, as later Italian Fascism did. It advocated Austrian nationalism and independence from Germany on the basis of protecting Austria's Catholic religious identity from what they considered a Protestant-dominated German state.
Red Vienna was the colloquial name for the capital of Austria between 1918 and 1934, when the Social Democratic Workers' Party of Austria (SDAP) maintained almost unilateral political control over Vienna and, for a short time, Austria as a whole. During this time, the SDAP pursued a rigorous program of construction projects across the city in response to severe housing shortages and implemented policies to improve public education, healthcare, and sanitation.
The Republikanischer Schutzbund was an Austrian paramilitary organization established in 1923 by the Social Democratic Workers' Party (SDAPÖ) to secure power in the face of rising political radicalization after World War I.
Edith Tudor-Hart was an Austrian-British photographer and spy for the Soviet Union. Brought up in a family of socialists, she trained in photography at Walter Gropius's Bauhaus in Dessau, and carried her political ideals through her art. Through her connections with Arnold Deutsch, Tudor-Hart was instrumental in the recruiting of the Cambridge Spy ring which damaged British intelligence from World War II until the security services discovered all their identities by the mid-1960s. She recommended Litzi Friedmann and Kim Philby for recruitment by the KGB and acted as an intermediary for Anthony Blunt and Bob Stewart when the rezidentura at the Soviet Embassy in London suspended its operations in February 1940.
Austromarxism was a Marxist theoretical current led by Victor Adler, Otto Bauer, Karl Renner, Max Adler and Rudolf Hilferding, members of the Social Democratic Workers' Party of Austria in Austria-Hungary and the First Austrian Republic, and later supported by Austrian-born revolutionary and assassin of the Imperial Minister-President Count von Stürgkh, Friedrich Adler. It is known for its theory of nationality and nationalism, and its attempt to conciliate it with socialism in the imperial context. More generally, the Austromarxists strove to achieve a synthesis between social democracy and revolutionary socialism. Uniquely, Austromarxists posited that class consciousness in the working class could be achieved more organically through the maintenance of national autonomy, in contrast to the internationalist perspective and the notion of the party vanguard popular in orthodox Marxist circles elsewhere in Europe.
Julius Braunthal (1891–1972) was an Austrian-born historian, magazine editor, and political activist. Braunthal is best remembered as the Secretary of the Socialist International from 1951 to 1956 and for his massive three volume History of the International, first published in German between 1961 and 1971.
Friedrich Wolfgang "Fritz" Adler was an Austrian socialist politician, physicist, philosopher and journalist. He is perhaps best known for his assassination of Minister-President Karl von Stürgkh in 1916.
Bertha Braunthal was a communist politician in Germany from the party's creation in 1920 till her emigration to London in 1933. She was also a first-wave feminist.
Bruno Frei was a political (Marxist) writer and journalist. He was born in Preßburg which at that time was part of the Austro-Hungarian empire, and the family moved to Vienna in 1909. Following the frontier changes mandated in 1919, he spent much of his adult life and career in that city, although he spent six of the Hitler years exiled in Mexico.
Rosa Jochmann was an Austrian resistance activist and Ravensbrück concentration camp survivor who became a politician (SPÖ).
The Landtag of Lower Austria is the state parliament of the Austrian state of Lower Austria. It exercises the state legislation (legislature). The seat of the Landtag is in St. Pölten in the Landhausviertel.
Wilhelmine Moik was an Austrian politician and trade unionist.
Alfred Braunthal was an Austrian trade unionist and social scientist.
Der Kampf was a monthly political magazine published in the period between 1907 and 1938. It was first headquartered in Vienna and then in Prague and Brno. It was affiliated with the Austrian Social Democratic Party (SDAP), and its subtitle was Sozialdemokratische Monatsschrift.
Das Kleine Blatt was an Austrian newspaper which was published in Vienna. The paper was affiliated with the Social Democratic Workers' Party, known as the Social Democratic Party. It was started in 1927 and published until 1971 with some interruptions.