The Publicity Department of the Austrian Fatherland Front served the Ständestaat regime (1933–38). An elaborate organization on paper, the Fatherland Front's actual work was bound up in the performance of para-fascism and the surveillance of opposing parties. Each of these modes of being mutually reinforced the need for the other and created a unique self-awareness of failure within the movement. As such, the Publicity Department offers a microcosm of the larger challenges of the Ständestaat, which faltered in the face of economic collapse, political violence, and a population largely indifferent to its attempt to secure Austrian sovereignty in the 1930s.

Healthy bodies were central to the welfare projects of Red Vienna, 1919–34. This article traces the discourse of care surrounding single mothers and their children within the interwar Viennese welfare system, paying particular attention to the ways their bodies were described, monitored, and maximized for social utility. It establishes a shift in the perception of “worth” for these citizens, and then contrasts this stated value with the remembered experiences of children growing up without legal fathers in Red Vienna.

There is a renewed interest in writing about the First Republic among Austrian historians. As always, it is political: how to frame the collapse of the empire, how to address the political divides of the era, whether to attribute “fascism” to the Ständestaat, what constitutes history, and what is mere description. The following essay takes into account five new and large additions to the canon.

Each version of the European welfare state developed out of particular historical contexts. The modern Austrian welfare state was developed in “Red Vienna” as a response to the perceived dysgenic emergency of World War I and strong doubts about the Lebensfähigkeit (viability, “ability for life”) of the young nation itself. Eugenic thought was central to the Vienna Welfare Ministry's mission, activity, and appeal to both a local and international audience. The welfare system implemented in Vienna in the interwar years worked to sustain and amplify the city's viability by creating hygienic conditions that Dr. Julius Tandler, its founder, believed would positively alter the very constitutions of its citizens and make possible a “coming generation” of healthy children.