National Autonomy for the Jews?

Otto Bauer was born in Vienna into a wealthy and assimilated industrialist family who ensured he received an exceptionally thorough secular education. While studying law at the University of Vienna, Bauer became attracted to socialist thought and circles, joining the Austro-Marxist educational movement Die Zukunft and the Social Democratic Party of Austria. Wrestling with how socialists should engage the competing claims of multiple nationalisms in the Austro-Hungarian Empire, claims that were intertwined with social and educational inequalities and developmental demands, Bauer developed a Marxist argument for certain kinds of national autonomy and self-determination within multinational states. Although Bauer did not extend this theory to Austro-Hungarian Jews, deeming them irreversibly embarked on assimilation, Jewish socialists and nationalists in Eastern Europe engaged seriously with his ideas. Active in Austrian politics after World War I, Bauer was exiled from Austria in 1934 after the Social Democrats’ failed February Uprising. He eventually settled in Paris, where he died months after the Nazi takeover.