Copilot said: Innsbruck is home to many famous sights, monuments, and spectacular buildings. The Golden Roof and the Bergisel Ski Jump attract tens of thousands of visitors every year. Less imposing, but arguably more important for the city's development during the turbulent first half of the 20th century, were other buildings. From the second half of the 1920s onward, major projects were implemented to alleviate the greatest hardship faced by many Innsbruck residents, who were living in barracks or crowded together with relatives in extremely confined conditions. Entire new districts were created, complete with kindergartens, schools, parks, and recreational facilities. One of the master builders who left a lasting mark on Innsbruck during this period was Theodor Prachensky (1888–1970). The story of his forty-year career in the service of the City of Innsbruck reads like a summary of Austrian history in the early twentieth century. Prachensky worked as both an architect and a civil servant under five different political systems. The Austro-Hungarian Empire was followed by the First Republic, which in turn gave way to the authoritarian Corporate State. In 1938 came the annexation by Nazi Germany, and in 1945, with the end of the war, the Second Republic was proclaimed. Like many artists, architects, and builders of his generation, Prachensky laid the foundations for his career at what is today the Higher Technical College (HTL). In 1908, he graduated from the construction engineering department of the Imperial-Royal State Trade School (k.k. Staatsgewerbeschule) in Innsbruck. Just one year later, he moved to Merano to gain his first experience with large-scale building projects at the renowned architectural firm Musch & Lun. In 1913, he returned to Innsbruck. In the same year, he married Maria, the sister of his friend Franz Baumann, moved into the Prachensky House, which he had designed himself at Bergiselweg 20, and began his employment with the Innsbruck City Administration under Senior Building Councillor Jakob Albert. This decision to enter public service would prove fortunate during the economically difficult years after the war, even though it required him to curb some of his creative ambitions. First, however, he was called to the front. Although Prachensky opposed the war, he volunteered for military service in 1915 as a one-year volunteer with the Tyrolean Imperial Rifles (Tiroler Kaiserjäger). Whether he was motivated by expectations associated with his position as a civil servant or by the widespread patriotic enthusiasm of the time can no longer be determined.

Nach dem Krieg kehrte er ins wirtschaftlich schwer angeschlagene Innsbruck zurück. Seine wegweisenden, wohl auch vom sozialdemokratischen Gedankengut seines Vaters Josef beeinflussten Projekte konnten erst nach den ersten und schwierigsten Nachkriegsjahren begonnen werden. Den Anfang machte der Schlachthausblock im Saggen zwischen 1922 und 1925. Es folgten der Mandelsbergerblock, der Pembaurblock sowie Kindergarten und Hauptschule in der Pembaurstraße, die ebenfalls für die wachsende Arbeiterschaft gedacht waren. Auch das 1931 entworfene Arbeitsamt war eine wichtige Neuerung im Sozialwesen. Seit der Republikgründung 1918 half das Arbeitsamt bei der Vermittlung von Arbeitssuchenden und Arbeitgebern und der Eindämmung der Arbeitslosigkeit.

The next major turning point after the First World War and the economic crisis was the succession of changes in Austria’s political system. Despite Dollfuss’s seizure of power and the banning of the Social Democratic Party in 1933, followed by Austria’s annexation to the German Reich in 1938, Prachensky was able to remain a senior civil servant and continued to influence the appearance of Innsbruck. Together with Jakob Albert, he implemented the residential developments that became known as the South Tyrolean Settlements (Südtiroler Siedlungen) under the National Socialist regime from 1939 onward. Unlike several members of his family, he himself never became a member of the Nazi Party. The Social Democratic influence of his father remained too strong, and this influence is reflected in his architecture. After the Second World War, he remained in office as Senior Building Councillor of the City of Innsbruck for another eight years. In addition to his work as an urban planner and architect, Prachensky was a passionate painter. He died in Innsbruck at the age of eighty-two.

The projects realized by Prachensky are not as spectacular as the mountain stations designed by his brother-in-law Franz Baumann or Lois Welzenbacher’s high-rise building. His surviving structures often appear sober and purely functional, yet reveal their fascination upon closer inspection. Particularly remarkable is the symbolism that Prachensky repeatedly incorporated into his work. Looking at his drawings in the Archive of Architecture at the University of Innsbruck, one quickly recognizes that he was as much an artist as a technician. Many of his designs, such as the Social Democratic People’s House (Sozialdemokratisches Volkshaus) on Salurnerstraße, his Kaiserschützen Memorial, and the Peace and Heroes Church (Friedens- und Heldenkirche), were never built. Innsbruck nevertheless contains many of Prachensky’s buildings that document the history of the interwar period and the changing political and governmental influences under which he himself lived. These include the large residential complexes of the 1920s and 1930s, the War Memorial Chapel (Krieger-Gedächtniskapelle) at Pradl Cemetery, and the old employment office (note: today an annex of the University of Innsbruck, located behind the current AMS employment service building in Wilten). The War Memorial Chapel at Pradl Cemetery, the Kaiserschützen Chapel at Tummelplatz, designed together with Clemens Holzmeister, as well as his unrealized proposals for a Kaiserjäger memorial and the Peace and Heroes Church of Innsbruck, reflect both his own experiences of war and the longing for peace shared by many of his contemporaries. His sons, grandsons, and great-grandchildren carried forward his creative legacy as architects, designers, photographers, and painters in a variety of disciplines. In 2017, parts of the multi-generational body of work created by the Prachensky family of artists were honored in an exhibition at the former Adambräu Brewery.

Hardly any era is more difficult to grasp than the interwar period. The Roaring Twenties, jazz, and automobiles come to mind just as readily as inflation and economic crisis. In major cities like Berlin, young women carrying themselves as flappers with bobbed hair, cigarettes, and short skirts danced lasciviously to the new sounds. In Innsbruck, American drinks were served during Five O'Clock Tea at the bar in the Knights' Hall (Rittersaal) of the Cafe Gasthaus Zur Annasäule, which later became the Alt-Innsbruck. The suits of armor can still be admired in the bay window from Maria-Theresien-Straße. For the most part, however, as part of the young Republic of German-Austria, Innsbruck’s population belonged to the faction of poverty, economic crisis, and political polarization. Right from the start, the proclamation of the republic in front of the parliament in Vienna before more than 100,000 people—who were less enthusiastic than they were curious and unsettled—was anything but smooth, accompanied by riots, shootouts, two deaths, and 40 injuries. No one knew how things were supposed to continue after the end of the monarchy and the loss of a large part of the state territory. The new Austria seemed too small and incapable of surviving. The bureaucratic apparatus of the Austro-Hungarian Empire carried on seamlessly under a new flag and name. In the constitution, the federal states, as successors to the old crown lands, were granted a great deal of leeway in legislation and administration under the framework of federalism. However, enthusiasm for the new state among the population remained limited. Not only was the supply situation miserable after the loss of the vast majority of the former giant Habsburg empire, but people also distrusted the underlying concept of the republic. The monarchy had not been perfect, but very few people could relate to the idea of democracy. Instead of being subjects of the Emperor, people were now citizens, but only citizens of a dwarf state with an oversized capital that was little loved in the federal states, rather than citizens of a great empire. In the former crown lands, which were largely governed by the Christian Social Party, people frequently spoke of the "Viennese hydrocephalus" (Wiener Wasserkopf) that let itself be fed by the yields of the hardworking rural population. Other federal states also toyed with the idea of breaking away from the republic after the plan to join Germany, which was supported by all parties, was banned by the victorious powers of the First World War. The various Tyrolean plans, however, were particularly spectacular. From a neutral alpine state with other federal states, a free state consisting of Tyrol and Bavaria, or extending from Kufstein to Salurn, an annexation to Switzerland, all the way to a Catholic church-state under papal leadership, many options were considered. The most obvious solution was particularly popular. Feeling German was nothing new. So why not also attach oneself politically to the big brother to the north? This desire was highly pronounced, especially among urban elites and students. The annexation plan (Anschlussplan) received 98% approval in a vote in Tyrol, but it never came to fruition. In Innsbruck, the Tyrolean National Assembly (Tiroler Nationalversammlung) and the Tyrolean National Council (Tiroler Nationalrat)—a concentration government with members from all parties—constituted themselves in the autumn of 1918 from the members of the former provincial parliament (Landtag). The National Council had authority over the people's and citizens' militias (Volks- und Bürgerwehren), which had formed at the municipal level to maintain public order, at least on paper. Primarily between Innsbruck and the Brenner Pass, up to 50,000 soldiers were stationed at the railway stations, causing problems while waiting for their transport home.

Instead of becoming a part of Germany, Tyrol was occupied by the hated Wallsche (Italian forces). For nearly two years after the end of the war, Italian troops occupied Innsbruck. Following the complex and lengthy peace negotiations in Paris, it finally became a certainty: on October 10, 1920, the formal annexation of South Tyrol took place. At the Brenner Pass, the barrier gate went down. On the North Tyrolean side, only a few administrative and customs buildings were erected, but in the southern part of the village, large barracks shot out of the ground to secure the new border militarily. Historical Tyrol was split in two. In Innsbruck and many other Tyrolean municipalities, pompous mourning ceremonies were organized annually on this date for years. In 1924, the Innsbruck city council decided to name squares and streets around the main railway station after South Tyrolean cities. Bozner Platz as well as Brixner Straße and Salurner Straße still bear their names today. Many people on both sides of the Brenner felt betrayed. Although they had by no means won the war, they did not see themselves as losers to Italy. Hatred toward Italians reached its peak in the interwar period, even though the occupying forces acted with pronounced mildness. A passage from the 1930s short story collection "The Front Above the Peaks" (Die Front über den Gipfeln) by Karl Springenschmid reflects the general mood:

"The young girl says, 'Becoming Italian would be the worst thing.

Old Tappeiner just nods and grumbles: "I know it myself and we all know it: becoming a whale would be the worst thing."

Trouble was also brewing in domestic politics. The revolution in Russia and the subsequent civil war with millions of fatalities, expropriation, and a complete reversal of the system cast its long shadow all the way to Austria. The prospect of "Soviet conditions" terrified people. Austria was deeply divided. Capital and federal states, city and countryside, citizens, workers, and peasants—in the vacuum of the first postwar years, each group wanted to shape the future according to its own ideas. The cultural struggles of the late monarchy between conservatives, liberals, and socialists continued seamlessly. The rift existed not only on a political level. Morals, family, leisure activities, education, faith, legal understanding—every sphere of life was affected. Who should govern? How should wealth, rights, and duties be distributed? Liberals and the Tyrolean People's Party (Tiroler Volkspartei), which had emerged from the Peasants' League (Bauernbund), the People's Association (Volksverein), and the Catholic Working Class (Katholische Arbeiterschaft), were at least as hostile toward Social Democracy as they were toward the federal capital of Vienna and the Italian occupiers. A communist overthrow was not a real danger, especially in Tyrol, but it was effectively instrumentalized in the media as a threat to bring Social Democracy into disrepute. Although a workers', peasants', and soldiers' council (Arbeiter-, Bauern- und Soldatenrat) modeled on the Soviet system had proclaimed itself in Innsbruck in 1919, its influence remained minimal and it was supported by no political party. From 1920 onward, so-called soldiers' councils were officially formed, but like the rest of politics, they were dominated by the Christian Socials. The conservative peasant and bourgeois camp right of center militarized itself more professionally with the Tyrolean Homeland Guard (Tiroler Heimatwehr) and enjoyed a stronger influx of members than leftist groups, also thanks to church support. From church pulpits and in conservative media, Social Democracy was referred to as the "party of Jews" (Judenpartei) and homeless traitors to the fatherland. People were all too eager to blame them for the lost war and its consequences. The Tiroler Anzeiger summed up the public fears: "Woe to the Christian people if the Jew-Socialists win the elections!".

While the Tyrolean People's Party dominated in rural districts, Social Democracy in Innsbruck under the leadership of Martin Rapoldi always managed to win between 30% and 50% of the vote in elections from 1919 onward, despite the strong headwinds. Under the new municipal code of 1919, which provided for universal suffrage for all adults, the city council comprised 40 members. Out of 24,644 citizens called to the ballot box, an incredible 24,060 exercised their right to vote. A certain degree of emancipation also became noticeable. Right from the first city council with free elections, three women were represented. The fact that the Social Democrats did not secure the mayoral seat was due to the majorities in the city council formed by alliances among the other parties.

High politics, however, was merely the backdrop to the actual misery. Martin Rapoldi got straight to the point in September 1919: "Gentlemen, for the moment the constitutional question is completely secondary to the population, as is whether the province has more rights or fewer rights. More potatoes is the slogan in our province." Time and again, looting and hunger riots broke out in the provincial capital. Those who had money could supply themselves with food on the black market; the rest depended on charity from foreign aid shipments. Long after the war, the province of Tyrol still required outside help to feed its population. Under the headline "Significant Expansion of the American Child Relief Action in Tyrol," the Innsbrucker Nachrichten reported on April 9, 1921: "Taking into account the needs of the province of Tyrol, the American representatives for Austria have most generously increased the daily number of meals to 18,000 portions." Alongside hunger, medical care was a major issue. The epidemic that went down in history as the Spanish Flu also took its toll in Innsbruck in the years after the war. Exact numbers were not recorded; worldwide, the number of fatalities is estimated at 27 to 50 million. In Innsbruck, at the height of the Spanish Flu, around 100 victims are said to have succumbed to the disease daily. Many Innsbruckers had not returned home from the battlefields and were missing as fathers, husbands, and workers. Many of those who did make it back were wounded and scarred by the horrors of war. As late as February 1920, the "Tyrolean Committee of Siberians" (Tiroler Ausschuss der Sibirier) organized a benefit evening at the Gasthof Breinößl "…in favor of the fund for the repatriation of our prisoners of war…". On top of this came unemployment. Civil servants and public sector employees in particular had lost their jobs after the League of Nations tied its loan to harsh austerity measures. Public sector salaries were cut. Strikes occurred repeatedly. Tourism as an economic factor was nonexistent due to the problems in the surrounding countries, which were likewise ravaged by the war. The construction industry, which had been booming before the war, collapsed completely. Innsbruck’s largest company, Huter & Söhne, had over 700 employees in 1913; at the peak of the economic crisis in 1933, only 18 remained. The middle class largely collapsed. The average Innsbrucker was destitute and malnourished. Often, no more than 800 calories per day could be scraped together. In this climate of poverty, the crime rate was higher than ever before. Many people lost their homes. In 1922, 3,000 families in Innsbruck were looking for accommodation despite a municipal emergency housing program that had already been in effect for several years. Apartments were built into every available property. On February 11, 1921, a long list in the Innsbrucker Nachrichten detailing the individual projects under way included this item:

"The municipal hospital has vacated the epidemic barracks in Pradl and placed them at the disposal of the municipality for the creation of emergency housing. The necessary credit of 295 K (Editor's note: Kronen) was approved for the construction of 7 emergency apartments."

In the early years, there was hardly any improvement in people's everyday lives. The central government had little enforcement power in distant federal states like Tyrol. For a time, Innsbruck, like many other Austrian municipalities, even began printing its own money. The amount of money in circulation rose from 12 billion kronen to over 3 trillion kronen between 1920 and 1922. An epochal inflation was the result. Then, politics woke up from its lethargy. Under Chancellor Ignaz Seipel, the Republic managed to secure a League of Nations loan. The krone, a relic of the monarchy, was replaced by the schilling as the official currency of Austria on January 1, 1925. Between 1918 and 1922, the old currency had lost more than 95% of its value against the dollar relative to the pre-war exchange rate. With the currency stabilization following the League of Nations loan, however, not only did banks and citizens recover, but public sector construction orders also picked up again. Innsbruck modernized. What economists call a sham boom (Scheinblüte) occurred. This short-term economic recovery was a bubble, but it brought major residential construction and infrastructure projects to the city of Innsbruck. In Innsbruck, there are no deliberate places of remembrance dedicated to the creation of the First Republic. The heritage-protected residential complexes such as the Schlachthofblock, the Pembaurblock, the Mandelsbergerblock, the Pembaurschule, the municipal indoor swimming pool (Städtisches Hallenbad), the Höhenstraße up to the Hungerburg, and the cable cars onto the Patscherkofel and Nordkette are contemporary witnesses that remain in operation to this day. The city purchased the Achensee lake and, as the main shareholder of TIWAG, built the power plant in Jenbach. In 1930, the Universitätsbrücke bridge connected the clinic in Wilten with the Höttinger Au. On the Sill river, the Pembaurbrücke and the Prinz-Eugen-Brücke were constructed. In Reichenau, the first airfield opened on June 1, 1925, involving Innsbruck in air traffic 65 years after the opening of the railway line. Many interested onlookers gathered on the meadow east of the city to witness the event. A monument to the pilots who fell in the World War was unveiled before the German airline Aero Lloyd took off for Munich in a single-engine Fokker-Grulich F III. In the autumn, the integration of the new airfield into the Strasbourg – Zurich – Innsbruck – Vienna route by the French Compagnie Internationale de Navigation followed. Thanks to the daring efforts of pilot Raoul Stojsawljewic, remote regions and alpine mountain huts could now also be supplied with food from Innsbruck, as a report in the Innsbrucker Nachrichten from June 7, 1926, shows:

"In fine weather yesterday morning, Major Stojsawljewic from German Lufthansa took off with his aircraft and flew toward Kühtai, where he dropped free beer, donated by the 'Löwenbräu' brewery, by parachute from a low altitude. At 10 o'clock, the Patscherkofelhaus was approached and beer from the Zipf brewery was dropped..."

Trotz der kurzzeitigen Höhenflüge war die Erste Republik auch auf lokaler Ebene eine schwere Geburt und sie sollte nicht lange Bestand haben, obwohl viel Positives seinen Anfang nahm. Aus Untertanen wurden Bürger. Was in der Zeit Maria Theresias begann, wurde nun unter neuen Vorzeichen weitergeführt. Der Wechsel vom Untertanen zum Bürger zeichnete sich nicht nur durch ein neues Wahlrecht, sondern vor allem durch die verstärkte Obsorge des Staates aus. Staatliche Regelungen, Schulen, Kindergärten, Arbeitsämter, Krankenhäuser und städtische Wohnanlagen traten an die Stelle des Wohlwollens von Grundherrn, Landesfürsten, wohlhabender Bürger, der Monarchie und der Kirche. Bis heute basiert vieles im österreichischen Staatswesen sowie im Innsbrucker Stadtbild und der Infrastruktur auf dem, was nach dem Zusammenbruch der Monarchie entstanden war. Auch gesellschaftliche Bräuche und alltägliche Lebenseinstellungen veränderten sich in der Republik nach dem Zusammenbruch der Monarchie. Der 1925 eingeführte Weltspartag erinnert alljährlich an die Einführung des Schillings und die Mahnung an Kinder und Erwachsene zum verantwortungsvollen Umgang mit Geld. Die Handschrift der jungen Massenparteien und das neue Verhältnis zwischen Zentralstaat und Bürger sind bei allem Lokalpatriotismus unübersehbar.

Martin Rapoldi (1880–1926) and his wife Maria (1884–1975) were among the most remarkable figures in Innsbruck’s municipal politics during the first half of the twentieth century. Martin Rapoldi had come to Innsbruck via Carinthia, Vienna, and Bohemia. During his apprenticeship as a carpenter, he was first exposed to socially critical ideas. Together with other apprentices, he founded a kind of anarchist trade union in Klagenfurt with youthful enthusiasm. In Vienna and Žatec, in what is now the Czech Republic, he became active in the trade union movement and in the Social Democratic Party, which had only recently been officially established. In 1904, he moved to Innsbruck, where the man in his mid-twenties soon distinguished himself as an ambitious organizer and an inspiring public speaker. Thanks to his linguistic talent, he took over the Volkszeitung, the mouthpiece of the Tyrolean Social Democrats, in the years that followed. Despite the initial enthusiasm for entering the war, which also existed within the Social Democratic movement, Rapoldi, who was known as an anti-clerical priest-hater, soon advocated for peace and for the introduction of universal suffrage at the municipal level as well. In the early years of the First Republic, he enjoyed a brief but steep political rise. He was elected to the Tyrolean Parliament and became a member of the first National Council in Vienna. In Innsbruck, he succeeded in making the Social Democrats the strongest party on the municipal council. However, due to the anti-socialist stance of the other factions on the council, he was never able to assume the office of mayor. His particular concerns were housing construction and the municipal energy supply. During Rapoldi’s time on the council, the major projects known as the Schlachthofblock in Dreiheiligen and the Pembaurblock in Pradl, together with a school and kindergarten, were built. He was also instrumental in establishing the Innsbruck Light Works, today’s Innsbrucker Kommunalbetriebe (Innsbruck Municipal Utilities). His greatest achievement was the acquisition of Lake Achensee and the Achensee Railway. As early as 1911, under Mayor Wilhelm Greil, the City of Innsbruck negotiated with the Bavarian monastery of Fiecht to purchase the lake for a hydroelectric power station serving the city’s electricity utility. The war interrupted these plans. In 1919, negotiations between the municipal council and the monastery concerning the purchase of Lake Achensee resumed. The purchase price was ultimately fixed at 1.2 million crowns, plus the monastery’s own electricity requirements. Financing proved difficult in the financially strained postwar period. Until 1924, the federal government granted tax relief for municipalities constructing hydroelectric power plants. At the last moment, TIWAG (Tyrolean Hydroelectric Power Company) was founded, with the City of Innsbruck as the majority shareholder, and the purchase could finally be completed. According to legend, because of the inflation between 1919 and 1924, the value of the purchase price at the time of payment was no longer enough to buy a lake, but only a gentleman’s suit. When the city sold the lake to TIWAG sixty years later, it generated nearly one billion Austrian schillings, enough to pay off the city’s debts. In 1926, the "Red Carpenter" died at the young age of 46 from the consequences of a kidney infection.

The biography of his wife Maria is no less impressive. In her parents’ household in Wörgl, she came into contact with Social Democratic ideas at an early age. Trained as a bookkeeper, she moved to Innsbruck. It was probably through her work for the health insurance fund that she met her future husband, whom she married in 1905. Despite raising two young daughters, Maria was already active in 1912 at the provincial women’s conference of the Social Democrats. After her husband’s death, she remained actively involved in the Social Democratic movement. As an employee of the Volkszeitung, she repeatedly came under the scrutiny of the Fatherland Front during the years of Austrofascism. After the Volkszeitung was banned as part of the regime’s censorship measures, she had to struggle to make a living as an unemployed widow. She opened a stamp shop in Innsbruck’s Old Town. At the same time, she was involved underground in the Red Aid (Rote Hilfe), an organization that supported the families of imprisoned members of the Republican Protection League (Republikanischer Schutzbund). During the National Socialist era, she was imprisoned for a short period. After the war, she emerged from the shadow of her husband Martin, who had died at a young age, and assumed official public responsibilities of her own. From 1946 to 1959, she served as a member of the Innsbruck City Council. She campaigned for social causes such as homes for the elderly, children’s homes, and improvements in food supplies and healthcare during the difficult postwar years. She also served as a member of the Tyrolean Relief Organization (Tiroler Hilfswerk), the City School Board, the Board of Trustees of the Sieberer Orphanage, and the Administrative Committee of the Innsbruck Girls’ Secondary School.

Martin and Maria Rapoldi are buried in a distinguished honorary grave at the Westfriedhof (Western Cemetery), which is well worth visiting. The park in Pradl, opened in 1927, also bears the names of these two memorable municipal politicians. Following Rapoldi’s early death, the Social Democratic Party erected a monument in his honor in Kranebitten. In 1934, however, the monument was destroyed by members of the Tyrolean Home Guard (Tiroler Heimwehr).

Political violence, alongside hunger and a severe housing shortage, shaped Austria throughout the 1920s and 1930s. The two major mass parties of the young republic, the Social Democrats and the Christian Socials, regarded each other with hostility. Both parties established paramilitary organizations to enforce their political agendas on the streets if necessary. The Republikanischer Schutzbund on the Social Democratic side and various Christian Social or even monarchist-oriented Heimwehr groups, which for simplicity may be grouped under this collective term, watched one another like opposing sides in a civil war. Many politicians and functionaries on both sides had fought on the front during the war and had become deeply militarized as a result. The Tyrolean Heimwehr enjoyed superior infrastructure and political connections due to the support of the Catholic Church. On November 12, 1928, the tenth anniversary of the founding of the Republic, 18,000 Heimwehr members marched through the city in the first nationwide Heimwehr rally, demonstrating their strength on what was the most important holiday for Austrian Social Democrats. From 1930 onward, the Nazi Party (NSDAP) also became increasingly visible in public life. It found supporters particularly among students and disillusioned young workers. By 1932, the party already had 2,500 members in Innsbruck. Violent clashes between the hostile political factions occurred repeatedly. The most notorious of these became known as the Hötting Hall Battle (Höttinger Saalschlacht) of May 27, 1932. At that time, Hötting was still independent and not yet part of Innsbruck. The community was inhabited mainly by workers. In this “red” stronghold of Tyrol, National Socialists planned a rally at the Goldener Bär Inn, a traditional meeting place of Social Democrats. This provocation escalated into a fight that left more than thirty people injured and one National Socialist dead. The violence spread across the entire city; even in the hospital, the injured continued fighting each other. Only the intervention of the gendarmerie and the army succeeded in separating the opposing sides.

After these years that resembled a civil war, the Christian Social Party prevailed in 1933 under Chancellor Engelbert Dollfuß (1892–1934). His goal was the establishment of the so-called Austrian Corporate State (Österreichischer Ständestaat), today better known under the term Austrofascism. The entire state apparatus was to be unified under the Fatherland Front (Vaterländische Front), modeled on Mussolini’s fascism in Italy: anti-socialist, authoritarian, socially conservative, anti-democratic, antisemitic, and militarized. Quite a few people welcomed the replacement of parliament and the multi-party system by a strong leader who promised peace and order. In Innsbruck, unlike in many Austrian cities where this political upheaval was at times accompanied by bloodshed, no significant fighting occurred. On 15 March, the headquarters of the Tyrolean Social Democratic Workers' Party (Sozialdemokratische Arbeiterpartei Tirol) in the Hotel Sonne was cleared out. The leader of the Republican Protection League (Republikanischer Schutzbund), Gustav Kuprian, was arrested on charges of high treason, and the individual units of the Schutzbund were disarmed. The Tiroler Wochenzeitung was established as the party newspaper. Innsbruck’s municipal council was reduced from forty to twenty-eight members. Instead of being elected through free elections, council members were appointed by the provincial governor. The Social Democrats, who had previously held strong representation, were removed from the city government. Dollfuß was extraordinarily popular in Tyrol, as photographs of the crowded square in front of the Hofburg during one of his speeches in 1933 demonstrate. His policies came closer than any other contemporary system to the traditions of the Habsburg Monarchy. As early as 1931, several Tyrolean mayors had joined forces in an effort to lift the ban on the Habsburg family entering Austria. This policy was supported by the Catholic Church and was even incorporated into the Constitution of 1934: “In the name of God, the Almighty, from whom all law proceeds, the Austrian people receive this Constitution for their Christian, German federal state founded on a corporative basis.” The close relationship with the Church provided the government with access to infrastructure, media organizations, and affiliated institutions. The Fatherland Front, together with its paramilitary units, took harsh action against the despised Socialists. It did not hesitate to employ repression and violence against both individuals and institutions associated with the political opposition. Suspected and actual Socialists, Social Democrats, trade unionists, and Communists were repeatedly arrested. The press was politically controlled and censored, while newspaper articles glorified the idyllic nature of rural life. Large families received financial support. Schools were segregated by gender, and the curricula differed accordingly: domestic work for girls and pre-military training for boys. Cultural policy deliberately distinguished itself from that of the National Socialist and anti-clerical neighbor to the north. Theatre and music were intended to present Austria as the “better and more civilized” German state.

tion Austrofascism, however, brought peace and order only briefly, if at all. On 25 July 1934, a coup attempt by the banned National Socialists took place in Vienna, during which Chancellor Engelbert Dollfuß was killed. Hitler, who had not ordered the attacks, initially distanced himself publicly from the events, helping to suppress the planned overthrow before it could gain momentum. An attempted coup also occurred in Innsbruck. During an effort by a group of National Socialists to seize control of the city, a police officer was shot and killed in Herrengasse. In memory of the murdered Federal Chancellor, who was subsequently elevated to the status of a martyr, the square in front of the theatre, where he had met with Richard Steidl only two weeks earlier, was renamed Dollfuß Square (Dollfußplatz) by “order of the Government Commissioner of the Provincial Capital of Tyrol.” Dollfuß’s successor as head of state was Kurt Schuschnigg (1897–1977), a native Tyrolean. The war veteran, who came from the lower nobility of the former Austro-Hungarian Empire, was a member of the Innsbruck student fraternity Austria. In 1930, Schuschnigg, then a lawyer and member of parliament, founded the Ostmärkische Sturmschar, a Catholic and antisemitic paramilitary organization intended to serve as a counterweight to the more radical Heimwehr groups. As Minister of Education and Minister of Justice, Schuschnigg played a key role in the rightward shift of society under the Corporate State. Among other measures, he reintroduced the death penalty. For the people of Innsbruck, however, little changed under the new Chancellor in terms of everyday hardship. Economically, the Corporate State was unable to reverse the situation during the 1930s. Government investment in major infrastructure projects came to a halt following the economic crisis of 1931. By 1933, the unemployment rate had reached 25 percent. The reduction of social welfare measures that had been introduced at the beginning of the First Republic had dramatic consequences. Long-term unemployed individuals were excluded from receiving social benefits as so-called “Ausgesteuerte” (persons whose entitlement to benefits had expired). Poverty led to rising crime rates, and assaults, robberies, and thefts became commonplace. As in previous decades, housing remained a particularly serious problem. Despite the city's efforts to provide modern housing, many Innsbruck residents still lived in dilapidated dwellings. Private bathrooms or even a separate bedroom for each person were rare exceptions. Since Innsbruck’s rapid growth beginning in the 1880s, housing conditions had remained precarious for a large part of the population. The railway, industrialization, refugees from the German-speaking regions of Italy, and the economic crisis had pushed the city to the limits of its capacity. After Vienna, Innsbruck had the second-highest number of residents per house in Austria. Housing rents were so high that workers often slept in shifts in order to share the costs. Although new apartment blocks and homeless shelters had been built, especially in Pradl, including the Workers’ Residence (Wohnheim für Arbeiter) on Amthorstraße in 1907 and the Hostel (Herberge) on Hunoldstraße, these measures were insufficient to bring the situation under control.

In this climate of social dictatorship and economic hardship, several shantytowns and barrack settlements emerged on the outskirts of the city. They were founded by the excluded, the desperate, and those left behind who could find no place within the system. The former prisoner-of-war camp in Höttinger Au, west of the city, served as emergency accommodation for homeless people. The most famous and notorious inner-city enclave, remembered to this day, was the Bocksiedlung ("Bock Settlement") in the area of present-day Reichenau. Beginning around 1930, several families settled there between the airport then located on the site and the concentration camp that would later be built in Reichenau. According to local legend, Otto and Josefa Rauth were the founders of the settlement after their caravan became stranded there. In the Innsbruck of the Corporate State, having the wrong party affiliation was enough to make affordable housing unattainable. As an openly declared Communist, Rauth possessed what was arguably the most disadvantageous party membership of all. His raft, the Ark Noah (Arche Noah), with which he planned to travel via the Inn and Danube rivers to the Soviet Union, remained moored on the riverbank in front of the Sandwirt Inn (Gasthof Sandwirt) and never actually set sail. Gradually, a settlement developed that existed both physically on the edge of the city and socially on the margins of society. It was run like an independent commune by its unofficial mayor, Johann Bock (1900–1975). He managed everyday life within his sphere of influence in a rough but warm-hearted manner. The air raids of the Second World War further worsened Innsbruck's housing situation and caused the Bocksiedlung to grow. At its peak, it is said to have contained around fifty dwellings. Even the barracks of the Reichenau concentration camp were used as sleeping quarters after the last National Socialists held there had been transferred or released. The Bockala, as the inhabitants were known, had a terrible reputation among the respectable citizens of the rest of the city, and despite later attempts to romanticize or soften its history, that reputation was probably not entirely undeserved. Many, though not all, residents were unemployed or involved in criminal activities. Often, however, they were simply people who had fallen through the cracks of society and found refuge in the Bocksiedlung. As helpful and supportive as the often eccentric residents could be toward one another, physical violence and petty crime were part of everyday life. Excessive alcohol consumption was commonplace. There were no paved roads, no sewage system, no sanitary facilities, and no regular electricity supply. Even access to drinking water remained precarious for a long time, creating a constant risk of disease outbreaks. The dwellings themselves were as diverse as their inhabitants. They included caravans, circus wagons, wooden barracks, corrugated metal huts, brick houses, and concrete buildings. Within the Bocksiedlung, houses and wagons were rented out and sold. With the tacit tolerance of the City of Innsbruck, property rights acquired through long-term occupation even emerged under Johann Bock's leadership. The residents cultivated self-sufficiency gardens and kept livestock. In difficult times, even dogs and cats occasionally appeared on the menu. There were no fixed boundaries to the settlement; in Innsbruck, being a Bockala was as much a social status as it was a place of residence.

The beginning of the end for the Bocksiedlung (“Bock Settlement”) came with the 1964 Olympic Games and a fire that had occurred in the settlement the year before. An urban legend claims that the fire was deliberately set by the municipal authorities in order to accelerate the clearance of the neighborhood and make way for the construction of the Olympic Village (Olympisches Dorf). In 1967, Mayor Alois Lugger and Johann Bock negotiated the future of the settlement and compensation payments from the municipality for its evacuation. According to local accounts, these discussions took place in a rather alcohol-laden atmosphere. Nevertheless, it would take several more years before the settlement effectively came to an end. It was not until 1976 that the last remaining dwellings were forcibly vacated due to unsanitary conditions. Many of the Bockala were relocated to municipal apartments in Pradl, Reichenau, and the newly constructed Olympic Village (O-Dorf). The customs and lifestyle associated with the Bocksiedlung continued there under a new address for several years, contributing in large part to the negative reputation that these neighborhoods still carry today. Less firmly embedded in the collective memory of many Innsbruck residents than the legends of the Bocksiedlung is the interwar period. Yet this era often remains a much greater part of everyday culture than we realize. In churches such as St. Jakob in Defereggen in East Tyrol or the parish church of Fritzens, images depicting Dollfuß as the protector of the Catholic Church can still be seen, more or less without comment. Even today, there are “red” and “black” motorists’ clubs, sports associations, rescue organizations, and Alpine clubs whose roots can be traced back to this period. The history of the Bocksiedlung has been painstakingly reconstructed by the Innsbruck City Archive through numerous interviews and extensive archival research, and was published in a highly readable form in the book: Bocksiedlung. Ein Stück Innsbruck (Bocksiedlung: A Piece of Innsbruck) published by the Innsbruck City Archive. The book provides a valuable account of both the settlement itself and the social realities of Innsbruck in the twentieth century.