Thoughts on Nature in Red Vienna

Putting a Question to Discontinuity of Angelo Carraro by “The Friends of Nature”

FURUKAWA Takako

Main theme of this article is to clarify the change of the thoughts on nature in “The Friends of Nature”, an alpine club for workers in “Red Vienna”. That is a procedure from liberal thoughts on nature since the fin de siècle in Austria to national ones in the interwar period, which was developed by the Social Democratic Party of Austria. Angelo Carraro, a Freethinker and Anarchist, had taught Natural Science at the Natural Histor y Section of the club since 1911, but suddenly in 1925 he was fired and since then, even one of his articles on nature was not in the magazines of “The Friends of Nature”. Why did it happen? Because Carraro, who was against the hegemonic powers, began to criticize all of the institutes of the societies, including the Party, and approach to a famous Anarchist on the one hand, but on the other hand, “The Friends of Nature” got closer to the Party, as they wanted to get support funds in order to build mountain huts in the higher mountains. After that, its alpine club’s articles on nature were written by the authors who claimed that nature was only regarded as resources provided for human beings. They advocated that a Socialist Society in the future would be consisted of healthy nation that would be created with valuable natural resources. The new authors’ world-views were different from that of Cararro who asserted a symbiotic world in the nature. “The Friends of Nature”, therefore, agreed to the future plan of the Party, but not to the Freethinker’s.