Nationalism,Ethnic Identity,and Jews in the Socialist Ideology of Otto Bauer

This paper examines the ideas of Otto Bauer (1881–1938) on national identity as a theoretical concept, the nationalities question in the Habsburg Monarchy, and the concept of a civic Austrian national identity. Additionally, it demonstrates that the experience of assimilation in Bauer’s family background affected most directly the way he wrote about Jewish identity, and finds that some of his writings reveal a degree of doubt about his own identity as a German.