!!!Siedlerbewegung

Suburban Movement (Siedlerbewegung): the English and German 
garden-city movement as well as a serious shortage of housing and jobs 
gave rise to an extensive suburban movement in Austria in 1918, 
particularly in large cities where numerous "wild 
settlements" emerged on the city outskirts and allotments were 
transformed into housing estates. The suburban movement was 
characterised by the coexistence of various ideologies, from leftist 
ideas of municipal housing to right-wing programmes of 
deproletarianization by creating owner-occupied homes. The suburban 
movement was organised and supported by various cooperatives whose 
umbrella organisation, the "Zentralverband der Kleingaertner, 
Siedler und Kleintierzuechter" (central association of allotment 
gardeners, settlers and small animal breeders), was founded in 1922 
(renamed "Oesterreichischer Verband der Siedler, 
Einfamilienhausbesitzer und Kleintierzuechter" (Austrian 
association of settlers, single-family-house owners and small animal 
breeders) in 1946). The municipality of Vienna at first supported the 
suburban movement (8,340 dwelling units with garden-city character 
were built in Vienna between 1921 and 1933), but finally ended by 
committing itself to the provision of multi-story municipal 
residential buildings in 1923. Through the Federal Housing and 
Settlement Fund (BWSF Bundes-Wohn- und Siedlungsfonds) the federal 
government subsidised the construction of 8,654 dwelling units between 
1921 and 1928. From the early 1930s settlements were built on the city 
outskirts (6,210 dwelling units between 1932 and 1937) to secure 
minimum self-sufficiency for those without jobs. The basic idea of 
providing single-family houses with gardens for the majority of the 
population was realised to a considerable extent during the Second 
Republic, but generally had little to do with the ideological 
background of the original suburban movement.

!Literature
R. Hoffmann, "Nimm Hack´ und Spaten ...". 
Siedlung und Siedlerbewegung in Oesterreich 1918-38, 1987.


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