ABSTRACT
This essay discusses the effects of continuities and discontinuities in the urban history of Central Europe in the turbulent years following the Great War, focusing on the three cities of Vienna, Budapest and Prague. ‘Red Vienna’ was regarded as a role model, with an impressive municipal social housing programme for more than 200,000 people and the assurance of better health for the urban population. Prague made use of the tailwind enjoyed by the new status of the Czechoslovak Republic on the winning side of the war. The population tripled within a few years and the city became a modern, expensive and Western-orientated capital. Budapest had to negotiate two radical breaks: the end of the war and the breakdown of the Béla Kun experiment. The following government was built upon an anti-urban ‘real’ Hungarianism and reduced the role of the capital as a centre of power. The Jewish populations of all three cities were confronted with different forms of anti-Semitism. In Budapest, this was increased by an anti-intellectual and anti-modern prejudice. In Vienna and Prague, though Jews played an important role in modernisation programmes, anti-Semitism had long traditions.
