BAUER, OTTO (1881-1938), Austrian politician, was born at Vienna. Bauer was one of the founders of the Socialist edu cational movement, "Die Zukunf t." He founded with F. Adler, the theoretical Socialist periodical Der Kampf and collaborated on Kautsky's journal Die Neue Zeit. He became secretary to the parliamentary fraction of the Social Democrat party in 1904 and at once proved himself the party's most brilliant theoretician. His first work, Die Nationalitdten f rage and die oesterreichische Sozialdemokratie, treated the problem of nationality in the Dual Monarchy with deep historical insight and on lines entirely borne out by later developments.
As a prisoner of war in Russia he studied Bolshevism at first hand, and on his return to Austria in 1917 became leader of the left wing of his party, which worked for a republic and self determination for all nationalities. He was appointed under secretary of state for foreign affairs by Victor Adler and became minister a few days later, on the latter's death (Nov. 12 1918). He retained this post under the Austrian Republic until July 1919. After 1918 it was Bauer's brain which really guided the international and internal policy of his party which he preserved as a non-Bolshevist but advanced Socialist organization.
Bauer was a member of the Austrian national council from 1929 to 1934. Following the uprising of Vienna Socialists and workers in 1934 he went into exile, but continued to direct the program of the Austrian Socialist party from Czechoslovakia and France. He died in Paris, July 4, 1938.
He wrote an important account of his own and his party's activities, Die oesterreichische Revolution (1923; English translation, 1925). His other chief works are Bolshevismus oder Sozialdemokratie (192o) ; Der acne Kurs in Sovietrussland (1921) ; Das Weltbild des Kapitalismus (in Der lebendige Marxismus, Jena, 1925) .