1933: Marie Jahoda, Paul Felix Lazarsfeld and Hans Zeisel: “The Unemployed of Marienthal”

“What do we know about unemployment?” The leading sentence of a study published in 1933 about the psychological situation of an unemployed town points to the pioneering character of this research project. From November 1931 until May 1932, a project team consisting of 17 people (including nine female researchers) from the Austrian Economic Psychology Research Centre examined the workers’ settlement Marienthal in Gramatneusiedl, whose leading enterprise, the textile factory, had closed down in 1930 due to the global economic crisis.

The research findings documented the profound social-psychological results of unemployment. The image of a “tired community” marked by resignation was at odds both with the left-wing image of the revolutionary potential of the unemployed as well as with the market-based expectation that dismantling social support would lead to (financial) empowerment. A majority of the researchers, including Jahoda and Zeisel, had to emigrate during Austrofascism or following the “Anschluss” (“annexation”). In 1935, Lazarsfeld went to the US for professional reasons. The study became known to the general public through Karin Brandauer’s TV film “Einstweilen wird es Mittag” (“In the Meantime, Noon Comes Around”), which premiered on ORF on May 1, 1988.