History
The preliminary organization of the VSStÖ was formed in 1893 in Vienna. In the beginning, it was more a student debate club that was sympathetic to young workers and the union movement. It fought for general elections in which both men and women could vote, free access to universities, and against bourgeoisie science. The resistance to nationalist and anti-semitic movements at universities led to discrimination and attacks against members of the Socialist Students and led finally to the prohibition of the VSStÖ during the Austrofascism period until the end of World War II.
After the liberation from the National Socialists by the Allied Forces in 1945, the Socialist Students were actively involved in the foundation of democratic student representation, which was established in 1946 as the Austrian National Union of Students. On the ideological basis of Marxism, the VSStÖ has subsequently fought for free and open access to universities, sufficient social funds for students, gender equality, and has taken an active role in the peace movement as well as the anti-globalisation.
Read more about this topic: Socialist Students Of Austria
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“In history an additional result is commonly produced by human actions beyond that which they aim at and obtain—that which they immediately recognize and desire. They gratify their own interest; but something further is thereby accomplished, latent in the actions in question, though not present to their consciousness, and not included in their design.”
—Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831)
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—William Faulkner (1897–1962)