Editing Otto Neurath (section)

==Career in Vienna==
Neurath taught political economy at the [[New Vienna Commercial Academy]] in Vienna until war broke out.<ref>Thomas E. Uebel (ed.), ''Rediscovering the Forgotten Vienna Circle: Austrian Studies on Otto Neurath and the Vienna Circle'', Springer, 2012, p. 26.</ref> Subsequently, he directed the Department of War Economy in the War Ministry. In 1917, he completed his [[habilitation]] thesis ''Die Kriegswirtschaftslehre und ihre Bedeutung für die Zukunft'' (''War Economics and Their Importance for the Future'') at [[Heidelberg University]]. In 1918, he became director of the Deutsches Kriegswirtschaftsmuseum (German Museum of War Economy, later the "Deutsches Wirtschaftsmuseum") in [[Leipzig]]. There he worked with [[Wolfgang Schumann (1887-1964)|Wolfgang Schumann]], known from the [[Dürerbund]] for which Neurath had written many articles. During the [[German Revolution|political crisis]] which led to the [[Armistice of 11 November 1918|armistice]], Schumann urged him to work out a plan for socialization in Saxony.<ref>"Otto Neurath: Empiricism and Sociology". edited by [[Marie Neurath]] and [[Robert S. Cohen]]. Dordrecht-Holland/Boston-USA: [[D. Reidel Publishing Company]], 1973</ref> Along with Schumann and [[Hermann Kranold]] developed the ''Programm Kranold-Neurath-Schumann''. Neurath then joined the [[History of the Social Democratic Party of Germany|German Social Democratic Party]] in 1918–19 and ran an office for central economic planning in [[Munich]]. When the [[Bavarian Soviet Republic]] was defeated, Neurath was imprisoned but returned to Austria after intervention from the Austrian government. While in prison, he wrote ''Anti-Spengler'', a critical attack on [[Oswald Spengler]]'s ''[[The Decline of the West|Decline of the West]]''.

In [[Red Vienna]], he joined the Social Democrats and became secretary of the [[Austrian Association for Settlements and Small Gardens]] (Verband für Siedlungs-und Kleingartenwesen), a collection of self-help groups that set out to provide housing and garden plots to its members. In 1923, he founded a new museum for housing and city planning called Siedlungsmuseum. In 1925 he renamed it [[Gesellschafts- und Wirtschaftsmuseum]] in Wien (Museum of Society and Economy in Vienna) and founded an association for it, in which the Vienna city administration, the trade unions, the Chamber of Workers and the Bank of Workers became members. Then-mayor [[Karl Seitz]] acted as the first proponent of the association. [[Julius Tandler]], city councillor for welfare and health, served on the first board of the museum together with other prominent social democratic politicians. The museum was provided with exhibition rooms in buildings of the city administration, the most prominent being the People's Hall at the [[Vienna City Hall]].

Neurath was a contributor to the Social Democrat magazine ''[[Der Kampf (magazine)|Der Kampf]]''.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Edmonds |first1=David |title=The Murder of Professor Schlick: The Rise and Fall of the Vienna Circle |date=2020 |publisher=Princeton University Press |location=Princeton |isbn=9780691164908 |page=136 |edition=First}}</ref>

To make the museum understandable for visitors from all around the polyglot [[Austria-Hungary|Austro-Hungarian Empire]], Neurath worked on [[graphic design]] and visual education, believing that "Words divide, pictures unite," a coinage of his own that he displayed on the wall of his office there.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Edmonds |first1=David |title=The Murder of Professor Schlick: The Rise and Fall of the Vienna Circle |date=2020 |quote=''Worte trennen, Bilder verbinden.'' |publisher=Princeton University Press |location=Princeton |isbn=9780691164908 |page=60 |edition=First}}</ref> In the late 1920s, graphic designer and communications theorist [[Rudolf Modley]] served as an assistant to Neurath, contributing to a new means of communication: a visual "language."<ref>{{Cite journal|last=Bresnahan|first=Keith|year=2011|title="An Unused Esperanto": Internationalism and Pictographic Design, 1930-70|journal=Design and Culture|volume=3|issue=1|pages=5–24|doi=10.2752/175470810X12863771378671|s2cid=147279431}}</ref> With the illustrator [[Gerd Arntz]] and with [[Marie Neurath|Marie Reidemeister]] (who he would marry in 1941), Neurath developed novel ways of representing quantitative information via easily interpretable icons. The forerunner of contemporary [[infographic]]s, he initially called this the Vienna Method of Pictorial Statistics. As his ambitions for the project expanded beyond social and economic data related to Vienna, he renamed the project "[[Isotype (picture language)|Isotype]]", an acronymic nickname for the project's full title: International System of Typographic Picture Education.<ref>{{cite news |last1=Berko |first1=Lex |title=Isotype, the Proto-Infographic You Probably Didn't Know Existed |url=https://www.vice.com/en/article/isotype-the-proto-infographic-you-probably-didnt-know-existed/ |access-date=7 November 2020 |work=Vice |issue=12 September 2013 |publisher=Vice Media}}</ref> At international conventions of city planners, Neurath presented and promoted his communication tools. During the 1930s, he also began promoting Isotype as an International Picture Language, connecting it both with the adult education movement and with the Internationalist passion for new and artificial languages like [[Esperanto]], although he stressed in talks and correspondence that Isotype was not intended to be a stand-alone language and was limited in what it could communicate.

In the 1920s, Neurath also became an ardent [[logical positivist]], and was the main author of the [[Vienna Circle]] manifesto. He was the driving force behind the [[Unified Science|Unity of Science]] movement and the ''[[International Encyclopedia of Unified Science]]''.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Edmonds |first1=David |title=The Murder of Professor Schlick: The Rise and Fall of the Vienna Circle |date=2020 |publisher=Princeton University Press |location=Princeton |isbn=9780691164908 |page=60 |edition=First}}</ref>

Neurath was a proponent of [[Esperanto]], and attended the 1924 [[World Esperanto Congress]] in Vienna, where he met [[Rudolf Carnap]] for the first time.<ref>{{cite book |title=Ways of the Scientific World-Conception: Rudolf Carnap and Otto Neurath |date=2024 |publisher=Brill |page=2}}</ref> In 1927 he became Secretary of the [[Ernst Mach]] Society.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Edmonds |first1=David |title=The Murder of Professor Schlick: The Rise and Fall of the Vienna Circle |date=2020 |publisher=Princeton University Press |location=Princeton |isbn=9780691164908 |page=89 |edition=First}}</ref>