This article explores some lines of developments and characteristics of the Austrian economic bourgeoisie (Wirtschaftsbürgertum) in the interwar period. It is structured along four theses. 1. The old German-Austrian and especially the Viennese bourgeoisie has definitely to be considered – due to territorial losses, inflation, the introduction of legal protection of tenants, budget stabilization and crashes of banks – as losers of the upheaval of 1918/9. 2. Until the end of the inflation period (1924/5) a small group of ‘war profiteers’ and nouveaux riche dominated the Austrian economy and society. Their short interlude had long lasting effects, for example a strengthening of anti-Semitism and a lack of confidence in the young democracy. 3. Due to the time of upheaval (1918/9) and the chaos of values of the inflation period a negative attitude towards democracy prevailed among substantial parts of the economic bourgeoisie already revealing the roots of later authoritarian developments and regimes. 4. What was often referred to as “descent of the ‘old-Viennese patricians’ to the board of directors” was a figurative expression for a structural change towards managerial capitalism inherent to the capitalist economic system. Finally, the epilogue closes with one of the darkest chapters of Austria’s history, the period of National Socialism when Austria’s economic bourgeoisie underwent the biggest change: the blood-letting due to the almost total extermination of the Jewish bourgeoisie.