Following the self-elimination of Parliament in 1933 and the prohibition of the Social Democratic Labour Party in spring 1934, the "Central Office for Public Education" in the Ministry of Education saw to the closure of numerous Social Democratic working class libraries, publishing houses, and bookstores, and to a "purge" of Social Democratic literature from public libraries.
The National Library, led by Director-General Josef Bick, a high political functionary of the authoritarian state, served as a collecting point for books confiscated for political reasons.
Although book transports from the provinces to the National Library in Vienna were far from proceeding smoothly at first, it can be assumed that eventually several thousands of books from Socialist libraries arrived. Due to a lack of resources, these holdings were simply stored away and then allocated to Vienna’s municipal libraries after the war.