After the voluntary liquidation of the Austrian Association for Librarianship (Österreichischer Verein für Bibliothekswesen, ÖVB), Austrian librarians made no further move to establish another library association of their own during the First Austrian Republic. The paper deals with the admission of Austrian librarians to the Association of German Librarians (Verein Deutscher Bibliothekare) in 1920 and the association with German librarianship until 1945. The establishment of a section within the union functioning as a successor to the ÖVB and its acting representatives will also be discussed here. This small group of exclusively academically trained librarians was part of the union of academic civil servants. Its officials were embedded in the networks and structures of German nationalist and Christian social organisations and in the unions dominated by those parties. Attention is also be given to the consequences of austerity and stuff cuts in librarianship and the rise of National Library in Vienna under the leadership of Josef Bick until 1938.