 Complete the following phrase:  Stern was also engaged in terms of more direct political involvement. As in much of the rest of Europe, so in Austria, the later 1920s were a period of intensifying political polarisation both among the politicians in Vienna and on the streets, and the tensions were only exacerbated by the economic austerity that arrived as part of the powerful backwash of the Wall Street Crash. In 1927 Stern was still a member of the Social Democratic Party, although he was regarded by many, including himself, as part of the partys extreme left-wing. He participated in the 