Austria

D

The Dual Monarchy

Losses of land and prestige during the 1860s led to a new arrangement of relations between Austria and Hungary. Various proposals were put forth for a unified parliament for the two countries, but they failed to win acceptance from the Magyar nobility in Hungary. In 1867, a compromise (German Ausgleich) was reached that gave Hungary its own constitution and a nearly independent status. Austria and Hungary were separate states, each with its own constitution, government, parliament, and language. The Austrian Empire was transformed into Austria-Hungary, also known as the dual monarchy, with the Magyars supreme in Hungary and the German Austrians ruling throughout the rest of the realm. The two states were linked by a single monarch, who was emperor in Austria and king in Hungary, and by common ministers of foreign affairs, war, and finance.

The 1867 compromise inspired movements for autonomy among other national groups within the empire. Besides Magyars and German Austrians (about 10 million each), the empire as a whole was also home to nine major nationalities: Czechs, Poles, Ruthenes (Ukrainians), Slovaks, Serbs, Romanians, Croats, Slovenes, and Italians. Most of the Slavic peoples of the empire still had a distinctly inferior political status and remained discontented. About 6.5 million Czechs living in Bohemia, Moravia, and Austrian Silesia made up the largest, most advanced, and most restless minority. All efforts of the national groups to achieve autonomy were stymied by Hungarian determination never to alter the political structure created by the compromise.

The constitution of 1867 regulated the political system in the Austrian half of the dual monarchy until 1918, but its liberal provisions were restricted in practice. Voting was tied to property qualifications, for example, and the aristocracy retained considerable influence. The ministers were responsible to the emperor, who had emergency powers to govern without parliament. As Austria experienced significant economic growth, there was increased social conflict, stronger national movements, the rise of mass political parties, and virulent anti-Semitism. From the 1880s political life was dominated by conflicts among the various nationalities.

Alongside the negative features of Austrian political life there were some solid achievements. Under Vienna’s mayor, Karl Lueger, a program of “municipal socialism,” including the building of hospitals, schools, and parks, made the city among the most progressive in Europe. Vienna was also the scene of extraordinary artistic and intellectual innovation. Scientists and scholars, writers, and creative artists enhanced the city’s international renown. A distinguished medical school attracted scores of students from other countries, and Sigmund Freud created the new discipline of psychoanalysis. No city in the world surpassed Vienna in the quality or quantity of musical offerings. Johann Strauss the younger composed waltzes and operettas that popularized the legend of Vienna as the city of gaiety and mirth. Johannes Brahms and Anton Bruckner, faithful to the musical legacy of Ludwig van Beethoven, won worldwide acclaim as composers. Richard Strauss was the master of opera; his opera Der Rosenkavalier has enjoyed lasting popularity. Dramatist Hugo von Hofmannsthal, who wrote the libretto for Der Rosenkavalier, and novelist and dramatist Arthur Schnitzler formed the Young Vienna group with other writers.

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D

1

Alliance with Germany

The establishment of the German Empire in 1871 led to reorientation of Habsburg foreign policy toward the Balkan Peninsula. The intention of the foreign minister, Hungarian Count Gyula Andrássy, was to preserve the status quo. Adopting a policy of friendship with Germany, Andrássy promised that Austria-Hungary would not interfere in German internal affairs; in return, Germany backed Austro-Hungarian attempts to limit Russian influence in southeastern Europe. Austrian interests in eastern Europe were threatened not only by nationalism but also by the power of Russia. By the late 1800s Russia had gained considerable influence in the Balkan Peninsula and elsewhere by supporting Pan-Slavism, a movement for the union of all Slavic peoples.

When Russia defeated the Ottomans in 1878, Austria-Hungary, supported by Germany and Britain, intervened to prevent the Russians from seizing all Ottoman possessions in Europe. The Congress of Berlin (1878) restricted Russian acquisitions; it also permitted Austria-Hungary to administer the Ottoman provinces of Bosnia and Herzegovina. In 1879 Germany and Austria-Hungary signed a formal alliance; with the addition of Italy in 1882 it became known as the Triple Alliance. From its inception, this alliance—the mainstay of Austria-Hungary’s international position—was dominated by Germany, which subordinated Austria-Hungary’s foreign policy interests to its own.

Serbia, made independent of the Ottoman Empire by the Congress of Berlin, was a satellite of Austria-Hungary until 1903, when new leaders came to power intent on unifying all the South Slavs in the Habsburg monarchy, including Bosnia and Herzegovina, into an enlarged Serbian state. In 1908, after a revolution in the Ottoman Empire, Austria-Hungary annexed the two provinces. The Serbs, backed by Russia, protested vehemently. Only Germany’s support of Austria-Hungary prevented war. By the time Serbia emerged from the Balkan Wars victorious and territorially enlarged, Austro-Hungarian leaders were convinced that war with Serbia was inevitable.

D

2

World War I

On June 28, 1914, the heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne, Archduke Francis Ferdinand, and his wife were assassinated in the Bosnian capital of Sarajevo by Gavrilo Princip, a Serbian nationalist. After receiving German assurances of support, the Austro-Hungarian foreign office sent a harsh ultimatum to the Serbian government, holding it responsible for the assassination and requiring its total acceptance of Austria-Hungary’s demands within three days. Despite a conciliatory reply that accepted all but two of the demands, and mediation efforts by the European powers, Austria-Hungary declared war on Serbia on July 28. Germany’s declaration of war on Russia and France in early August transformed the conflict into World War I.

Austro-Hungarian military activity during the first year of the war was concentrated against Russia and Serbia. In May 1915 Italy, which had declared its neutrality in 1914, left the Triple Alliance and entered the war on the side of the Allies. The Austro-Hungarian army suffered many setbacks, and the monarchy, weakened by decades of internal dissension, began to disintegrate after the death in 1916 of Francis Joseph I. He was succeeded by his grandnephew, Charles I of Austria. In 1917 the new emperor failed in several secret attempts to achieve a separate peace with the Allies, angering the Germans in the process. At the same time representatives of the Czechs, Poles, and South Slavs set up organizations in the Allied countries to gain sympathy and recognition. By late 1917 nationalist activities made the monarchy increasingly untenable.

During the spring and summer of 1918 Austro-Hungarian forces were defeated on every military front; shortages of food and other necessities triggered strikes and demonstrations at home and mutinies in the army and navy. Recognizing that the collapse of the monarchy was inevitable, the nationalist groups within the empire organized national councils that acted like separate governments. The South Slavs, meeting in Zagreb on October 7, 1918, advocated union with Serbia, and on October 28 the Czechs proclaimed an independent republic in Prague. On October 31 the Magyars had a revolution that initiated the creation of an independent Hungarian republic. On November 3, Austria and Hungary each signed an armistice with the Allies. On November 12 Charles relinquished all part in the administration of the state and left Austria. Within days Austria and Hungary declared themselves republics.

E

The First Austrian Republic

The Austrian Republic came into being as a disorganized and impoverished state of some 7 million people. The dissolution of the monarchy deprived Austria of the industrial areas of Bohemia and Moravia and ended the large internal market created by the union between Austria and Hungary. German Austrians desired union with the new German Republic, but this was forbidden by the peace treaties of Versailles and Saint-Germain. The new constitution (1920) created a federal state, with a bicameral legislature and a democratic suffrage.

Economic reconstruction took place with the aid of outside agencies. Between 1919 and 1920 U.S., British, and Swedish organizations provided food to relieve the desperate situation. Rising inflation heightened the country’s distress, and in 1922 Austria appealed for help to the League of Nations. The league arranged for a large loan to prevent economic collapse. In return, Austria pledged to remain independent for at least 20 years. The deflationary policies that were a condition of the loan caused much economic hardship and unemployment, but Austrian finances slowly stabilized.

The internal political situation remained uneasy because of antagonisms between Socialist-dominated Vienna and the conservative provinces. On July 15, 1927, the Socialists organized mass demonstrations in Vienna to protest the acquittal of three members of a right-wing group, who were on trial for killing two people during a clash with the Socialist Schutzbund (Defense League). The Palace of Justice was burned, and about 100 people were killed when police fired on the demonstrators.

E

1

Fascism and Anschluss

A succession of federal governments, dominated by the conservative Christian Social Party, could not overcome either the continuous unrest or the economic misery of the Great Depression. The rise of Austrian Nazism (see National Socialism) became a new destabilizing factor. Faced with his party’s declining electoral strength and growing opposition from the left and the extreme right, the Christian Social chancellor, Engelbert Dollfuss, dissolved parliament in 1933 and ruled by decree. Backed by the army and the Heimwehr (Home Defense League), a Fascist paramilitary organization, in February 1934 the government crushed the Socialist opposition. Later all political parties were abolished except the Fatherland Front, which Dollfuss had created to unite the conservative forces. In April he introduced a constitution that did away with parliamentary government and vested control in the executive.

Dollfuss was killed in July during an attempted Nazi putsch (takeover). Under the new chancellor, Kurt von Schuschnigg, the regime drifted on, weakened by internal rivalries but sustained by promises of Italian dictator Benito Mussolini to maintain the status quo. His guarantee lasted only until the Rome-Berlin Axis was established in 1936. Schuschnigg soon reached an agreement with Adolf Hitler that acknowledged Austria as “a German state.”

When Schuschnigg called for a plebiscite on Austrian independence in 1938, Hitler demanded and received his resignation. The Anschluss (annexation) was accomplished when German troops entered Austria on March 12, and a Nazi government was formed, headed by Arthur Seyss-Inquart. Austria, now called the Ostmark (Eastern March), was divided into seven administrative districts under the central authority of the German Third Reich.

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