Countries of the World/COUNTRYS.BIN/dp/0022/00224.txt

Text File | 1991-06-24 | 31KB | 493 lines

$Unique_ID{COW00224}
$Pretitle{376}
$Title{Austria
Chapter 2B.   Austro-Hungarian Empire (1867-1918)}
$Subtitle{}
$Author{Jean Coutts Shema}
$Affiliation{HQ, Department of the Army}
$Subject{austria
party
social
austrian
government
vienna
soviet
spo
german
chancellor}
$Date{1976}
$Log{Figure 4.*0022403.scf
}
Country:     Austria
Book:        Austria, A Country Study
Author:      Jean Coutts Shema
Affiliation: HQ, Department of the Army
Date:        1976

Chapter 2B.   Austro-Hungarian Empire (1867-1918)

     In order to preserve his empire, Emperor Franz Josef made a deal in 1867
with the Hungarians, who were the strongest of the empire's non-German ethnic
groups. The Compromise of 1867 (Ausgleich) established a mode of relationship
between the Habsburgs and their Hungarian subjects, after which the Empire of
Austria was reorganized as the Dual Monarchy of Austria-Hungary, that is, the
Empire of Austria and the Kingdom of Hungary (see fig. 3). The compromise set
forth the details of control over matters of common concern, such as defense,
finance, and foreign affairs. Failure to act in concert on these common
matters during the turbulent year of 1848 had aroused suspicions in the
Habsburg court that the Hungarians were seeking complete independence. The
compromise established the legal link between the two countries that was
necessary for concerted action.

     The common monarch and the obligation to render support on matters of
general concern were accepted by both parties to the 1867 agreement.
Parliamentary bodies were to function in both states, and any suggestion of a
general legislature was abandoned as an affront to Hungarian autonomy. The
ministers who were concerned with matters of defense, finance, and foreign
affairs were responsible to equal delegations from the two parliaments sitting
alternately in Vienna and Pest (after 1872, Budapest). The delegations decided
what part of the budgets were allocated for matters of joint concern, and a
special committee periodically determined the relative financial contributions
of the two countries. Arrangements concerning commerce and the customs were
made subject to periodic review every ten years.

     Seeing the Hungarians achieve a measure of independence, several other
ethnic groups that had been chafing under Habsburg rule increased their
demands for national recognition, but further concessions to the principle of
national autonomy were disdained by Emperor Franz Josef I. Particularly
adamant in the demand for national recognition were the Czechs, who agitated
for a Bohemian kingdom that would have a status similar to that of Hungary
with Franz Josef as the common monarch. Prime Minister Eduard von Taaffe
placated the Czechs and other ethnic groups by granting minor concessions but
refusing actual autonomy. Von Taaffe's goal, in his own words, was "to keep
all the nationalities in a balanced state of mild dissatisfaction" and thus
avoid major upheaval. For several years during the 1880s and early 1890s von
Taaffe was successful in keeping a lid on the more extreme expressions of
nationalism, but after his resignation in 1893 the voices of dissent became
more shrill.

     By the time of the outbreak of World War I in August 1914, it had become
obvious that the Austro-Hungarian Empire could not survive military defeat.
From the Austrian point of view the declaration of war on Serbia following the
assassination of the Archduke Franz Ferdinand, heir to the throne, had been
necessary in order to stamp out the dangerous nationalistic movement supported
from outside the Dual Monarchy. Ironically, Franz Ferdinand (who had a Czech
wife) had been sympathetic to the idea of a Habsburg state organized with full
recognition of national differences. As the war progressed, Czech, Romanian,
Polish, and South Slav demands for the division of the Dual Monarchy into new
national states became increasingly strong.

     Some attempts were made by Karl I, the last Habsburg ruler, to make
concessions to nationalism that might have held his realms together, but they
were too late. The collapse of the Central Powers in 1918 meant the loss of
Czech, Slovak, Romanian, Polish, and Balkan territories. The tie with Hungary
was broken. An "Austria" was left as a sort of German residue of the Habsburg
rule.

     Although present-day Austria is only a part of the old Habsburg realm,
the Habsburg rule is not forgotten. Austrians look back to the long reign of
Franz Josef I (1848-1916) as a sort of golden age. They like to recall the
eighteenth-century reigns of Maria Theresa and her son the reforming Emperor
Josef II, who is even now referred to affectionately as the "People's Kaiser."
Heroes of the Habsburg rule such as Prince Eugene of Savoy, the great
eighteenth-century general, are still heroes in Austria. All these memories,
however, belong to a past that was terminated by the complete collapse in 1918
of Habsburg Austria-Hungary.

THE INTERWAR YEARS

     In the words of French premier Georges Clemenceau, Austria appeared in
post-World War I form as "what was left over" after Czechoslovakia, Poland,
Yugoslavia, Romania, Italy, and Hungary had taken their shares of the old Dual
Monarchy (see fig. 4). "What was left over" appeared to have no economic or
political cohesiveness, and it seemed exceedingly doubtful that it could
survive at all; the chief industrial and agricultural centers of
Austria-Hungary were detached from it. Indeed, many "Austrians" did not want
it to survive. The Provisional National Assembly met in Vienna in November
1918 and approved a constitutional law stating that "German-Austria" was an
essential part of the German Republic. Even Karl Renner, the first chancellor
of the First Republic and both the first chancellor and the first president of
the Second Republic, approved of Anschluss (union with Germany). The
Constituent Assembly that met in March 1919 confirmed the decision of the
Provisional National Assembly, and the provinces of Salzburg and Tirol held
plebiscites that were overwhelmingly in favor of Anschluss.

[See Figure 4.: Austria and the Successor States]

     The Allies, however, forbade Anschluss. The Treaty of Saint-Germain,
signed on September 10, 1919, by Renner as head of the Austrian delegation,
declared, "The independence of Austria is inalienable otherwise than with the
consent of the League of Nations." Most Austrians at first resented the Allied
decision to keep their country alive and to change its name from
"German-Austria" to "Austria."

     The provinces that originally composed the new Austria had little feeling
of common interest. Vorarlberg would have preferred to join Switzerland, with
which it had close ties of geography, economics, and even language. Tirol
hoped that it might retain its southern section, ceded to Italy by the Treaty
of Saint-Germain, if it were established as an independent, separate nation.
Socialist Vienna, organized as a new province, had little in common with the
agrarian and conservative regions of Austria. All the nine provinces of
Austria had efficient governments that tended to go their own way once the
central authority of the Habsburg monarchy was gone.

     The political difficulties that beset the First Republic were evident in
the structure of its parties. From the beginning there was a fairly even
balance between the two largest, the Social Democratic Party and the Christian
Social Party, with a sizeable number of votes going to the German Nationalist
bloc. The Social Democratic Party-so-called Austro-Marxists-was especially
strong in Vienna, and the Christian Social Party was strongest in the
conservative rural areas. The electoral system allocated seats in all
legislative bodies to the parties in proportion to the number of votes cast
for each, and it was difficult for any one party to gain an effective
majority. As the republic moved into the difficult period of the 1930s, many
people felt, as Kurt von Schuschnigg did, that it was impossible to govern
Austria effectivel