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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 August 2014
Constitutionalism, in Austria, is not a new slogan. It was a phrase to conjure with during the entire lifetime of Francis Joseph, though in practice the whole history of the country down to the revolution of 1918 was its virtual negation. Only in the latter days of the monarchy, when the scepter passed from the hands of Francis Joseph to the inexperienced young emperor Karl, was a modicum of popular expression allowed to supplant the personal autocracy of the sovereign. The old Austria passed out of existence in 1918 without the successful implantation of a régime of liberal legality in any of its parts.
The young Austrian Republic, coming into existence in the hour of the Empire's dissolution, thus inherited a legacy of unconstitutional government, and only the solidity of socialist and clerical party organization, bred of the stress and strain of clashing conceptions of the social order, gave support to the government in the days when social revolution swept almost to the doors of Vienna. It was under such circumstances that Austria entered, in 1918, upon the way of constitutionalism and sought, through her provisional instruments of government, to avoid the autocratic excesses of the past and avert the impending perils of a proletarian dictatorship.
In a series of revolutionary pronouncements and decisions of her provisional assembly, she discarded, under socialist leadership, the arbitrary régime attendant on the monarchy, and, establishing a unitary democratic republic with far-reaching local self-government as a stepping-stone toward union with Germany, inaugurated a régime of unquestioned parliamentary supremacy, strict ministerial responsibility, virtual executive impotence, and extensive socialization.
1 Cf. Redlich, Joseph, Emperor Francis Joseph, pp. 536–539 Google Scholar.
2 Cf. ibid., Austrian War Government, pp. 136-164.
3 Cf. Kelsen, Hans, Die Verfassungsgesetze der Republik Deutsch-Oesterreich, (1919)Google Scholar.
4 Cf. ibid. For an English translation, cf. McBain, and Rogers, , The New Constitutions of Europe, pp. 256–306 Google Scholar.
5 The status of the parties may be seen from the following table [see next page]:
At the elections of 1927 the Social Democrats polled 1,534,088 votes, or 42.3 per cent; the combined governmental parties 1,983,323, or 54.5 per cent. The Austrian Communist group polled 16,181 or 0.4 per cent. Cf. Statistische Nachrichten, June, 1927. It was estimated in 1928 that the municipal elections indicated a general gain of 3 per cent over the percentages of 1927 for the Social Democrats, with marked increases in Vienna, Salzburg, and Carinthia. Cf. Bulletin Périodique de la Presse Autrichienne, No. 189, May 17, 1929.
6 Cf. Graham, M. W., New Governments of Central Europe, pp. 187–191 Google Scholar.
7 Cf. Bulletin Périodique de la Presse Autrichienne, No. 164, September 10. 1925.
8 Such was the objective of financial legislation proposed in May, 1928, by Finance Minister Kienbock with a view to federal supervision of provincial financial administration. According to the socialist Arbeiterzeitung, June 8, 1928, such legislation would tend to make Austria a unitary state, while the Neves Wiener Tageblatt, May 31, 1928, openly declared that “the economic necessities of today condemn an onerous and cumbrous federalism.”
9 Cf. Bulletin Périodique de la Presse Autrichienne, No. 192, February 26, 1929.
10 This trial of Hungarian individuals accused of shooting workers in a Schutzbund parade at Schattendorf, in Burgenland, resulted in their acquittal, July 15, 1927. The rioting which followed immediately thereafter in Vienna was poignantly characterized by the Arbeiterzeitung, July 15, 1927: “ …. if the working class distrusts justice, it means the end of the established order. The bourgeois world is always warning against civil war. But this revolting acquittal of individuals who have killed workers and because they have killed workers—is it not in itself civil war? We warn everyone that when such an injustice as that of yesterday is committed, only grave evils will be harvested from it.”
11 Cf. Bulletin Périodique de la Presse Autrichienne, No. 183, August 13, 1927, and Arbeiterzeitung, July 27, 1927.
12 Cf. New York Times, November 5, 1926, for the details of the Linz program, characterized as “bristling with a recognition of political realities.”
13 Cf. note 5, supra.
14 The objectives of the Schutzbund, as a purely defensive body to withstand fascist provocation, are outlined in Arbeiterzeitung, November 2, 1927.
15 An excellent survey of the Heimwehr movement is given in the Neues Wiener Journal, November 8, 1927. In the words of the Wiener Neuste Nachrichten, December 8, 1927, the Heimwehr is “a popular anti-marxist movement against the terror of the Social Democratic party.” Cf. also “Austria, Quo Vadis?”, Central European Observer, vol. 7, p. 479, Aug. 30, 1929 Google Scholar.
16 In an address on April 7, 1929, Herr Pfrimer, a prominent Heimwehr leader, pronounced for the suppression of the parliamentary régime and the constitution and for a march on Vienna to accomplish this, arms in hand. Similarly, Herr Steidle, the nominal head of the Heimwehr, declared on April 14, 1929: “If our economic and political life is in danger, I have the right to consider the constitution, which is impotent, as of less value and to suppress it by any means whatsoever. We consciously invoke for our people the case of force majeure.” Cf. Arbeiterzeitung, April 10, 18, 1929.
17 On the general movement for constitutional reform, cf. Kelsen, Hans, “Der Drang zur Verfassungsreform,” Neue Freie Presse, October 6, 1929, pp. 6–7 Google Scholar.
18 For a detailed enumeration of Schober's proposals, cf. Berliner Tageblatt, October 19, 1929, morning edition, p. 4.
19 These included restoration of titles of nobility, prohibition of cremation of the dead, censorship over printed matter, theaters, and cinemas, “and a host of other statutory disabilities which apply to members of the socialist party alone.” Cf. London Times, October 23, 1929, p. 15, c. 5Google Scholar. These failed of final enactment. New York Times, December 7, 1929, p. 6, c. 3.
20 The propositions regarding the presidency put forward by the Pan-German party at Salzburg in 1920, by the Christian Socialists at intervals since the beginning of 1928, and by the Landbund in a memorandum to Chancellor Streeruwitz on August 31, 1929, were, in the main, accepted and utilized by Schober, with the exception of the proposal to give the executive the right to declare martial law in individual provinces. Cf. Wiener Neuste Nachrichten, August 28, 1929, and New York Times, December 7, 1929.
21 Neue Freie Presse, December 1, 1929.
22 London Times, November 19, 1929, p. 16, c. 3Google Scholar. It will be recalled that this was, in substance, the actual procedure by Chancellors Seipel and Ramek on financial matters during the period of Austria's financial reconstruction. Cf. Graham, M. W., New Governments of Central Europe, p. 194 Google Scholar.
23 This error, a psychological backwash of the experience of a number of countries with the abuse of executive power in time of war and a part of the legacy of misrule inherited in common by the post-war succession states, went furthest in Poland, where Pilsudski's coup d'état of 1926 forced a strengthening of the executive along much the same lines as those mentioned above. Czechoslovakia and Finland both avoided the mistake, but it took the brief dictatorship of M. Voldemaras in Lithuania to revamp executive authority there. In Latvia, with a stronger presidency from the start, no such need has been felt, while in Esthonia the fusion of actual with titular executive authority (there being no president) solves the problem. In Jugoslavia, necessity forced resort to a benevolent royal dictatorship to retrieve the deficiencies in executive power; in Hungary, the impotence of the presidency, under the short-lived Karolyi régime, was one of the reasons for its downfall. The dictatorships of Kun and Horthy followed.
24 Here Schober fell far short of Heimwehr expectations. It had been the minimum hope of the Heimwehr leaders (1) to reduce the parliamentary seats from 165 to 120, thereby making a smaller number of seats essential to the gaining of a parliamentary majority, and (2) greatly to increase the number of constituencies as a means of breaking the force of socialist party organization. Their maximum program called for the institution of a legislative system “on the lines of the Italian régime.” London Times, September 9, 1929. The Pan-German party openly proposed the adoption of the German definite-quota, indefinite-number system—largely in the interest of Ausgleichung. Neue Freie Presse, September 28, 1929.
25 Complaint of the futility of the Bundesrat had long been made on the ground that it was a made shadow of the Nationalrat and that the members of both houses were controlled by the party executives. It stood neither for distinctive provincial representation nor in juxtaposition to the Nationalrat. It was largely on this score that the Bundesrat was thought superfluous. Cf. Winkler, Franz, “Fort mit dem Bundesrat,” Neues Wiener Journal, September 29, 1929, p. 3 Google Scholar.
26 On October 14, 1929, Herr Schumy, Schober's minister of the interior, outlined the government's proposals as adding to the Bundesrat 12 representatives of agricultural proprietors and workers, 9 representatives of commerce, business, and industry, 9 of workers and private enterprises, 3 from the bureaucracy, and 3 from the liberal professions. Cf. Berliner Tageblatt, October 14, 1929, p. 2, c. 2-3.
27 The sincerity of the federalist doctrine sponsored by Mgr. Seipel and his Christian Socialist followers seems open to some question, inasmuch as their sudden advocacy of the corporative state is without precedent—save in Spain and Italy. It is true that since 1919 there have not been lacking in Austria those who would have liked to see the Bundesrat either supplanted or supplemented by a national economic council such as exists in Germany. The Schober proposal seems, paradoxically enough, to have been a mixture of German socialism and Italo-Spanish corporativism, grafted on to a truncated federal structure. The obvious reduction of proletarian representation in such a body needs no comment, and is indicative of the effort to forestall impending Social Democratic control in certain quarters by corporativism, today a much stronger control mechanism than the federal structure meekly accepted by the strong socialist minority in the Constituent Assembly in 1920. Cf. Seipel, Ignatz, Die Kampf van die oesterreichische Verfassung, Vienna, 1929 Google Scholar.
28 Cf. Central European Observer, vol. 7, p. 409, July 26, 1929 Google Scholar.
29 Cf. London Times, October 23, 1929, and Neue Freie Presse, December 1, 1929, p. 9 Google Scholar.
30 Dr. Stumpf, Landeshauptmann of the Tyrol, declared himself in full agreement with such provisions. Neves Wiener Journal, October 25, 1929.
31 Professor Hans Kelsen held that a demotion of Vienna would in reality force a total revision of the constitution, under different procedure from that contemplated by Schober. Cf. “Die Grundzüge der Verfassungsreform,” Neue Freie Presse, October 20, 1929. Actually, the proposals of Schober did not go so far; hence the ordinary procedure for partial revision sufficed. Cf. Heininger, K. W., “Wien in der Bundesverfassungsnovelle,” Neue Freie Presse, October 27, 1929, pp. 7–8 Google Scholar.
32 Cf. Renner, Karl, “Der Schlag der daneben ging,” Sozialistische Monatshefte, vol. 69, pp. 880–884, October, 1929 Google Scholar.
33 A violent critique of the socialists for their acquiescence is contained in “The Austrian Bourgeoisie's Move toward a Fascist Dictatorship and the Tasks of the Proletarian Counter-Attack, The Communist International, vol. 6, pp. 957–964, November 1, 1929 Google Scholar.
34 The Pan-German party considers federal control of educational policy essential to break down provincialism and maintain a Great-German culture. The Ausgleichung movement is very marked here, and is divorced from, and above, religious considerations. “The freedom of the schools,” declared a prominent party leader, “is for us a point in our program on which we cannot yield. We are not fighting against socialist schools merely to make possible a clerical school system.” Neue Freie Presse, November 10, 1929, p. 9, c. 2Google Scholar.
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