History of Europe

Corporate State vs. Republic. Austria in the interwar period

September 10 marks the 100th anniversary of the signing of the Saint-Germain Peace Treaty. In the fall of 1919, this treaty cemented the post-war order in what would soon be known as Austria. The signing of the treaty ushered in a new and conflict-ridden period for the country, which was to end in the so-called Corporate State and finally the “Annexation” to the German Reich. I always find that anniversaries like this are a good opportunity to reflect on a historical topic. A blog parade that Sabrina from the Stammbaum Manufaktur advertised was what particularly motivated me to write this post. "100 years ago today" is the motto. So let's take a look at what exactly the signing of the contract in Saint-Germain meant for my old home country of Austria, what followed and how we finally ended up with "Ständestaat" and "Anschluss". As you can see, there will be a lot of quotation marks in this article...

The beginning of the First Republic of Austria

The story begins, of course, long before the corporate state and also before the Treaty of Saint-Germain. In order to uncover the roots of the First Republic of Austria, we have to go back at least to the autumn of 1918. As everywhere in Central Europe, the looming end of the World War set things in motion. The November Revolution swept across Germany even before the armistice was signed, and hardly a stone was left unturned in Austria during those months. After all, it was already becoming clear in Vienna in October (if not long before) that most parts of the Noch-Monarchy actually had no interest in staying in this club. Suddenly there was talk everywhere of new states, art constructs, as the Viennese certainly saw it. They had abstruse names like "Czechoslovakia", "Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes" or even "Hungary". That must have been unimaginable for the gentlemen in Vienna! But one could not hide from the fact, so the provisional national assembly that had just been created also proclaimed the “Republic of German-Austria” on November 12, after the Kaiser had renounced his share of state affairs (which of course was not a resignation, as far as we knew even then already about PR).

At first glance, that all sounds pretty positive. With the first cabinet under the Social Democrat Karl Renner, Austria was finally able to move towards a democratic future and leave the dusty monarchy behind. It's just stupid that hardly anyone wanted it in this form. So democracy, that's what most people wanted. It was "Austria" that was the problem for many. After all, from the beginning the government made it a point to emphasize that German-Austria was, of course, only a part of the German Republic. No significant party of the time, neither the conservative Christian-Social nor the Social Democrats or the Greater Germans (perhaps not quite so surprising here) saw a chance of survival for the small state of Austria. In their eyes, only the union with Germany could bring a viable future. It's just stupid that exactly that was immediately forbidden by the victorious powers of the First World War. In the Treaty of Saint-Germain (and, to be on the safe side, again in the Treaty of Versailles with Germany), this connection ban was laid down. Not a very good start to the new era...

The interwar period. Not a highlight of Austrian history

What started out suboptimal hasn't gotten any better over time. At the beginning of the 1920s, the situation in Austria got even worse if anything. In the beginning, the major parties at least got together and worked together in some way. The governments up to 1921 were all large coalitions in which the Christian Socialists and the Social Democrats of the SDAP came to terms more or less with one another. But that was soon over. After 1921, the Social Democrats were no longer represented in any Austrian government, despite their election results close to the 40 percent mark. Instead, the Christian Social Party rallied all remaining conservative forces around itself, just to keep the Reds out of power. They, in turn, made themselves comfortable in the capital and built “Red Vienna” there with their absolute majority. Conservatives in the state government, leftists in the capital and little contact between the two. But whether you believe it or not:The low point had not yet been reached here either.

In addition to the increasing political polarization (which I'm going to talk about in detail in this week's podcast), the two blocs soon faced each other on the streets of Austria. Shortly after the end of the war, so-called “home guards” were founded all over the country, groups of old soldiers and officers who obviously had nothing better to do with themselves than to declare themselves the keepers of order. Before you knew it, these self-appointed law enforcement officers were already hounding communists and everyone they thought were communists. Finally, in 1923, the Social Democratic Party founded the Republican Protection League against these home guards. The state's monopoly on the use of force had now degenerated into a joke. The various paramilitaries marched undisturbed across the country and increasingly attacked each other.

Of course, that wasn't the only problem. Austria's economy has also been on the ground for a long time. The structures were not designed for a small state like this, the granary of the old empire was suddenly in Hungary, the largest industrial centers in Czechoslovakia. As in Germany, inflation was not long in coming. It could only be tackled successfully at the beginning of 1925 by taking out a loan from the League of Nations (the moderately successful forerunner of the UN) and introducing a new currency, the shilling. This even brought recovery for a few years, also because the schilling turned out to be very stable. After the Great Depression of 1929, that would of course also reveal its disadvantages, but I'm anticipating. In the middle of the 1920s - we can sum it up - the democratic system of the first Austrian republic was increasingly on the Oasch, as we would say quite nonchalantly here.

The road to dictatorship and corporate state

Polarization was followed by what usually follows such polarization:the radicalization of one or more affected parties. One could already see this in the Christian Socials in the late 1920s. Initially, the party and its most important figure, the multiple chancellor Ignaz Seipel, were still quite open to democracy. At least that's what he claimed back then. Over time, however, things started to sound quite different and Seipel's last words on his deathbed are said to have been "You have to shoot!". So much for the man... In Austria, right-wing radicalization was not first pushed by the Christian Socialists but by the Heimwehr. In the 1920s these organizations took on more and more fascist traits and although they were closely related to the Christian Socialists, they were far more radical than them in many respects. In 1930 they then officially turned away from parliamentary democracy in the "Korneuburg Oath" and now demanded an autocratic corporate state structured according to professional groups. It didn't take long for the "mother party" to take action.

This happened under their new party leader and chancellor, Engelbert Dollfuss. In the spring of 1933 he took advantage of a stalemate in parliament to switch it off without further ado. He used police force to prevent MPs from returning to the house, which did not stop him from then describing the charade as a "self-taken out." Among other things, he banned new elections with the great justification that this could restrict tourism in Austria. From this point in time at the latest, he ruled with enabling laws, defused the country's courts and was actually able to rule freely. At least if it hadn't been for the Social Democrats and the increasingly vocal National Socialists (with whom we actually had a lot in common, but sharing power is really not conservative politics).

Dollfuss – who was already known as “Millimetrnich” at the time because of his unimpressive height – nonetheless set about transforming his regime into a “corporate state”, as the Heimwehr had envisioned a few years earlier. After the abolition of parliament, the Communist Party and the Nazis were banned, and in the end even Dollfuss' party itself had to believe in it. The Christian Socials merged into a new state party, the Fatherland Front. Anyone who now draws parallels to Sebastian Kurz's "New People's Party" does so at their own risk.

In February 1934, the regime finally tackled the "problem" of social democracy. The government suddenly made it its mission to restore the state's monopoly on the use of force and to take action against the arms caches of the Republican Defense League (not that they interfered with the arms of the Home Guard). Days of fighting ensued between the Schutzbund, the military and the Heimwehr, at the end of which the Schutzbund and with it the Workers' Party lay on the ground. On May 1st (not entirely coincidental) the legal basis of the new state followed:the May Constitution, which finally cleaned up democracy in Austria. Nothing now stood in the way of building up an authoritarian corporate state. Well, except perhaps for the fact that Engelbert Dollfuss was murdered by the Nazis just months later. But what should he have done anyway? You can't confuse the people either. To tell them that now both the Socialists AND the Nazis were enemies of the state... That was overdoing it. Chancellor successor Kurt Schuschnigg tried to continue this strange construct, the "corporate state of Austria", for almost four years. As is well known, at the end of the theater there was the “connection”. The leadership of the corporate state then saw itself again in the concentration camp together with the socialists they had imprisoned. Sometimes history knows irony.

By the way, this week's podcast is about why we should still be interested in the topic of the corporate state in Austria today. There I speak in detail about Dollfuss and Schuschnigg's path to Austrofascism. As I look at the roots of the polarization and militarization of the 1920s, it may not surprise you:some of it is still happening today in much the same way. A glance in the direction of Poland is enough. Listen!