First Republic and the Anschluss

Early postwar years

On October 21, 1918, the 210 German members of the Reichsrat of Austria formed themselves into the National Assembly for German-Austria, and on October 30 they proclaimed this an independent state under the direction of the State Council (Staatsrat), composed of the leaders of the three main parties (Social Democrats, Christian Socialists, and German Nationalists) and other elected members. Revolutionary disturbances in Vienna and, more important, the news of the declaration of a republic in Germany forced the State Council on the republican path (see The Weimar Republic, 1918–33). On November 12, the day after Charles’s abdication, the National Assembly resolved unanimously that “German-Austria is a democratic republic” and also that “German-Austria is a component part of the German republic.” Under the title of chancellor, the socialist Renner became head of a coalition government, with Bauer, the acknowledged spokesman of the left wing of the Social Democrats, as foreign secretary. On November 22 the territory of the republic was further defined: the National Assembly claimed for the new state all the Habsburg lands in which a majority of the population was German. It also claimed the German areas of Bohemia and Moravia.

From the first day, the republic was faced with the disastrous heritage of the war. Four years of war effort and the breakup of the Habsburg empire had brought economic exhaustion and chaos. The resulting social distress and poverty inspired revolutionary activities, making bolshevism appear the greatest danger to the new republic, especially after a Soviet republic was established in Hungary at the end of March 1919. The Austrian Social Democrats were determined to resist bolshevism with their own forces without making an alliance (as the German Social Democrats did) with the old order. The Volkswehr (People’s Guard) was organized and was twice effective (April 17 and June 15) against communist attempts at a putsch. Bauer and fellow socialist leader Friedrich Adler staked their popularity on defeating the communist agitation in the workers’ and soldiers’ councils, which had been set up on the Soviet model. By mid-1919, political and social order was restored on parliamentary lines, and the Communist Party relapsed into insignificance.

More dangerous was the tendency of the Länder (states) to break away from Vienna or to claim almost complete independence. Though the principal motive of this was reluctance to send food supplies to Vienna, it also represented a genuine social, political, and ideological conflict: the administration of the industrialized capital was socialist controlled, while the states, being predominantly agrarian, remained conservative and faithful to the Roman Catholic tradition. This difference was aggravated by the fact that the Habsburg monarchy had been the only bond between the German Austrian lands; with the abdication of the emperor, no symbol of loyalty common to all states remained. Vorarlberg voted for union with Switzerland in May 1919, and Tirol also attempted to secede.

In February 1919, elections for a constitutional assembly were held. The Social Democrats were returned as the largest single party, with 69 seats. The Christian Socialists won 63 and the German Nationalists 26. When this assembly met (March 4), it had to make wide concessions to federalism in order to appease the states. In exchange, Vienna was elevated to the rank of a state, and the mayor was made the equivalent of a state governor. This proviso subsequently enabled socialist-controlled Vienna to pursue an autonomous policy, even though the Bundesregierung (“federal government”) was controlled by the conservative parties from 1920 to 1934.

The constituent assembly also settled the constitution of the federal republic (October 1, 1920). The State Council was abolished, and a bicameral legislative assembly, the Bundesversammlung, was established. The Bundesrat (upper house) was to exercise only a suspensive veto and was to be elected roughly in proportion to the population in each state. This represented a defeat for the federal elements in the states, which had wanted the Bundesrat to exercise an absolute veto and to be composed of equal numbers of members from each state. The Nationalrat (lower house) was to be elected by universal suffrage on a basis of proportional representation. The Bundesversammlung in full session elected the president of the republic for a four-year term, but the federal government, with the chancellor at its head, was elected in the Nationalrat on a motion submitted by its principal committee; this committee was itself representative of the proportions of the parties in the house.

The foreign policy of Bauer and the representatives of the major political parties had insisted firmly on Anschluss (“union”) with Germany, and, as late as 1921, unauthorized plebiscites held in the western provinces returned overwhelming majorities in favour of the union. But Article 88 of the Treaty of Saint-Germain (1919), signed by Austria and the Allied Powers, forbade Anschluss without the consent of the League of Nations and stipulated that the republic should cease to call itself Deutschösterreich (German-Austria); it became the Republik Österreich (Republic of Austria). The Austrian claim for the German-speaking areas of Bohemia and Moravia was denied by the Saint-Germain peace conference, and Austria also had to recognize the frontiers of Czechoslovakia along slightly rectified historical administrative lines. On Austria’s southern frontier, the newly created Kingdom of Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes threatened armed invasion until it was decided that the border question should be settled by a plebiscite, which, on October 10, 1920, returned a majority of 59 percent in favour of Austria. The German-speaking districts of western Hungary were to be ceded to Austria outright, but Austria, in the face of Hungarian resistance, was obliged to hold a plebiscite. The area of Sopron was finally restored to Hungary.

After the elections of February 1919, Renner had formed another coalition government; however, following a government crisis in the summer of 1920, a caretaker cabinet under the Christian Socialist Michael Mayr was formed. This was the government that prepared the draft of the constitution and introduced it into parliament. After its approval, new elections were held on October 17, 1920. The Christian Socialists were returned as the strongest party, gaining 82 seats, while the Social Democrats were reduced to 66 and the German Nationalists to 20. Mayr formed a cabinet composed of Christian Socialists; the Social Democrats went into opposition and never returned to the government during the First Republic.

This political division hardened, and no decisive change took place during the following years. The system of proportional representation combined with the ideological background of Austrian parties made oscillations of political allegiance unlikely. Of the two mass parties, the Social Democrats had an unshakable majority in Vienna (in which about a third of the republic’s population lived), while the Christian Socialists had an equally secure majority among the Roman Catholic peasants and the conservative classes, the latter consisting largely of army officers, landowners, and big businesses. The urban middle classes, hostile to both workers and peasants, became German Nationalists. But German nationalism was not limited to the middle classes. Many workers and peasants felt themselves to be Germans and responded to the national appeal.