An Alpine, prosperous state with a rich cultural heritage that espouses some of the best causes in the European Union and around the world is how we see Austria today. This, however, was not how Austria figured in the World at the time of its inception in the second decade of the twentieth century. It is a fact that for the first few years of its life the economic and political viability of the mini state was doubted by analysts. This was despite the fact that the new Austrian republic claimed a huge part of the cultural heritage of the Austro-Hungarian and Holy Roman Empires, strong and powerful monarchies whose history of a millennia stretched back to the medieval times.
Despite the cosmopolitan character of the multicultural Austria-Hungry, its successor, the First Austrian Republic was essentially German in both culture and ethnicity. It was a German nation of a very high culture. It adopted and practiced republicanism and democracy of the early twentieth century. The exigencies of the post-World War I meant that the new republic struggled with both; its economy and politics. It is a fact that the country was described as ‘the state nobody wanted’ by the architects of the European order following the treaty of Versailles.
The new republic had a population of seven million only. Most of the citizens of the new state wanted an ‘Anschluss’ with the new German Weimer republic that was born in 1918. This union was, however, not allowed by the Allied Powers that drafted the Treaty of Versailles in 1919. Support for a union with scions of the Austro-Hungarian Empire was lukewarm in the Weimar German that was struggling with political and economic challenges of its own.
The decade and half after the inception of the First Austrian Republic, on September 10 th,1919, was marked by a prolonged economic and social strife. This strife, inevitably, bore on and determined the course of the politics in the new republic. The new republic lasted for fifteen years only. Karl Renner (1870-1950), the first Chancellor of the Austrian Republic had to contend with some of the most trying challenges in the history of modern Austria. As a result of the Treaty of St. Germaine large parts of the German speaking areas of the former Austro-Hungarian empire were separated from the new republic. Sudetenland was given to Czechoslovakia; parts of southern Tyrol went to Italy. The loss of large agricultural an industrial areas meant that the new republic was born economically hamstrung. The border disputes with its neighborhood would linger on throughout the life of the new republic.
Karrl Renner was a Social Democrat. The first Chancellor of the Republic, he lasted in office only till July 1920. The Social Democratic Workers’ Party of Austria lost parliament majority after the October 17, 1920 legislative elections. After that the first Austrian Republic was ruled by coalition governments of the Christian Social Party and the Greater German People’s Party. The later party was to regress into Austrian Nazism in the 1930s. The Social Democrats remained a big political force in the country, nevertheless. Karl Seitz (1869-1950) of the Social Democratic Workers’ Party, however, remained the mayor of Vienna from 1923 to 1934.
The First Austrian republic remained mired in political strife through most of its life. It could barely manage the economic and social challenges facing it. A constant confrontation between the conservatives and the leftists slipped into violent clashes between paramilitary groups representing the two. A July 1927 controversial court verdict acquitting the alleged killers of two civilians led to a violent protest by the leftists which resulted in police shooting claiming 89 deaths and over half a thousand injuries. This has come to be known as the July Revolt of 1927.
The ultimate culmination of this militarization of politics and radicalization of political conflicts was a civil war. The Christian Social Chancellor Engelbert Dollfuss ended on the banning of the SDAP (Social Democratic Workers’ Party) on February 12th,1933. After that he became increasingly more authoritarian. The political disputes turned into an open Civil War after February 1934, Chancellor Dollfuss ended the First Austrian republic on May 1st, 1934 by making Austria a state ruled by a single party.
The story of the First Austrian Republic is that of economic and social distress that spawned social and political strife. This strife led to violence and civil war which ended on a dictatorship.
