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Austria Internal Developments in Austria
The Czech boycott of the Austrian parliament enabled the
German Austrian Liberals to dominate the government of Austria
until the late 1870s. They used their position to block
concessions to Czechs and Poles in the early days of the Dual
Monarchy, and they further protected their interests in 1873 by
altering the franchise law to increase the representation in
parliament of their constituency--the urban, ethnically German
population and assimilated Jews. The Liberals' legislative
program focused on anticlerical measures, but conflict over
foreign policy issues, not religious ones, caused the Liberals'
fall from power in 1879. The Liberals opposed the annexation of
Bosnia and Hercegovina--which was favored by the emperor--and
claimed certain powers in the conduct of foreign policy that
Franz Joseph saw as an infringement on his sovereign authority.
After the fall of the Liberals, a nonparty government known
as the Iron Ring was formed under Eduard Taaffe. Intended to
encircle and limit the influence of the Liberals, the Iron Ring
represented court interests and enjoyed broad support from
clerical parties, German Austrian conservatives, Poles, and Czech
representatives, who had decided to end their boycott. Backed by
this comfortable parliamentary majority, the executive branch was
able to operate smoothly. Although the concessions given the
Czechs in return for their support were linguistic and cultural
rather than political, the concessions raised sensitive issues
because the expanded use of the Czech language in Bohemian public
life weighed heavily on the ethnic German minority.
The major legislative initiative of the Taaffe government was
the 1883 franchise reform. This measure broadened the
ocioeconomic base of the electorate and thus weakened the support
of the Liberals while strengthening the conservatives. An even
broader franchise reform was proposed in 1893 after the election
of 1891, which had been conducted in an atmosphere of heightened
ethnic tensions in Bohemia. The proposed reform would have given
the vote to all male citizens over the age of twenty-five and
thus diluted still further the middle-class urban vote that the
court associated with fervid nationalism. The bill, however, was
widely rejected by the conservative backers of the Iron Ring, and
Taaffe resigned.
Ethnic tensions, however, did not subside, even though a
modified version of the franchise legislation proposed in 1893
was ultimately enacted. With the parliament highly fragmented
both nationally and politically, Minister-President Count Kasimir
Badeni offered new concessions to the Czechs in 1897 to forge the
majority coalition he needed to conduct customs and trade policy
negotiations with the Hungarians. These concessions, which dealt
with the use of the Czech language by the bureaucracy, inflamed
German-speaking Austrians. Violent rioting on a nearrevolutionary scale erupted not only in Bohemia but also in
Vienna and Graz. The Badeni government fell. Because no effective
majority could be assembled in the polarized parliament, the
government increasingly used emergency provisions that allowed
the emperor to enact laws when parliament was not in session.
The political stalemate in parliament was a reflection of
socioeconomic changes in the empire that were heightening
tensions among social classes and nationalities. Although the
economic and psychological impact of the economic crash of 1873
endured for some time, Austria experienced steady
industrialization and urbanization in the late nineteenth
century. By 1890 Austria stood midway between the rural societies
that bordered it on the east and south and the industrially
advanced societies of Western Europe.
The German-speaking middle class, including assimilated Jews,
had been the first group to translate growing numerical and
economic power into political leverage. Even after the 1879 fall
of the Liberal government, which had represented this group's
interests, the government had to consider the concerns of the
German-speaking middle class in order to maintain political
stability.
In contrast to that of the middle class, the positions of the
aristocracy and the Roman Catholic Church weakened. Individual
aristocrats played prominent roles in the government, but the
bureaucracy was assuming many functions once played by the
aristocracy as a whole. For the church, the 1855 concordat
between the empire and the Vatican had been a high-water mark for
its formal role in political life. The Liberals' anticlerical
legislation and abrogation of the concordat in 1870 curtailed the
church's public presence and influence. Nonetheless, popular
support for the church remained strong, and a new form of
Catholic political participation was beginning to take shape
based on a socially progressive platform endorsed by the 1891
papal encycylical Rerum Novarum. This largely urban
movement coalesced into the Christian Social Party
(Christlichsoziale Partei--CSP). Papal support was not sufficient
to win the new party the approval of the conservative Austrian
bishops, who continued to work through the older
clerical-oriented parties.
Initially, the CSP found strong support in Vienna and
controlled the city administration at the turn of the century.
Nonetheless, the party was unable to hold its desired base among
industrial workers in the face of competition from the Social
Democratic Workers' Party (Sozialdemokratische Arbeiterpartei--
SDAP). Founded in 1889 at a unity conference of moderate and
radical socialists, the SDAP adhered to a revisionist Marxist
program. The SDAP became a political home for many Austrian Jews
uncomfortable with the growing anti-Semitism of the German
nationalist movement, the other major political current of the
time.
Rising ethnic tensions made it difficult for political
parties to ignore the influence of German nationalism in the
closing decades of the nineteenth century. The Liberal movement
faded, largely because of its resistance to becoming a
specifically German party, and dissatisfied Liberals were key
figures in the formation of new nationalist movements and
parties. Even though the CSP and SDAP were based on political
ideologies that transcended national identity, they too were
obliged to make concessions in their program to German
nationalism. In the late 1890s, all German-oriented parties, with
the exceptions of the SDAP and the Catholic People's Party,
united in the German Front. The specific demands of the German
Front were modest, but by calling for recognition of a special
position for Germans in light of their historic role in the
empire, German Austrians were on a collision course with other
national groups.
Data as of December 1993
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