Austria THE FIRST REPUBLIC
Vienna's Karlsplatz art nouveau subway stop with baroque
Karlskirche in the background
Courtesy Austrian National Tourist Office, New York
Overview of the Political Camps
Conditioned to view themselves as the ruling elite of a
supranational empire by virtue of what they regarded as their
superior German culture, German Austrians (including assimilated
Jews and Slavs) were the national group least prepared for a
post-Habsburg state. The provisional government formed at the end
of the war included representatives from three political groups:
the Nationalists/Liberals, the Christian Social Party
(Christlichsoziale Partei--CSP), and the Social Democratic
Workers' Party (Sozialdemokratische Arbeiterpartei--SDAP). These
three groups dominated political life in interwar Austria and
reflected the split of Austrian society into three camps:
pan-German nationalists, Catholics and Christian Socials, and
Marxists and Social Democrats.
The parliamentary bloc represented by the
Nationalists/Liberals was the smallest and most internally
divided. Seventeen nationalist groups were unified in the Greater
German People's Party (Grossdeutsche Volkspartei), commonly
called the Nationals, which described itself as a "national-anti-
Semitic, social libertarian party." The political heirs of the
Liberals, the Nationals drew their support from the urban middle
class and retained liberalism's strong anticlerical views.
Unification (Anschluss) with Germany was the Nationals' key
objective, and they were cool, if not openly hostile, toward
restoration of the Habsburg Dynasty to rule in Austria. In rural
Austria, another party, the Agrarian League (Landbund), endorsed
a nationalist program in conjunction with a corporatist and antiSemitic platform. Radical nationalists were few in number, and
some, Adolf Hitler, for example, had emigrated to Germany. The
National Socialist German Workers' Party (National-Sozialistische
Deutsche Arbeiterpartei--NSDAP or Nazi Party) represented this
segment of the nationalist movement but was numerically
insignificant during the 1920s.
The NSDAP originated in prewar Bohemia, where the German
Workers' Party (Deutsche Arbeiterpartei) drew on a virulently
racist movement headed by Georg von Schönerer to put together an
anti-Semitic, anti-Slav nationalist program hostile toward
capitalism, liberalism, Marxism, and clericalism. In 1918 the
party changed its name to the National Socialist German Workers'
Party. After World War I, the party split into two wings, one in
Czechoslovakia among Sudeten Germans (German Austrians of
Bohemia, Moravia, and Silesia), and one in Austria. A similar
party was founded in Germany and eventually came under the
leadership of Hitler. Although the Austrian party leader favored
parliamentary participation and internal party democracy in
contrast to Hitler's antiparliamentarianism and emphasis on the
"leadership principle," the Austrian and German parties united in
1926 but maintained separate national organizations.
The original Christian Social Party (Christlichsozial Partei-
-CSP) had merged with one of the rural-based clerical parties in
1907 and had become more conservative in outlook. Because the
church had lost the political protection of the Habsburg Dynasty
with the collapse of the monarchy in 1918, the church was
increasingly reliant on the political power of the CSP to protect
its interests. Nevertheless, the church hierarchy, which was
distrustful of parliamentary democracy, remained cool toward the
CSP.
During the 1920s and early 1930s, the CSP was dominated by
Ignaz Seipel, a priest and theologian who had served in the last
imperial ministry. The party was well disposed toward the
Habsburg Dynasty and inclined toward its restoration under a
conservative, constitutional monarchy. The CSP gave only
conditional support for unification with Germany and emphasized
Austria's distinct mission as a Christian German nation. In light
of public opinion favoring unification, however, the party was
circumspect in voicing its doubts. The CSP inherited an antiSemitic strain from its association with the prewar nationalist
movement. In addition, the close identification of Jews with both
liberalism and socialism, which were the ideological foes of the
CSP, made anti-Semitism an easy way to cultivate a political
base.
The Social Democratic Workers' Party (Sozialdemokratische
Arbeiterpartei--SDAP) endorsed a revisionist Marxist program.
Although it spoke of the dictatorship of the proletariat, it
sought to gain power through the ballot box, not through
revolution. Karl Renner, who headed the provisional government,
was the chief spokesman for this revisionist program after the
war, but leadership of the party was held by Otto Bauer, who
vocally supported a more radical, left-wing position. Bauer's
rhetoric helped the party outflank the Austrian Communist Party
(Kommunistische Partei Österreichs--KPÖ). But because CSP leader
Seipel was given to similarly strong rhetoric, the two
contributed to the polarization of Austrian society. The Social
Democrats (members of the SDAP), were strong supporters of
unification with Germany, their fervor declining only with the
rise of the Nazi regime in the early 1930s.
Data as of December 1993
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