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Austria The Foundation of the First Republic
Although the SDAP was the smallest of the three parliamentary
blocs, it received a preeminent role in the postwar provisional
government because it was perceived as best able to maintain
public order in the face of the revolutionary situation created
by economic collapse and military defeat. With Bauer's Marxist
rhetoric and the party's strong ties to organized labor, the SDAP
was able to outmaneuver the KPÖ for control and direction of
workers' and soldiers' councils that sprang up in imitation of
the revolutionary government in Russia. The SDAP suppressed the
old imperial army and founded a new military force, the Volkswehr
(People's Defense), under SDAP control, to contain revolutionary
agitation and guard against bourgeois counterrevolution.
When parliamentary elections were held in February 1919, the
SDAP won 40.8 percent of the vote, compared with 35.9 percent for
the CSP and 20.8 percent for the Nationals. As a result, the
Nationals withdrew from the coalition and left a SDAP-CSP
government headed by Renner to negotiate a settlement to the war
and write a constitution. At the peace talks in the Paris suburb
of St. Germain, however, the Allies allowed no meaningful
negotiations because Austria-Hungary had surrendered
unconditionally. The Allies had decided that Austria was a
successor state to Austria-Hungary, so the treaty contained a
war-guilt and war-reparations clause and limitations on the size
of Austria's military. Although the provisional government had
declared the Austrian state to be a constituent state of the
German republic, the treaty barred Austria from joining Germany
without the consent of the League of Nations and compelled the
new state to call itself the Republic of Austria rather than the
German-Austrian Republic. After Austria's parliament approved
these unexpectedly harsh terms, the Treaty of St. Germain was
signed on September 10, 1919.
In setting the territorial boundaries of the Austrian state,
sometimes referred to as the First Republic, the Allies were
faced with the basic problem of carving a nation-state out of an
empire in which ethnic groups did not live within compact and
distinct boundaries. Austria received the contiguous German or
German-dominated territories of Upper Austria, Lower Austria,
Styria, Carinthia, Tirol (north of the Brenner Pass), Salzburg,
and Vorarlberg, as well as a slice of western Hungary that became
the province of Burgenland. Under the empire, however, no
specifically "Austrian" identity or nationalism had ever
developed among these provinces. Thus, despite a common language
and historical ties through the Habsburg Dynasty, pressure from
the Allies was necessary to keep even these contiguous areas
together.
Although geographically contiguous and ethnically German,
South Tirol was transferred to Italy as promised by the Allies
when Italy joined the war. The Sudeten Germans were not
geographically contiguous and could not be included in the new
Austrian state. As a result, the Sudeten Germans were
incorporated in the new Czechoslovakia. Austria's population
numbered 6.5 million, as against Czechoslovakia's 11.8 million,
of whom 3.1 million were ethnic Germans.
The constitution of 1920 established a bicameral parliament,
with a lower house, the Nationalrat (National Council) elected
directly by universal adult suffrage, and an upper house, the
Bundesrat (Federal Council) elected indirectly by the provincial
assemblies
(see Government Institutions
, ch. 4). In accordance
with the SDAP desire for a centralized state, real political
power was concentrated in the Nationalrat. Significantly,
however, none of the three major parties was truly committed to
the state and institutions established by the constitution. The
SDAP goal was an Austria united with a socialist Germany, and the
party's inflammatory Marxist rhetoric caused the other parties to
fear that the SDAP could not be trusted to maintain democratic
institutions if it ever achieved a parliamentary majority.
Although the CSP under Seipel came closest to accepting the idea
of an independent Austria, it preferred a monarchy over a
republic. Seipel himself voiced increasingly antidemocratic
sentiments as the decade advanced. The Nationals were
fundamentally opposed to the existence of an independent Austrian
state and desired unification with Germany.
Data as of December 1993
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