Albert Sever

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Albert Sever's tomb in the Ottakringer Friedhof

Albert Sever (born November 24, 1867 in Agram , Kingdom of Croatia and Slavonia , Austria-Hungary ; † February 12, 1942 in Vienna ) was a social democratic politician in Vienna and the first democratically elected governor of Lower Austria (at that time still including Vienna).

Youth and Politics

After the death of Sever's Croatian father, his mother moved with him to Vienna. Sever's learned profession was that of butcher's assistant. He later worked in a paper mill, then as a private civil servant (employee) for a health insurance company. As the website of the Austrian National Council records, he was punished for political offenses in 1889 and 1890 (and has since been considered a criminal record instead of blameless ). Politically, he was not regarded as a great speaker, but as a talent for organization. With the brilliant speaker Franz Schuhmeier , he is said to have developed the internal organizational structure of Austrian social democracy that is still in use today.

Ottakringer MP

In 1908 he was elected a member of the Lower Austrian state parliament, on October 3, 1911, a member of the Reichsrat (last session: November 12, 1918). In 1913 he became (as a replacement for the murdered Franz Schuhmeier ) district chairman of the Social Democrats in the Viennese workers' district of Ottakring (at that time the strongest Viennese district organization of the party).

Shortly before the end of the First World War , at the request of the naval section of the Austro-Hungarian War Ministry, the parliamentary club of the Social Democratic Workers' Party sent him to the Austro- Hungarian naval port Pola in Istria at the end of October 1918 because naval commander Nikolaus Horthy was no longer in control of the situation. Together with August Forstner and Oskar Helmer , Sever succeeded in saving 22,000 soldiers from being captured by Italy and ensuring their repatriation.

As a former member of the Reichsrat, he was a member of the Provisional National Assembly of the new state of German Austria from October 21, 1918 to February 16, 1919.After the first elections, in which women could also participate, he was a member from March 4, 1919 to May 31, 1919 of the Constituent National Assembly and was subsequently a member of the National Council from November 10, 1920 to February 1934 (which was no longer convened after March 4, 1933). On November 18, 1927, Albert Sever was made a citizen of the City of Vienna (the highest honor after honorary citizenship).

As a prominent politician, Sever was occasionally targeted by the great critic Karl Kraus . So Kraus took z. For example, the impetus was that in 1930 Sever devotedly welcomed the Viennese police president and now Federal Chancellor Schober , who had been described as a workers murderer three years earlier, at a memorial service for the victims of the police hunt for demonstrators in the Palace of Justice fire on July 15, 1927. Kraus commented the greeting before the Workers' Home, where he dedicated a photo in his magazine, the news of the birth of the Empress of Abyssinia (a transmission of the official news agency) would have far less upset a socialist ... as the Wagentürlöffnung Comrade Sever for the Schober on July 15, 1930 in front of the workers' home.

Governor of Lower Austria

Until November 10, 1920 , the province of Lower Austria also included the predominantly social democratic city of Vienna (transitional regulations until the end of 1921, see Separation Act ); the social democratic majority thus achieved in the state elections of May 4, 1919, brought Albert Sever into the position of governor of the largest federal state from May 20, 1919 to November 10, 1920, the day the Federal Constitution came into force, which made Vienna independent new republic. After November 10, 1920, there was no longer a joint state government; The mayor of Vienna, Jakob Reumann, and the governor of Lower Austria, Johann Mayer , took turns chairing the joint administrative commission that existed until the end of 1921 and was responsible for coordinating the separation agendas.

As governor, Sever enabled the so-called "Sever marriages", the remarriage of divorced Catholics. According to church principles, a second marriage is still forbidden to this day. Austria did not have a civil marriage similar to Germany or France until 1938; its introduction into the constitution of the republic had failed due to resistance from the powerful Catholic Church and the Christian Social Party. With an ordinance, Sever created the opportunity to apply to the governor for a dispensation from this ban. In this way “ wild marriages ” could be made state-recognized.

Clerical opponents of this liberality - Friedrich Funder reports that the Christian Social Party had been attacked by smuggling administrative measures, for example the grotesque invention of the so-called dispense marriage of Governor Sever - turned to the Constitutional Court (VfGH) and the Supreme Court (OGH). The two highest courts could not agree to invalidate Sever's decree and the marriages based on it; the Supreme Court spoke of invalidity, the Constitutional Court declared it valid. The marriages continued

Sever's stance on refugees from Galicia

“During the war, around 20,000 Jewish refugees from the then Austrian Galician regions [...] came to Vienna. They were followed by around 5,000 in the first post-war weeks, who managed to flee the terrible pogroms wrought by Polish and Ukrainian soldiers. In Lemberg alone , where officers of a dehumanized Soldateska gave up the Jewish quarter for three days to plunder, 300 people were killed and terrible atrocities committed. When a Jewish organization close to the Social Democrats, Poale Zion , asked the party to send a speaker to a protest meeting against these pogroms, the party executive declined.

[...] “We are facing another shortening of the bread ration. We should let our women and children starve because the Eastern Jews like it so much and they insist that we share our last crumb of bread with them ”, wrote the “ Reichspost ” (October 4, 1919). [...] The "Arbeiterzeitung" also demanded that "Vienna be relieved of this burden [...]". "

In fact, Albert Sever, as governor, issued a decree in September 1919 that made the further stay of the refugees dependent on a residence permit - which was rarely granted. With the end of the monarchy, the Jews lost the monarch as their “patron”. The social democrats, who were not fundamentally anti-Semitic, pushed a policy directed against (East) Jewish war refugees. Especially the impracticable deportation order ... Severs of September 9, 1919, deeply unsettled the refugees. Numerous "abolitions" were ordered. In practice, nothing came of it.

The Czechoslovakia refused. The Polish government complained to the League of Nations . Fear also emerged that the victorious powers might stop helping. This is how the fall of Albert Severs, but also Renner and Reumann , which contradicts all social democratic principles, ended .

Sever and ex-emperor Karl

In March 1921, ex-emperor and king Karl drove unrecognized from his exile in Switzerland to Budapest via Austria to take over government from imperial administrator Miklos Horthy . Horthy was able to persuade Karl to return to Switzerland, citing the reactions of the Allies. The Hungarian government contacted the Austrian one about the passage of the court train to Switzerland. The main committee of the National Council gave its approval on the condition that the Austrian Volkswehr be accompanied under political leadership. The social democratic party appointed Sever, the railroad workers the state parliament member Adolf Müller. On April 4, the train from Jennersdorf , which was still under Hungarian administration, was transferred to the border station in Fehring , where the social democratic politicians, as well as police officers, four officers, twelve soldiers of the People's Army and Allied soldiers (one French, one Italian and one British officer as well as four English, two French and six Italian soldiers) took over the train. Although the actual authority of command lay in the hands of the Allied military, the presence of the politicians could help to prevent a planned storming of the train by workers in Bruck an der Mur.

Switched off

After March 4, 1933, Parliament, which Sever had belonged to for more than 20 years, was no longer functional; the Dollfuss government ruled without a parliament. In the February uprising , the last uprising of the Social Democrats against the emerging corporate state , Sever's wife Ida (née Kirchberger, * 1873) was on 12./13. Killed in February 1934 in the bombardment of the Ottakring workers' home. Sever, then 67, was arrested and the Social Democratic Party banned.

Albert Sever lived through the first years of the Third Reich and died in Vienna at the age of 75.

memory

  • Severhof: Municipal housing with 96 apartments, Vienna 16., Maroltingergasse 56–58, built in 1930/31 according to plans by Alexander Popp, named September 3, 1949
  • Albert Sever Hall: Vienna 16th, Schuhmeierplatz 17-18
  • Albert-Sever-Straße: Gerasdorf near Vienna , on the border with the 21st district of Vienna (date unknown)
  • Albert-Sever-Straße: Strasshof on the northern line

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ "Die Fackel", Ed. Karl Kraus, No. 847–851, March 1931, p. 65
  2. ↑ Friedrich Funder: From yesterday to today. From the Empire to the Republic. Verlag Herold Wien - Munich, 3rd edition, Vienna 1971, p. 493
  3. ^ Website of the Wiener Zeitung, keyword Hans Kelsen , October 7, 2006 (accessed November 22, 2013)
  4. ↑ Review of Ulrike Harmat: marriage on revocation? The conflict over marriage law in Austria 1918-1938 (= Ius Commune special issue 121). Klostermann, Frankfurt am Main 1999, XII, 560 S, online
  5. ↑ a b Rudolf Spitzer: Karl Seitz . Franz Deutike, Vienna 1994, p. 80f.
  6. ^ From Albert Lichtblau : Between the millstones. The influence of politics on the dimension of minorities using the example of the Czechs and Jews in Vienna in the 19th and 20th centuries . Online version. Archived from the original on January 19, 2008 ; accessed on March 1, 2014 .
  7. ↑ Albert Sever: A man from the people. Autobiography . Verlag Landesorganization der SPÖ Vienna, 1956, p. 34ff.
personal data
SURNAME Sever, Albert
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Austrian politician, governor of Lower Austria, member of the National Council
DATE OF BIRTH November 24, 1867
PLACE OF BIRTH Agram , Croatia , Austria-Hungary
DATE OF DEATH February 12, 1942
Place of death Vienna