Kasimir Felix Badeni

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Kasimir Felix Graf von Badeni (born October 14, 1846 in Surochów near Jaroslau , Galicia , † March 10, 1909 in Krasne , Galicia) was a lawyer and from 1895 to 1897 Prime Minister of the Austrian part of the Austro-Hungarian monarchy . He is known for the Baden s electoral law reform and the Baden language ordinance of April 5, 1897 in the area of ​​tension of the nationality struggle of the multi-ethnic state.

Casimir Felix Count Badeni

Life

Badeni, who originally came from an Italian family , completed his legal studies at the University of Krakow with a doctorate and entered civil service in 1866. He worked in the Ministry of the Interior and the Ministry of Agriculture, became district captain in Żółkiew in 1871 , then in Rzeszów , and in 1879 governor's delegate and councilor in Krakow . From 1886 to 1888 he lived on his property.

Badeni family coat of arms

Badeni in 1888 by Emperor Franz Joseph I to kk governor in the Kingdom of Galicia and Lodomeria appointed. He followed on September 30, 1895 at the request of the Emperor Erich Graf Kielmansegg in the office of the Imperial and Royal Prime Minister ( Badeni Ministry ).

His son Ludwik Józef Władysław Badeni was married to Alice Elisabeth Ankarcrona (1889–1985), a daughter of the Swedish nobleman Oscar Carl Gustav Ankarcrona, who in 1920 after the death of her husband in the second marriage to the former Austrian Archduke Karl Albrecht von Habsburg-Altenburg got married.

Baden's electoral reform

As Prime Minister (September 30, 1895– November 30, 1897), he initiated an electoral reform in 1896. A fifth general class of voters was introduced for all male citizens over the age of 24. The four classes of voters that existed until then were: large estates, cities, chambers of commerce and industry, and rural communities. The new - fifth - class of voters comprised 72 of the 425 seats in the House of Representatives . As a result of this reform, the House of Representatives was enlarged and a political shift took place, as the Social Democrats and Christian Socials in particular benefited from the new electorate.

The importance of the political consequences of Baden's electoral reform cannot be overestimated. In fact, it led to a complete reshaping of the Austrian political landscape: if up until then the members of the parliament had formed rather loose parliamentary groups within the framework of the notable parties , the now changed requirements for voter mobilization made the development of firmly established, tightly organized mass parties necessary. At that time, the three political camps emerged that would shape the domestic political landscape of Austria until the 1980s: Social Democrats , Christian Socials and German Nationalists (who only succeeded in forming a unified political party, the Greater German People's Party , in 1919). In particular, Social Democrats and Christian Socials found their supporters in the new general electoral class, but were only able to move into parliament with a strength corresponding to their true significance when universal male suffrage had also become equal . This was the case in 1907.

Baden language regulation

Gustav Brandt : Badeni's cat music

After the defeat in the German War of 1866, Austria's politically weakened ruling class was forced to accommodate the Hungarians ( Magyars ), who recognized the crown but did not want to be dependent on a government in Vienna. This happened through the Austro-Hungarian compromise reached in 1867 .

With the Hungarian example in mind, other Slavic nationalities now also demanded domestic political independence. The Czech national movement in particular was disappointed that their loyalty to Austria in the war of 1866 was not rewarded with equality with the Germans and Hungarians of the monarchy ( Austro-Czech Compromise ) . The Germans in the Danube Monarchy, on the other hand, increasingly felt the efforts to increase the independence of Czech culture as an existential challenge. This dispute reached its first climax in the dispute over Czech as the official language alongside German in Bohemia and Moravia .

As the Imperial and Royal Prime Minister, Badeni, in his function as Minister of the Interior, brought about the ordinance of the Ministers of the Interior, Justice, Finance, Trade and Agriculture of April 5, 1897 regarding the linguistic qualifications of civil servants employed by the authorities in Bohemia . The ordinance was signed by Interior Minister Badeni, Finance Minister Leon Biliński , Agriculture Minister Johann von Ledebur-Wicheln , Justice Minister Johann Nepomuk Gleispach and Trade Minister Hugo Glanz von Eicha . The five ministers announced a similar ordinance in Moravia on April 22, 1897.

Before that, Justice Minister Karl von Stremayr had issued the Stremayr language ordinances in 1880 together with the Imperial and Royal Prime Minister Eduard Taaffe . As the Christian social journalist Friedrich Funder later explained, this established the external official language : administrative authorities and courts in Bohemia and Moravia had the duty to “deal with oral and written submissions in the same national language in which they were made; general announcements, as far as they did not concern individual districts or communities, had to be bilingual. "

Badeni's ordinance now referred to the internal official language , "which also required the handling of verbal or written inquiries and submissions from the party in internal official dealings instead of the previous exclusively German treatment in the language of the forwarder." This resulted in the provision that in the future all civil servants should both Had to master national languages ​​and from July 1, 1901 onwards, only applicants who could speak both languages ​​were to be accepted. In 1896 Badeni received an honorary doctorate from the Philosophical Faculty of Lwów University .

Badeni riots

A storm of protest arose in the 77 German judicial districts (out of a total of 216) because the German officials only rarely spoke Czech and therefore an influx of the usual bilingual Czech officials was feared.

Before and after the summer parliamentary break, there were riots in the Reichsrat and mass demonstrations in Vienna , Graz and Prague ( Badeni crisis ).

An official Viennese police chronicle, which mainly referred to November 1897, assessed the events in the interwar period as follows: “In the old national struggle between Germans and Slavs ... Badeni's attempts to grant privileges to the Slavs resolved the state to the core harrowing volcanic eruptions. Wache [meaning the security guard ] had to calm down in a grueling and sacrificial struggle. ”After the Second World War, the Badeni riots in Vienna were, in a text from the same source, only an example of“ the national demonstrations led by the student body ”and for "The frequent German national rallies against the Czechs".

Badeni submitted a resignation on November 28, 1897, on the basis of which the Badeni Ministry was relieved by the emperor two days later.

On the occasion of the removal, on November 30, 1897, Franz Joseph expressed his “warmest, most appreciative thanks” to Badeni for his “devoted loyalty”, for “persistent, self-sacrificing zeal” and for “loyal devotion and devotion” in a handwriting published the following day assured him of his "sincere, unchanging benevolence". He then lived in Busk . Badeni died on a journey home from Karlsbad, a few kilometers from Busk.

Unresolved problem until 1918

Austria now got into a state crisis, the imperial and royal prime ministers changed in quick succession. The language ordinance was softened by Badeni's successor in office, Baron Paul Gautsch von Frankenthurn , on February 24th to March 15th, 1898 and finally repealed completely on October 14th, 1899 by Prime Minister Manfred von Clary-Aldringen . Funder commented: “By 1900 three governments - Gautsch, Thun and Clary-Aldringen - had bled to death on Badeni's legacy since 1897. Count Clary had eliminated the language regulations and exchanged them for the German and Czech obstruction. "

It was therefore partially governed by emergency decrees, and a state of emergency was imposed on Prague . The language regulations were also the external reason for the German nationalists around Georg Ritter von Schönerer to proclaim the Los-von-Rom movement .

An Austro-Czech balance was still sought, but never achieved. The Germans of Bohemia and Moravia, although in the minority there, together with the Germans in the German-speaking crown lands (later German Austria ) claimed leadership in Cisleithanien and rejected the domestic political independence of Bohemia and Moravia. This conflict could not be resolved until the end of the First World War . However, the German element was too weak in autumn 1918 to prevent the now complete independence of the new Czechoslovakia or to actually win the claimed German-populated peripheral areas of Bohemia and Moravia.

literature

  • Johann Albrecht Freiherr von Reiswitz:  Badeni, Kasimir Graf von. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 1, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1953, ISBN 3-428-00182-6 , pp. 510-512 ( digitized version ).
  • Badeni Kasimir Felix Graf. In: Austrian Biographical Lexicon 1815–1950 (ÖBL). Volume 1, Publishing House of the Austrian Academy of Sciences, Vienna 1957, p. 42 f. (Direct links on p. 42 , p. 43 ).
  • Artur Felkier: Count Kazimierz Feliks Badeni (1846–1909). Governor of Galicia and Prime Minister of Austria. Unprinted diploma thesis, Vienna 2002.
  • Friedrich Kornauth: Badeni as Prime Minister (October 1, 1895 to November 28, 1897). Unprinted dissertation, Vienna 1949.
  • Hans Mommsen: 1897: The Badeni crisis as a turning point in German-Czech relations. In: Detlef Brandes (Ed.): Turning points in the relations between Germans, Czechs and Slovaks 1848–1989. Klartext Verlag, Essen 2007, ISBN 978-3-89861-572-3 , pp. 111-118.
  • Esther Neblich: The Effects of the Baden Language Ordinance of 1897. Tectum-Verlag, Marburg 2002, ISBN 3-8288-8356-7 .
  • J. Stahnke: Ludwik Teichmann (1823–1895). Anatomist in Krakow. In: Würzburger medical historical reports 2, 1984, pp. 205–267; here: p. 216 f.
  • Berthold Sutter: The Baden language ordinances from 1897. Böhlau-Verlag, Graz 1960/1965 (2 volumes).

Web links

Commons : Kasimir Felix Badeni  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Jiří Kořalka : Czechs in the Habsburg Empire and in Europe 1815-1914. Social-historical connections of the modern nation-building and the nationality question in the Bohemian countries. (= Series of publications by the Austrian Institute for Eastern and South Eastern Europe, Volume 18) Verlag für Geschichte und Politik, Vienna 1991, ISBN 3-7028-0312-2 , p. 159.
  2. ↑ J. Stahnke: Ludwik Teichmann (1823–1895). Anatomist in Krakow. In: Würzburger medical historical reports 2, 1984, pp. 205–267; here: p. 216.
  3. ↑ LGBl. Bohemia No. 13/1897 (= p. 43) .
  4. ↑ LGBl. Moravia No. 30/1897 (= p. 48) .
  5. ↑ LGBl. Bohemia No. 14/1880 (= p. 34) .
  6. ↑ LGBl. Moravia No. 17/1880 (= p. 31) .
  7. ↑ Friedrich Funder : From yesterday to today. From the Empire to the Republic. Herold, Vienna ³1971, p. 153, note.
  8. ↑ Central Inspectorate of the Vienna Federal Security Guard: Sixty Years of the Vienna Security Guard. A memorial book , self-published by the Vienna Federal Police Directorate , Vienna 1929, p. 238.
  9. ↑ Bundespolizeidirektion Wien (Ed.): 80 Years of the Vienna Security Guard , Youth and People, Vienna 1949, p. 25.
  10. ^ Daily newspaper Wiener Zeitung , Vienna, No. 277, December 1, 1897, p. 1, official part .
  11. ↑ Friedrich Funder: From yesterday to today. P. 179.
personal data
SURNAME Badeni, Kasimir Felix
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Badeni, Kazimierz Feliks Hrabia (maiden name); Badeni, Kasimir Felix Graf von
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Prime Minister of Cisleithanien
DATE OF BIRTH October 14, 1846
PLACE OF BIRTH Surochów near Jarosław
DATE OF DEATH March 10, 1909
Place of death Krasne