Edmund von Gayer

Edmund (Ritter von) Gayer (* 7 November 1860 in Upper Moschtenitz , Moravia ; † 18th August 1952 in Vienna ) was 1917/1918 Vienna police chief and 11 June last until November 11, 1918 kk Secretary.

Police officer

Gayer joined the Imperial and Royal Police Directorate in Vienna in 1884 and was appointed to the cabinet chancellery of Emperor Franz Joseph I in 1906 . In the Emperor's Cabinet Chancellery, Gayer was entrusted with the management of the monarch's security service and in 1913 he was also involved in the case of Colonel Redl .

Gayer's time as the Vienna police chief appointed by Emperor Karl I was characterized by major supply problems in the winter of 1917/1918 and by increasing exhaustion from the war. In the January strike in 1918, which covered large parts of old Austria, the discontent of hundreds of thousands of workers was expressed. The Russian revolutions of 1917 showed the Austrian security authorities the political dangers of these strikes, which required numerous deployments by the Vienna police.

Gayer was the last police president of the monarchy. (The actual last head of the Imperial and Royal Police Directorate, Johann Schober provisionally appointed after Gayer's appointment as minister on June 11, 1918 , was only appointed president by the state of German-Austria .)

Interior minister

On June 11, 1918, Gayer joined the Seidler government, which was only in office for two weeks . On July 26, 1918, Emperor Karl I appointed the Hussarek-Heinlein government , in which Gayer retained the office of Minister of the Interior. All attempts by this government to save the monarchy by restructuring were in vain.

When, on October 27, 1918, the Kaiser appointed Heinrich Lammasch to head the (as the media called it) "Ministry of Liquidation" , the government that had to administer the dissolution of the Austrian half of Austria-Hungary ( Czechoslovakia was founded on October 28 ), Gayer stayed in office.

Since all non-German areas had left the previous state by the end of October, Gayer handed over his departmental agendas to Heinrich Mataja , the State Secretary (= Minister) of the Interior of the Renner State Government appointed on October 30, 1918 by the German-Austrian State Council (chair: Karl Seitz ) I under State Chancellor Karl Renner .

Edmund von Gayer, along with Lammasch, Josef Redlich , Karl Renner and Ignaz Seipel, was the author of the declaration of renunciation by Emperor Karl I and on November 11, 1918, 11 a.m., he himself also performed Lammasch in Schönbrunn Palace to get the Kaiser to sign. Gayer was asked to confirm once again that any attempt at armed resistance from the castle could do more harm than good. Allegedly he has declared that a revolution cannot be suppressed by force. After the emperor had signed the declaration at 12 p.m., he formally removed the Lammasch government at 2 p.m.

Gayer's title fell in April 1919 due to the nobility annulment law of the republic.

Individual evidence

1. ^ Felix Czeike : Historical Lexicon Vienna. Volume 2: De-Gy. Kremayr & Scheriau, Vienna 1993, ISBN 3-218-00544-2 , p. 482 ( Edmund Gayer in the Vienna History Wiki of the City of Vienna ).
2. ↑ Central Inspectorate of the Vienna Federal Security Guard (Ed.): Sixty Years of the Vienna Security Guard , self-published by the Vienna Federal Police Directorate , Vienna 1929, p. 42
3. ↑ Gordon Brook-Shepherd: To Crown and Empire. The tragedy of the last Habsburg emperor , Fritz Molden Verlag, Vienna 1968, p. 254 f.