Karl Stürgkh

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Karl Graf Stürgkh (born October 30, 1859 in Graz , † October 21, 1916 in Vienna ) was an Austrian politician and Imperial and Royal Prime Minister. He was responsible for the adjournment of the Imperial and Royal Reichsrat , the parliament of Old Austria, in March 1914 and, in the July crisis of 1914 , advocated the Austro-Hungarian monarchy's entry into war without parliamentary consultations . The member of an old noble family was shot dead in 1916 by the social democratic politician Friedrich Adler , son of party chairman Victor Adler , because of his dictatorial policies .

Karl Graf Stürgkh (1909)

Life and politics

education

Stürgkh graduated from a high school in Graz and studied at the University of Graz Law from 1877 to 1881. First, in the Styrian governor's office operates, he joined in 1886 as a civil servant in the Ministry of Education , and he ran the high school department.

Deputy of the large landowners

Stürgkh was elected a member of the Reichsrat in 1891, still in the era of class suffrage, and belonged to the group that was known as the large landowners loyal to the constitution . He was the landlord of Halbenrain in the south of Styria . From 1909 to 1911 - in the meantime, in the Reichsrat election in 1907, universal and equal male suffrage had been introduced and Stürgkh's grouping had no chance in elections - he served as kk Minister of Education in the Bienerth-Schmerling and Gautsch cabinets . In this position he appointed Albert Einstein as professor at the German University in Prague .

kk Prime Minister

On November 3, 1911, after the resignation of the Gautsch cabinet because of the inflationary revolt in Vienna, Emperor Franz Joseph I , then 81 years old, appointed him to the post of Imperial and Royal Prime Minister . As a top politician in Cisleithania , he was now a voting member of the Joint Council of Ministers , in which the three kuk ministers discussed the foreign and security policy of the entire monarchy with the Prime Ministers of Austria and Hungary.

Postponement of the Reichsrat

Cooperation between the government and the Reichsrat often turned out to be difficult, as the rules of procedure of the Reichsrat did not provide for any measures against obstruction, which was particularly exploited by Czech MPs. The Reichsrat had therefore been postponed again and again in the course of its existence when the obstruction got out of hand.

The Basic Law on the Central Organization of 1867 provided for in § 14 that the Imperial Government can rule by imperial decrees with temporary force of law when the Imperial Parliament is not in session and pending urgent decisions. The application of the emergency law of § 14 was therefore not uncommon in old Austria.

The adjournment of the Reichsrat on March 16, 1914, brought about by Stürgkh by the Emperor, had a fatal effect four months later, as the elected MPs were now unable to respond to the warmongering actions of Austrian and Hungarian top politicians and militaries after the assassination attempt in Sarajevo To influence.

Exponent of the "war party"

Stürgkh belonged with the most important exponents of the overall monarchy, Foreign Minister Leopold Berchtold , Chief of Staff Franz Conrad von Hötzendorf , the joint Finance Minister Leon Biliński and War Minister Alexander von Krobatin , to the so-called war party, the supporters of a warlike conflict with Serbia .

For Stürgkh, the war with Serbia was an opportunity to break the ties between the Slavic parties in Austria and the Pan-Serb and Yugoslav movements. “In other words, he was thinking of the war as an enterprise of a domestic political nature as well.” Stürgkh considered the South Slavic provinces to be lost if nothing happened, and shared Berchtold's opinion that diplomatic successes would not solve the Serbian problem: “If so the way If a previous diplomatic action against Serbia was entered into for international reasons, this would have to be done with the firm intention that this action should only end with a war. "

Politics at war

In contrast to the German Reichstag, the Austrian parliament had no influence whatsoever on the declaration of war against Serbia on July 28, 1914 , from which the First World War developed, or on the political ambitions associated with the war of the clandestine decision-makers, the 84-year-old Kaiser as the actual final decision-maker apparently had not grown.

During the war, the Stürgkh government continued to work with imperial ordinances instead of laws, even when it came to restricting basic rights such as freedom of the press (he introduced rigorous press censorship ). Stürgkh ignored opposition calls for parliament to be reconvened.

Italian policy proposals

An insight into Stürgkh's policy is also given by his behavior at the Council of Ministers for Common Affairs on July 31, 1914, where he asked himself

“... whether it is not dangerous to simply wait until Italy decides to take aggressive action against us and whether an attempt should not be made to deceive it with a kind of secret treaty and thus get over the danger zone of the next few weeks. Against brigands , as the Italians are now, no diplomatic maneuver is too bad. He would therefore have no moral reservations about betraying the Italians now. "

He presented a detailed treaty according to which Italy would be granted Trentino , guaranteed by Germany, which would have to enter the war on the side of the Central Powers and accept the reorganization of the Balkans by the monarchy. According to Stürgkh, Italy would never do the latter, which would invalidate the treaty and the assignment of Trentino.

“This approach would have the advantage that Italy would be induced by the German assurances to fulfill its federal obligation and we would not actually be obliged to undertake an assignment of territory. He knows that such an action plan would not be very honest, but in view of the underhandedness of Italy he believes that we are released from all moral obligations. "

However, the Hungarian side did not believe that Italy would be fooled by this. The proposal to deceive Italy with a kind of secret treaty shows a "lack of realism in Vienna".

Such, according to Hugo Hantsch, “underhanded bogus contracts” also cast a significant light on Stürgkh's person and his politics, which were shaped by “illusions and a lack of morality”.

Polish question

After the initial phase of the war and the driving back of the Russians, the question arose for Germany and Austria-Hungary of how to deal with the formerly Russian-Polish territories or with a reunified Poland.

Stürgkh's adherence to the dominance of Germans in Austria also shows his policy towards Poland . His concerns about the Austro-Polish solution , the unification of Russian Poland with Austria, were:

“If the rights accruing to the Poles to the monarchy and to Austria were to be measured according to the ratio of the Polish to the rest of the population, then Austria would be lost, then this old empire, which withstood so many severe storms victoriously, would be nothing like an annex of one Body in which politically chaotic conditions currently prevail and would continue to prevail for a long time. [6. October 1915] "

Stürgkh considered it impossible to integrate all of Poland into Austria-Hungary or Cisleithania in view of the inevitable Slavic dominance. On the other hand, Stürgkh feared that extensive autonomy would also reinforce the wishes of the other nations and thereby endanger Austria and Hungary, both multiethnic states.

A special Polish position is necessary,

“... but it is even more necessary that the central power make itself felt in these areas and, above all, that Austria's character, Austria's existence, be preserved. A satisfactory solution in the context of the current situation [...] does not exist in his opinion at all, he only endeavored in his elaborate to contain the dangers associated with the attempted solution as far as possible. "

Like Stürgkh, most of the politicians and publicists concerned about German primacy in Austria thought during the First World War. But even if one were to come to an agreement on the Austro-Polish question, Stürgkh was in favor of an “absolutist transition phase”.

At the joint Council of Ministers on January 7, 1916, Stürgkh showed himself ready to reduce the war aims if this were necessary to establish peace. But he resisted the abandonment of the "Austro-Polish solution" most decisively.

He emphasized the great burden that Austria would take on by annexing Poland, but regarded it as a desirable goal in order not to lose Galicia and not to drive the Poles towards Russia . Partition would be the worst thing for the Poles, it would exacerbate the Galician problem, as well as the Ruthenian question.

Only if all of Congress Poland were to be united with Western Galicia would the Poles, albeit reluctantly, come to terms with the separation of the Ruthenian (= Ukrainian) settled Eastern Galicia. "The Austrian government has no intention of leaving Eastern Galicia to the Ruthenians, on the contrary, the administration should rather be Germanized." The "Ruthenians" prefer that to Polish suzerainty.

This German-national idea by Stürgkh shows, with the negligibly small proportion of ethnic Germans in East Galicia, of a startlingly little sense of reality. Stürgkh and the Viennese bureaucracy wanted to strengthen the centralistic tendencies of the monarchy, and the Ukrainian leaders even agreed for tactical reasons, as they initially hoped for a liberation from the political and cultural supremacy of the Poles.

death

On October 21, 1916, Stürgkh was shot dead by the social democratic politician Friedrich Adler at lunch in the restaurant of the Meissl & Schadn hotel on the Neuer Markt in Vienna. Friedrich Adler waited until Count Stürgkh was sitting alone at his table, then he took a revolver from his right jacket pocket and fired three or four shots at Stürgkh's head. Adler is said to have exclaimed: "Down with absolutism, we want peace!" However, the exact course of the crime and the number of shots could not be determined with certainty even immediately after the attack.

The emperor appointed the previous kk finance minister Ernest von Koerber to succeed Stürgkh . Franz Joseph I died four weeks later. Friedrich Adler gave a highly political defense speech in front of the court, in which, among other things, he accused his own party of lack of principles. He was sentenced to death, pardoned by Emperor Karl I to 18 years in prison and given an amnesty by the Emperor in autumn 1918 shortly before his resignation from the government.

literature

Web links

Commons : Karl von Stürgkh  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Family Stürgkh without the title of nobility from. See: Adolph Lehmann : Stürgkh Karl Gf. - Entry in Lehmann's General Housing Gazette. A. Hölder, Vienna 1859–1942, born in 1916, volume 2, [list of names] VII. Evidence. Residents of Vienna. P. 1317. Online edition : Vienna Library in the City Hall , Vienna 2010.
  2. ^ Letters from Stürgkh to Einstein dated December 15, 2010 and January 13, 1911. In: The collected papers of Albert Einstein, Volume 5: The Swiss Years: 1902–1914 , No. 238 and 245, online .
  3. ↑ William Jannen, Jr: The Austro-Hungarian Decision For War in July 1914. In Samuel R. Williamson, Jr., Peter Pastor (Ed.): Essays on World War I: Origins and Prisoners of War. New York 1983. pp. 55-81, here: 56f. and 72.
  4. ^ Leo Valiani: Negotiations between Italy and Austria-Hungary 1914–1915. In: Wolfgang Schieder (Ed.): First World War. Causes, origins and aims of the war. Cologne / Berlin 1969, pp. 317–346, here: p. 337.
  5. ↑ Miklós Komjáthy (Ed.): Protocols of the Joint Council of Ministers of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy (1914–1918). Budapest 1966, ZDB -ID 1163150-8 , p. 145; and Imanuel Geiss (ed.): July crisis and outbreak of war. A collection of documents. Hanover 1963, Volume 1: p. 108.
  6. ↑ Miklós Komjáthy (Ed.): Protocols of the Joint Council of Ministers of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy (1914–1918). Budapest 1966, p. 163; and Imanuel Geiss (ed.): July crisis and outbreak of war. A collection of documents. Hanover 1963. Volume 2, pp. 442ff (Doc.No. 861).
  7. ↑ Miklós Komjáthy (Ed.): Protocols of the Joint Council of Ministers of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy (1914–1918). Budapest 1966, p. 165; and Imanuel Geiss (ed.): July crisis and outbreak of war. A collection of documents. Hanover 1963. Volume 2, pp. 442ff (Doc.No. 861).
  8. ^ Leo Valiani: Negotiations between Italy and Austria-Hungary 1914–1915. In: Wolfgang Schieder (Ed.): First World War. Causes, origins and aims of the war. Cologne / Berlin 1969, pp. 317-346, here: p. 322; and Hugo Hantsch: Leopold Graf Berchtold. Grand master and statesman. Böhlau, Graz / Vienna / Cologne 1963, Volume 1, p. 658.
  9. ↑ a b Miklós Komjáthy (Ed.): Protocols of the Joint Council of Ministers of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy (1914–1918). Budapest 1966, p. 309ff.
  10. ^ A b Heinz Lemke: Alliance and rivalry. The Central Powers and Poland in the First World War . Böhlau, Vienna / Cologne / Graz 1977, ISBN 3-205-00527-9 , p. 274.
  11. ↑ Miklós Komjáthy (Ed.): Protocols of the Joint Council of Ministers of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy (1914–1918). Budapest 1966, p. 385ff. (Text).
  12. ↑ The assassination attempt against Count Stürgkh. In:  Oesterreichische Volks-Zeitung , October 22, 1916, p. 2 (online at ANNO ).Template: ANNO / Maintenance / ovz
predecessor Office successor
Joseph of Kanera Austrian Minister of Education
1909 - November 2, 1911 		Max Hussarek from Heinlein
personal data
SURNAME Stürgkh, Karl
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Stürgkh, Karl Graf (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Austrian politician and Prime Minister
DATE OF BIRTH October 30, 1859
PLACE OF BIRTH Graz
DATE OF DEATH October 21, 1916
Place of death Vienna