Parliament of the city of Trieste

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The state parliament of the city of Trieste was 1849-1851 and 1861-1918 the state parliament of the imperial city of Trieste and its territory in the Austrian Empire and from 1867 in Cisleithanien as well as city ​​councilor (later: local council ) of the city of Trieste .

prehistory

The city of Trieste was a free city in the 14th century. However, in order to protect itself from the expansion of the Republic of Venice , the city submitted to the Habsburg Monarchy . In a statute from 1550, Ferdinand , later Emperor, as Archduke of Austria guaranteed the city of Trieste autonomy. The Capitano was therefore the Archduke's deputy in the city. However, the power of the magistrate gradually declined, and in 1783, municipal autonomy and the office of Capitano were formally abolished by Emperor Joseph II . Attempts to obtain a new municipal statute in 1808 and 1809 fizzled out.

In 1838, Emperor Ferdinand I, advised by State Chancellor Klemens Wenzel Lothar von Metternich, allowed the formation of a 40-member committee, unofficially called Consiglio ferdinandiano . However, this had a purely advisory function. The members were appointed by the imperial governor on the basis of proposals from the magistrate. Three-quarters of the members were property owners and merchants, and one-fourth held academic degrees.

The March Revolution of 1848

The March Revolution led Trieste to take up the desire for autonomy again. In the spring of 1848 a provisional municipal commission, the Commissione municipale , was elected to replace the Consiglio ferdinandiano. The politicians in Trieste emphasized their loyalty to the Habsburg monarchy and thereby gained sympathy with the emperor. In the summer of 1848, the commission submitted a draft for a state and municipal constitution. The Vienna Ministry of the Interior thereupon commissioned the provisional city council with the further elaboration.

Statuto municipale 1849

On November 12, 1849, the provisional city council elected a commission to draft a state statute that was accepted by the Imperial and Royal Government in Vienna. With the imperial patent of Franz Joseph I of April 12, 1850, the Statuto municipale di Trieste came into force.

This was preceded by long discussions as to whether a joint diet for the Adriatic coastal areas of the monarchy or separate diets for Trieste, the duchy counties of Gorizia and Gradisca and the margravate of Istria were preferable. Trieste would have been the largest city in such a common crown land , but it would not have made up the majority of the population and therefore could only have a minority of the MPs.

Trieste managed to get its own constitution; it became an imperial city. Section 31 of the statute stipulated that the city council should have the "characteristics of a state parliament" in matters that were the tasks of the state parliaments according to sections 33 and 36 of the March constitution .

The city council consisted of 54 members, 48 ​​of whom were elected in the city and six in the surrounding area. Elections were made exclusively by men in four curiae. Virile votes were not provided. The right to vote presupposed that one had been resident in the city for at least five years, owned real estate or practiced a qualifying profession (ship owner, captain, academic, master craftsman, trader). The first three curiae were filled according to a staggered census , the fourth curia consisted of all other citizens.

The elections took place between late August and mid-September 1850. 15 wholesalers, six lawyers, five merchants, five civil servants, four doctors, three teachers and two bankers, officers, brokers and authorized signatories were elected. Only one clergyman was represented. The city council was loyal to the Habsburg monarchy. According to the police reports, only six MPs were in support of the Italian unification movement.

Parliament was opened on September 22, 1850. By the end of 1851, outgoing MPs were replaced by supplementary elections.

Consiglio decennale 1852–1861

With the New Year's Eve patent , with which Emperor Franz Joseph I switched to neo-absolutism , the city council's powers as a state parliament initially ended. With the highest cabinet letter of December 31, 1851, the city council only retained the powers of a communal body. Outgoing members have now been appointed by the Minister of the Interior. Trieste was now part of the Crown Land of the Austrian Coast .

Since there were no elections for a decade, the city council was unofficially known as the "Consiglio decennale".

The City Council of 1861

With the imperial constitution of 1861, Trieste regained the status of a crown land and the city council regained the status of a state parliament. The Landtag had the right to initially send two members to the Reichsrat in Vienna (the number was later increased to five). The mayor ( podestá ) was also chairman of the state parliament with the title of governor and was appointed by the emperor.

With an ordinance of November 26, 1860, new elections were announced, which took place between February 14 and March 10. The constituent meeting took place on March 18, 1861. According to the assessment of the police reports, 12 extreme liberals , 29 moderate liberals and 13 conservatives were elected. As in many other countries of the multiethnic state, the language issue was a field of conflict. A legislative proposal by the state parliament, according to which Italian and Slovenian should be the official languages , received no imperial sanction. However, in addition to the (German-speaking) state grammar school, a municipal grammar school was built, in which Italian language lessons were given. The language of negotiation in the state parliament was Italian. The Reich Law Gazette was also published in Italian and Slovenian, the Law and Ordinance Gazette for the Austro-Irish coastal region in Italian and German.

In the last decades of the Danube Monarchy, there were predominantly majorities of Italian national liberals in the state parliament (Liberal National Party, Associazione Patria). These represented irredentist positions. A series of resolutions of the state parliament was the result of the conflict. The Slovenes (Edinost) had a strong position in the surrounding communities, but always formed only minorities in the state parliament.

Suffrage reforms in 1896 and 1908

In 1896, as in the Reichsrat, a fifth curia was introduced. In this there was universal male suffrage.

A comprehensive change to the electoral law was decided by the state parliament with a law of August 26, 1908. The now 80 MPs were elected, only by men, in three curiae with census and one with universal suffrage. Each curia appointed 16 members, four from the Chamber of Commerce and 12 from the surrounding area. The electoral term was extended from three to four years. Until the reform of 1908, only just under 5% of the total population had the right to vote; now it was 50%. From 1907, the Trieste men could elect their five members of the Reichsrat with universal, equal and direct suffrage, without curiae.

In the state elections in 1909, the National Liberals won 54, the Slovenes (Narodnjaki) 12 and the Italian Socialists 10 seats. In addition there were the four mandates of the Chamber of Commerce and Industry. This result was the result of the disagreement among the socialists, who had won four out of five seats in the 1907 Reichsrat elections. The National Liberals also prevailed in the 1911 election.

End of the state parliament

Presumably the Trieste municipal council last acted as state legislature in 1913 (amendment of the hunting law and the provisions for small apartments). In the years 1914 and 1916–1918 no more Trieste laws were published in the coastal law gazette (the law gazette 1915 is not electronically available).

With the end of the First World War and the occupation of Trieste by Italy on November 3, 1918, the time of the state parliament ended. As a unitary state, the Kingdom of Italy had no diets. In 1963 the Italian Republic established the autonomous region of Friuli-Venezia Giulia with Trieste as its capital; Until 2017, Trieste and its surrounding area formed one of the four provinces of the region. Since then, the Trieste population has been represented in the regional council. The Furlanic language is used in the region alongside Italian, Slovene, spoken by 7% of the population in Trieste, is used in schools with Slovene as the language of instruction and is state-protected.

analogy

The Vienna legislature and municipal council is based, historically, to Trieste very similar conditions: An already existing self-governing body of the municipality should also act as a parliament. This has been the case in Vienna since 1920, when Vienna left Lower Austria and was given the status of its own federal state.

swell

  • Ugo Cova: The state parliament of the imperial city of Trieste and its area. In: Adam Wandruszka , Peter Urbanitsch (ed.): The Habsburg Monarchy 1848–1918. Volume 7: Helmut Rumpler , Peter Urbanitsch (eds.): Constitution and parliamentarism. Volume 2: The regional representative bodies. Publishing house of the Austrian Academy of Sciences, Vienna 2000, ISBN 3-7001-2871-1 , pp. 1919–1949.
  • Eduard Winkler: Suffrage reforms and elections in Trieste 1905–1909. An analysis of political participation in a multinational urban region of the Habsburg monarchy (= Southeast European works. 105). Oldenbourg, Munich 2000, ISBN 3-486-56486-2 (also: Erlangen - Nürnberg, University, dissertation, 1999).

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ RGBl. No. 139/1850 (= p. 765)
  2. ↑ RGBl. No. 3/1852 (= p. 27)
  3. ↑ RGBl. No. 4/1852 (= p. 28)
  4. ↑ Historical legal texts on the website of the Austrian National Library
  5. ↑ income statement for the Austrian-Irish coastal region No. 44/1908 (= p. 197)
  6. ^ Reichsrat election regulations 1907, RGBl. No. 17/1907 (= p. 59), appendix (= p. 107)