Landtag of Gorizia and Gradisca

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The Landtag of Gorizia and Gradisca was the Landtag of the Crown Lands of Gorizia and Gradisca in the empire of Austria and Austria-Hungary between 1861 and 1918.

history

prehistory

After the Meinhardiners died out in 1500, the Habsburg regents also became Counts of Gorizia , which was reunited with the County of Gradisca in 1754. In the course of the unification of the two counties, the state estates of the County of Gradisca joined those of Gorizia. The name Gradisca subsequently disappeared from the official name by 1861. The class structures had existed until the occupation by the French army or the incorporation into the Illyrian provinces , after the re-establishment of Austrian rule over the area, the class institutions were revived. Plans to create an autonomous state representation failed in the county in 1848 in the course of the elections for the German National Assembly in Frankfurt. Under the leadership of Prince Archbishop Franz Xaver Luschin , a request for majesty arose on May 13, 1848, which suggested the creation of a state representation. In addition, the draft electoral code was presented and Archbishop Luschin invited the representatives of the old estates to his residence on May 31, 1848. 30 of the 49 invited requested some modifications of the request for majesty and categorically refused the union of the county with Trieste and Istria. While the March constitution of 1849 recognized the independence of Trieste, the regional order of January 25, 1850 provided for a joint regional representation of Istria and Gorizia with 38 members.

Establishment of the state parliament

The February constitution in 1861 provided for only one state order for the entire Austrian coastal region . After the city of Trieste had already been granted the status of its own country and thus the establishment of a state parliament in 1850, Gorizia and Istria also received completely separate state representations. The Landtag of Gorizia met for the first time on April 6, 1861 at the invitation of the governor of the coastal region in the Palazzo Provenciale in Gorizia. In addition to the Imperial Commissioner Giovanni de Bosizio , these were the Governor Wilhelm Graf Pace appointed by the Emperor , the Deputy Governor Carlo Doliac , Prince Archbishop Andres Gollmayr as well as 18 other members of parliament. One of the first tasks of the Landtag was the election of the two members of the Gorizia Landtag to be sent to the Reichsrat. After some difficulties in the third meeting on April 10th, the choice fell on Anton Gorjup and Anton Černe . In the fourth meeting on April 11th, the members of the state committee were elected as the executive body of the state parliament.

Language question and electoral reform

Due to the mixed-language structure of the county, the language dispute between Italians and Slovenes was particularly decisive for the early days of the state parliament. In order to improve the representation of the Slovenes in the state parliament, Anton Gorjup initiated an electoral reform in the fourth session at the end of 1965, which was approved by the state parliament on January 3, 1866 with a majority of one vote. The Slovenian-speaking MPs were supported by Prince Archbishop Gollmayr, Governor Pace, his deputy Dolinac and the German-oriented District Captain Franz Grossmann.

The reform of the electoral law lowered the census for large Slovenian landowners to 50 guilders and thus overturned the clear Italian majority in the state parliament. While this was 14: 7 between Italians and Slovenes before the reform of the electoral law, after the state elections in January 1867 it had shrunk to a wafer-thin lead of 11:10. The new ratio of 2: 2 also had an impact on the state committees. In the Landtag, the archbishop's virile vote tipped the scales due to the new majority structure, which was able to decide on the quorum or the majority in the Landtag.

The negotiating language of the Gorizia state parliament and the business language of the state committee was initially only Italian . On April 22nd, 1861, on the initiative of MP Kaffol, there was already a debate on equality for Slovene in the state parliament. Kaffol, who referred to Gorizia as a “Slavic city” in his speech, called for the minutes to be kept in “Slavic”, ie Slovene, in his speech. When he also used the Slovene language in the course of the meeting, the MP Del Torre proposed in return that only the Italian language should be used in “our Italian state parliament”. Governor Pace subsequently suggested that, in addition to the official Italian language, the language that the respective MP was able to speak should also be used. However, this was rejected by Italian MPs with reference to the German language, as only Italian and Slovenian were national languages.

With the change in the composition of the Landtag after the electoral reform in 1866, the language dispute finally began to move. The imperial commissioner, Baron Felix Pino, also used the Slovene language in his speech at the opening of the parliamentary session on August 22, 1868. The Slovene MPs subsequently also increasingly used their mother tongue, and in the subsequent meeting on August 25, 1868, the first applications were tabled in Slovene. In the state committee, however, only Italian was still spoken. This only changed when Henrik Tumas moved into the state committee in 1895. The minutes of the state parliament were initially also in Italian, but a translation into Slovene appeared after the first session. With the increasing use of the Slovene language in the Landtag, the speeches of the Slovene-speaking members of parliament were also reproduced in full in the minutes. However, Italian remained as the guiding language in the minutes.

Economic issues

One of the most important questions in the Görzer Landtag was the connection of the county to the infrastructure of the empire. After the southern railway connected Vienna with Trieste from 1857 onwards, Gorizia fell into an economic and political sideline, which is why the railway committee responsible for railway issues at the state parliament level dealt intensively with the railway issue. Due to their common economic interests, Italian and Slovenian MPs fought together for the connection to Gorizia on this issue, with the Slovenian MPs advocating a route across areas populated by Slovenia and the Italian MPs aiming to connect the railway network to the Kingdom of Italy had. After the southern railway was connected to Udine via Gorizia, an agreement was reached in 1866 to build a railway in the Canal Valley . There was also a railway line between Monfalcone and Cervignano in 1884 and the Friulian Railway in 1894 . After the loss of Veneto in 1866, the Gorizia MPs also campaigned for an improved connection between the county and the Austrian industrial areas north of the Alps. For years, plans were made for the construction of the Wippachtahlbahn , the Wocheinerbahn and the Predilbahn , although the latter was never realized.

literature

  • Harald Krahwinkler: The Landtag of Gorizia-Gradisca and Istria. 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. 1873-1918.