State election in Carinthia 1945

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
← 1930State
election 19451949 →
Turnout: 89.35%
 %
50
40
30th
20th
10
0
48.83
39.75
8.10
3.32
    
A total of 36 seats

The state election in Carinthia in 1945 took place together with the National Council election in Austria in 1945 on November 25, 1945 and was the first democratic election in Carinthia since 1930.

requirements

After the occupation of Carinthia by British troops from May 8, 1945, the administration was initially carried out directly by the occupation authorities, and later by the provisional state government. With the First Control Agreement between the Allies of July 4, 1945, the country conferences in September and the recognition of the Provisional State Government Renner by the Western Allies on October 20, the way to the first elections after the Second World War was clear. National Council and state elections were held nationwide at the same time.

The approval of the campaigning parties in Carinthia was with the British military government. The British demanded that all parties sign a declaration in which they spoke out in favor of a free and independent Austria, in favor of democratic principles, against any activity against the occupying powers. Point 5 read: Neither party will make claims or demands, suggestions or allusions regarding a re-examination, alteration or modification of the existing Austro-Yugoslav or any other border in public meetings or in promotions until the convening of the peace conference or until an earlier point in time, which can be determined by the British Commander in Chief.

In addition to the Austrian-wide SPÖ , ÖVP and KPÖ parties , the Democratic Party of Austria was also approved as a campaigning party in Carinthia . The functionaries of this party were made up of small civil servants, employees, farmers and traders. In its political program it formed a kind of forerunner for the Association of Independents . List leader was the Metnitztaler landowner Ferdinand Knappitsch .

The candidacy of a Slovenian party did not come about. On September 21, Josef Tischler , the representative of the Slovenes in the provisional provincial government, applied to the military government for approval of the Osvobodilna Fronta za Slovenska Koroška (OF, Liberation Front for Slovenian Carinthia). The British forwarded the application to the Allied Commission in Vienna in a positive manner. At the same time, they pointed out to the Slovenes not to address the question of demarcating borders and joining Yugoslavia at the events. During the controls, the British found that a number of representatives did not comply. The OF was also not ready to sign the declaration requested by the British. The carpenter belonging to the Catholic-Conservative camp tried to mediate between the British and the Communists within the OF, he also signed the declaration on November 5th to enable the party to take part in the election. However, Tischler was then relieved of his position as party chairman of the OF, he also resigned as a state councilor. The new party chairman Franc Petek refused to sign, the OF was struck off the electoral list by the British and was no longer allowed to appear as a party, for example was not allowed to publish a newspaper. The OF called for the election to be boycotted or for the KPÖ to be elected.

Election campaign

In order to make an election campaign possible in the first place, the occupying powers allowed the parties greater freedom. The recognized political parties were allowed to publish newspapers for the first time, until then the newspapers were published by the Allies. The paper for the newspapers as well as for posters and leaflets was allocated to the parties by the British. In Carinthia, the weekly newspaper “Neue Zeit” of the SPÖ and the “ Kärntner Volkszeitung ” of the ÖVP appeared from October 28th, the “ Volkswille ” of the KPÖ from October 30th and from November 8th “The Democrat” of the Democratic Party. The parties were also given the opportunity to present themselves on the radio for a total of eight hours.

In the short election campaign, two phases can be distinguished: At the beginning the self-presentation of the parties and the presentation of their party programs were in the foreground. Only in the second half did the political confrontation come to the fore.

The main topics of the election campaign were the parties' social and economic programs. The question of denazification was also an important point. Although members of the NSDAP and their weapons organizations were excluded from the election, the parties accused each other of giving preference to former National Socialists. Another topic of the election campaign was the democratic or undemocratic past of the respective political competitor.

Result

Around 15 percent of the adult population were excluded from this election due to their Nazi past. For this reason and because of the large number of war dead, the proportion of women among those eligible to vote was 62 percent. That although the majority of the soldiers had already returned home. The turnout was 89.4 percent.

Political party be right percent Mandates
Socialist Party of Austria (SPÖ) 87,573 48.8 18th
Austrian People's Party (ÖVP) 71,279 39.7 14th
Communist Party of Austria (KPÖ) 14,521 8.1 3
Democratic Party of Austria (DPÖ) 5,953 3.3 1

The result of the Nationalrat election in Carinthia was practically identical to that of the state elections, the SPÖ came to 48.8 percent, the ÖVP to 39.8 percent, the KPÖ to 8.1 and the DPÖ to 3.3 percent. The SPÖ thus provided five members of the National Council, the ÖVP four. The tenth Carinthian National Council mandate was awarded via the residual vote procedure in the constituency association.

Compared to the last state election on November 9, 1930, the socialists rose by 10.1 percent, while the ÖVP lost 8.6 percentage points compared to the bourgeois parties of the First Republic. In the districts of Hermagor and Spittal , the ÖVP was stronger than the SPÖ, in the Wolfsberg district the SPÖ was just ahead of the ÖVP. In the other districts, the SPÖ was well ahead of the ÖVP. At 8.1 percent, the communists were much stronger than in the other federal states. Their share was above average in the Villach area , in some industrial locations and in the mixed-language area.

Constitution of the Landtag

In its last meeting on December 7th, after negotiations with the parties, the provisional state government issued the guidelines for the opening of the Carinthian state parliament . The constitution took place on the basis of the last democratic state constitution of 1930 and the rules of procedure of April 29, 1931. The convocation was thus made by the governor. The constituent meeting took place on December 10th, not in the country house , which had been confiscated from the British, but in the meeting room of the Klagenfurt town hall. The session was chaired by the former President of the State Parliament. The president of the last democratically elected state parliament was Julius Lukas sen. This was also a sign of democratic continuity, as was the counting of the legislative period: the one beginning in 1945 was counted as the 16th legislative period, thus excluding the state parliament from 1934 to 1938.

After the deputies had been sworn in, the election of the presidium was carried out by reading out the group's proposals. Under the newly elected President, Jakob Sereinigg (SPÖ), the governor and the other members of the state government were elected, each with 32 votes to four, i.e. SPÖ and ÖVP against KPÖ and DPÖ.

See also

literature

  • Wilhelm Wadl: The year 1945 in Carinthia. An overview. An overview. Verlag des Kärntner Landesarchivs, Klagenfurt 1985, ISBN 3-900531-15-3 , pp. 106–124.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ quoted from: Wadl: The year 1945 in Carinthia. P. 114.
  2. ^ Gabriela Stieber: The British as an occupying power in Carinthia 1945–1955. Verlag des Kärntner Landesarchivs, Klagenfurt 2005, ISBN 3-900531-57-9 , pp. 95–98.