Max Wladimir von Beck

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Baron Max Wladimir von Beck (born September 6, 1854 in Vienna ; † January 20, 1943 there ) was an Austrian politician and Prime Minister .

Max Wladimir Freiherr von Beck

Life

The ennobled father Anton Ritter von Beck (1812–1895) came from a humble background (his parents ran a small tavern in Butsch , South Moravia ), edited the Czech edition of the Reichsgesetzblatt for a long time and finally became director of the Imperial Court and State Printing Office in Vienna. In 1848/49 he belonged to the Kremsier Reichstag and always considered himself a Czech. After the death of the father of the Beck family was the baron bestowed (Barony).

Max Wladimir had four sisters and attended the Academic Gymnasium in Vienna, where Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk , founding president of the Czechoslovak Republic in autumn 1918 , was one of his classmates. He graduated with honors and studied until 1878 at the University of Vienna Law . In 1896 he married Helene, b. Mayer-Gunthof (1862–1930), after their divorce from Ludwig von Dóczi .

official

After completing his studies, Max Wladimir von Beck entered the civil service, first in the financial procuratorial office , then from 1880 to 1906 he was a member of nine department heads at the kk agriculture ministry, one of the ministries of Cisleithania .

He was chosen to work for Franz Ferdinand of Austria-Este , Archduke heir to the throne from 1896, as a teacher of law and political science. He won the trust of Franz Ferdinand and later also became his advisor in legal and political questions, including constitutional questions that arose in 1900 about the morganatic marriage of the heir to the throne.

In 1898 Beck became head of section in the Ministry of Agriculture . As head of the legislative and organizational department, he prepared important laws on agricultural reform. Contemporaries and biographers always found it difficult to classify him in terms of ideology and politics.

Prime Minister

During the political crisis of 1905/06 Beck was after the resignation of Konrad to Hohenlohe on 2 June 1906 by the Emperor kk appointed Prime Minister. Franz Joseph I saw the former tutor of the heir to the throne as a middleman between himself and his stubborn nephew .

Beck became one of the most capable prime ministers of Cisleithania . Favored by the economic boom, he managed to form a parliamentary majority with the core of the liberal parties of the most important Cisleithan nationalities. The previous governments had ruled with imperial ordinances because they could not resolve the conflicts in parliament. Beck made no attempt to rule over the parties like his predecessors or to form a neutral government of civil servants . Without a formal agreement, he accepted German, Czech and Polish MPs into his cabinet, which he described as a "permanent compensation conference".

Although he only held the office until November 15, 1908, he initiated decisive reforms. Above all, he brought against the resistance of the heir on 1 December 1906, the old Austrian Empire Council electoral reform , which the Social Democrats have long demanded universal and equal male suffrage for the House of Representatives .

This led to a falling out with Franz Ferdinand. He intended to oppose the decision in the manor house of the Reichsrat, but was outmaneuvered by the emperor by threatening to use the emperor's two chief stewards as pro-speakers.

Whether there was any hidden collaboration between Beck and the Social Democrats under Victor Adler is controversial; Beck denied it. The introduction of universal and equal male suffrage, which failed Prime Minister Eduard Taaffe in the 1890s, was favored by the 1905 Russian Revolution , which strongly influenced the Social Democrats and Slavic parties.

In any case, Beck was able to win over the Social Democrats as well as the Christian Socials through a comprehensive social policy program with the reform of workers' insurance and the introduction of old-age and disability insurance . The expansion of social security was therefore also the subject of Franz Joseph's speech to the throne, drafted under Beck's direction, which the Kaiser gave on June 19, 1907 in the Hofburg in front of the members of both houses of the Reichsrat.

In addition, Beck succeeded in renewing the financial equalization with Hungary with a new, lower rate for Cisleithania of 63.6% compared to 36.4% for Hungary, which has become somewhat stronger economically.

Two years after taking office, Beck summed up the situation on June 2, 1908 in the House of Representatives of the Reichsrat as follows:

“Providence has given us a problem like no other state in Europe. 8 nationalities, 17 countries, 20 parliamentary bodies, 27 parliamentary parties, two different worldviews, a complicated relationship with Hungary, the cultural distances that are incidentally eight and a half latitudes and roughly the same longitudes - to combine all of this into one point, to produce one result from all of this pulling, that's necessary to rule in Austria. "

In his politics he met above all the resistance of the aristocratically dominated conservative parties and the kuk foreign minister Alois Lexa von Aehrenthal, who focused on confrontation . Beck was a man of domestic politics and not a foreign policy gambler , which is why he had to resign on November 15, 1908 during the Bosnian annexation crisis , also under pressure from the old opponents of the electoral reform.

More functions

From 1907 to 1918 he was a member of the manor house of the Austrian Reichsrat , from 1915 to 1918 President of the Supreme Audit Office , then until 1934 of the (Republican) Audit Office and from 1919 to 1938 President of the Austrian Society of the Red Cross .

memories

Grave of Max Wladimir von Beck in the Hietzinger Friedhof

Max Wladimir Beck was buried on January 23, 1943 in the Hietzinger Friedhof in Vienna, 13th district , in the family grave, group 16, No. 23 D, which had existed for the duration of the cemetery.

In 1949 the Gustav-Groß-Gasse branching off westward from Lainzer Straße in the 13th district, until 1938 Reichgasse, was named after Beck. For the last decades of his life he had lived not far from this alley in a villa at Lainzer Strasse 47.

Fonts (selection)

  • The emperor and electoral reform . In: Eduard Ritter von Steinitz (ed.): Memories of Franz Joseph I, Emperor of Austria, apostolic king of Hungary. Verlag für Kulturpolitik, Berlin 1931, pp. 197–225.

literature

  • Johann Christoph Allmayer-Beck : From the innkeeper to the ministerial maker. Anton Beck and his brothers. Böhlau, Vienna a. a. 2008, ISBN 978-3-205-78181-3 .
  • Franz Bauer: Officials as Prime Minister in the outgoing Habsburg Monarchy. Dr. Ernst v. Koerber, Paul Freiherr Gautsch v. Frankenthurn, Dr. Max Vladimir Baron v. Beck. Unprinted dissertation, Vienna 2006.
  • Heribert Sturm (Ed.): Biographical lexicon for the history of the Bohemian countries. Volume 1, Verlag Oldenbourg, Munich 1997, ISBN 3-486-49491-0 , p. 64.

Web links

Commons : Max Wladimir von Beck  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c Beck Max Wladimir von. In: Austrian Biographical Lexicon 1815–1950 (ÖBL). Volume 1, Publishing House of the Austrian Academy of Sciences, Vienna 1957, p. 61.
  2. ↑ Alois Czedik of Bruendl Mountain: History of the Imperial Austrian ministries from 1861 to 1908. Volume 3, Prochaska, Vienna 1920, p. 142.
  3. ^ Franz Adlgasser (ed.), Heinrich Friedjung : History in Conversations. Records 1898-1903. (= Publications of the Commission for Modern History of Austria , 87) Volume 1: 1898–1903. Böhlau, Vienna 1997, ISBN 3-205-98589-3 , p. 421.
  4. ^ List of Austrian ministers of agriculture
  5. ^ Johann Christoph Allmayer-Beck : Prime Minister Baron Beck. A statesman of old Austria. Verlag für Geschichte und Politik, Vienna 1956, p. 17 ff.
  6. ↑ Alfred Ableitinger: Max Vladimir Baron von Beck . In: Walter Pollak (Ed.): A thousand years of Austria. A biographical chronicle. Volume 3: Parliamentarism and the Two Republics. Verlag Jugend und Volk, Vienna 1974, ISBN 3-7141-6523-1 , pp. 28–33, here p. 31f.
  7. ^ Eduard Winkler: Suffrage reforms and elections in Trieste 1905-1909. An analysis of political participation in a multinational urban region of the Habsburg monarchy. Verlag Oldenbourg, Munich 2000, ISBN 3-486-56486-2 , p. 117
  8. ↑ Jan Křen : The conflict community. Czechs and Germans. 1780-1918. Verlag Oldenbourg, Munich 1996, ISBN 3-486-56017-4 , p. 252.
  9. ↑ a b Alfred Ableitinger: Max Vladimir Baron von Beck . In: Walter Pollak (Ed.): A thousand years of Austria. A biographical chronicle. Volume 3: Parliamentarism and the Two Republics. Verlag Jugend und Volk, Vienna 1974, ISBN 3-7141-6523-1 , pp. 28–33, here pp. 28 ff.
  10. ^ Peter Schöffer: The struggle for the right to vote of the Austrian social democracy 1888 / 89-1897. From the Hainfeld Unification Party Congress to Badeni's electoral reform and the entry of the first Social Democrats into the Reichsrat. Verlag Steiner, Stuttgart 1986, ISBN 3-515-04622-4 , pp. 702 and 727.
  11. ↑ Hellmuth Rößler:  Beck, Max Wladimir Freiherr von. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 1, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1953, ISBN 3-428-00182-6 , p. 706 f. ( Digitized version ).
  12. ↑ 1 of the supplements to the stenographic minutes of the House of Representatives. XVIII. Session. 1907, p. 1 ff.
  13. ^ Eduard Winkler: Suffrage reforms and elections in Trieste 1905-1909. An analysis of political participation in a multinational urban region of the Habsburg monarchy. Verlag Oldenbourg, Munich 2000, ISBN 3-486-56486-2 , p. 244.
  14. ^ Johann Christoph Allmayer-Beck: Prime Minister Baron Beck. A statesman of old Austria. Verlag für Geschichte u. Politics, Vienna 1956, p. 127.
    Stenographic minutes of the House of Representatives. XVIII. Session, p. 5218.
  15. ↑ Rudolf Sieghart: The last decades of a great power. People, peoples, problems of the Habsburg Empire. Ullstein publishing house, Berlin 1932, p. 120 ff.
  16. ↑ Alfred Ableitinger: Max Vladimir Baron von Beck . In: Walter Pollak (Ed.): A thousand years of Austria. A biographical chronicle. Volume 3: Parliamentarism and the Two Republics. Verlag Jugend u. Volk, Vienna 1974, ISBN 3-7141-6523-1 , pp. 28–33, here p. 32f.
personal data
SURNAME Beck, Max Wladimir von
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Austrian politician and Prime Minister
DATE OF BIRTH September 6, 1854
PLACE OF BIRTH Vienna
DATE OF DEATH January 20, 1943
Place of death Vienna