Ministry of Lammasch
The Lammasch Ministry (October 27, 1918 - November 11, 1918; “Ministry” referred to the entire cabinet in the parlance at the time ) was the last government of the Austrian states (Cisleithanien) appointed by Emperor Karl I ; it succeeded the cabinet of Max Hussarek von Heinlein, which only held office for three months . The non-politician and legal scholar Heinrich Lammasch became Kk Prime Minister . The cabinet was appointed during the collapse of Austria-Hungary at the end of the First World War and, at the request of the emperor, remained in office until he renounced any share in state affairs in German-Austria . Likewise, the three ministers of both halves of the empire, who were common until October 31, 1918, remained in office until that day.
History of the Lammasch government
Proposal for appointment
The helplessness prevailing under Franz Joseph I about how to secure the future of the monarchy continued under Charles I and intensified in 1917 when the USA entered the war and in 1918 with the feared defeat in the First World War. In the two years of his reign, the young emperor appointed a total of four imperial prime ministers without improving the situation. The last appointment fell in weeks when the dual monarchy as a whole and Cisleithania in particular were clearly in the process of dissolution.
The publicist Friedrich Funder stated that the proposal to appoint Lammasch as Prime Minister was made on October 24, 1918 in the Christian Social Vienna daily Reichspost , which he directed , after discussions with the Christian social pioneer Ignaz Seipel . The paper was entitled A Ministry of Order! the establishment of a regulatory authority above all new parliamentary groups, which should act as an impartial administrator of the future national state and guarantee the maintenance of the infrastructure (economy, transport, finances) until it is established. Representatives of the new national councils could participate in this government, which would not be a central government in the previous sense. The paper suggested to the emperor to order Heinrich Lammasch without delay . The parliamentary parties would not have rejected this proposal.
On October 26, 1918, the Viennese daily Neue Freie Presse , the internationally best-known newspaper in Old Austria , assessed the situation more soberly , which Lammasch announced as the “liquidator of old Austria” and his government as the liquidation ministry. It was emphasized that he had taken on the almost insoluble task of creating a new federation of states from the already separated parts of old Austria with their national assemblies. As it turned out over the next four days, this corresponded to reality.
The central organ of the social democracy , the Arbeiter-Zeitung , assumed on October 26th that the main purpose of Lammasch's appointment was "that his appointment can make a good impression on the opposing country". The Lammasch cabinet would be "a government of peaceful internal conflict and the attainment of peace externally [...] Of course, all concerns about the seriousness of these tasks must be receded." Seipel , Redlich and Schumpeter are being discussed as members of the government. However, it was also reported that the Czechs and southern Slavs had already refused to participate.
minister
The letter of appointment for Lammasch and the ministers was published in the official Wiener Zeitung on October 28, 1918. Five ministers had been in office since 1917, and another three had belonged to the Hussarek-Heinlein ministry, which was removed on October 27, 1918; the Prime Minister and five ministers were appointed to the Imperial and Royal Government for the first time.
After the end of the monarchy, five members of the last imperial cabinet served republican Austria: Lammasch acted as advisor to the Austrian delegation during the peace negotiations in Saint-Germain in 1919, Seipel became a Christian Social Party leader, Federal Chancellor and one of the most controversial politicians of the First Republic, Redlich and Paul served as minister, Vittorelli was appointed President of the Constitutional Court.
State and government situation
The day after the government was appointed, the republican Czechoslovak state was established in Prague ; one began to remove imperial emblems. Resistance from the previous state power was out of the question, since the interests of the Czech and German old Austrians also diverged widely in the army and police.
By the end of October 1918, with the exception of Bukovina , all non-German areas of Cisleithania, as announced since 1917, made themselves independent of Old Austria, without paying any further attention to the Viennese government.
The hope, cherished in mid-October by state-loyal forces in Vienna, that the Reichsrat and the Imperial and Royal Government could moderate the orderly rebuilding of old Austria into a federation of states (see People's Manifesto of October 16), turned out to be illusory.
With its inauguration on October 31, 1918, the first government of German Austria, the Renner I state government , elected on October 30, commenced work in the German areas of the former western half of Austria-Hungary , after the Provisional National Assembly had been in session since October 21, 1918 would have. The real union of Old Austria with the Kingdom of Hungary was ended by the latter, as announced in mid-October, with the consent of the emperor and king at the end of October 1918, so that the livelihoods of the three joint kuk ministries were also lost.
In many places at the end of October the imperial eagle and the letters kk were removed from inscriptions, including in Prague and Vienna, where officers on the street were urged to remove the imperial cockades from their caps. On November 1st, Johann Schober , head of the Vienna Police Department, took the oath on the German-Austrian Council of State. In Graz , the Social Democrats threatened to remove all imperial emblems at a mass meeting on November 3, 1918. Then the associated governor's office on November 2, with the approval of Minister of the Interior Gayer to eliminate the emblems of its own motion.
On October 30, 1918, the Lammasch Ministry would have had to be presented to the House of Representatives of the Reichsrat , but its session was postponed to November 12, 1918 within two minutes, taking into account the prevailing circumstances , without even mentioning the new government. On the same day the new cabinet should have been introduced in the manor house of the Reichsrat. As Lammasch had previously announced that he was unable to issue a government statement, the meeting was closed after five minutes; it was the last session of the manor house before its abolition on November 12, 1918.
The Lammasch Ministry handed over its German-Austrian agendas to the Renner state government in the first days of November 1918. Otherwise, the Imperial and Royal Ministers were busy with various organizational tasks in the transition from the Imperial and Royal State Administration to the successor states.
Neither the Lammasch Ministry nor the Reichsrat was concerned with the armistice with the war opponents (Villa Giusti) concluded by the Austro-Hungarian Army in the name of the Kaiser on November 3, 1918 . The German-Austrian Council of State, which the Emperor had tried to involve, refused to share responsibility.
The work of the imperial government found little expression in the Reichsgesetzblatt . New laws were no longer possible due to the political situation. Minister of Commerce Wieser issued an ordinance on the consumption of newsprint on the basis of the War Economic Enabling Act . Finance Minister Redlich announced new banknotes for 25 and 200 kroner and cash notes . Minister of the Interior Gayer, effective on November 3, 1918, in agreement with the Justice, Finance and Trade Ministries, lifted the bans on importing and distributing printed matter published in hostile countries since the beginning of the war in 1914 .
Waiver and release
After the announcement of the abdication of the German emperor on November 9, 1918, the cabinet was generally of the opinion that Charles I could now only resign. One therefore dealt intensively with the draft of a declaration to be submitted by the Emperor of Austria and worked with the German-Austrian State Council. The last kk finance minister, Josef Redlich , gave a detailed account of the process.
At lunchtime on November 11, 1918 at Schönbrunn Palace, Lammasch and Gayer persuaded Karl I to renounce his monarchy functions and to sign the declaration of renunciation drawn up by imperial and German-Austrian politicians . Lammasch and his ministers were removed by the emperor at 2 p.m. The sealing of the downfall of Old Austria was felt by some dismissed ministers as very sad.
Emperor Karl's resignation and the end of the Lammasch Ministry were published on November 11, 1918 in a separate edition of the Wiener Zeitung . Under the waiver, it was announced that the German-Austrian Council of State would petition the Provisional National Assembly the next day to declare the state a democratic republic by law.
Since the Cisleithan state structure had no successor (the new states rejected the formal legal succession), the Lammasch Ministry also had no formal successor.
The Wiener Neue Freie Presse , which dryly noted the emperor's waiver as a resignation on the morning of November 12th , commented on Lammasch's departure as follows: “... The Lammasch Ministry appeared on the scene as the liquidation ministry. In the meantime the peoples have taken care of the liquidation themselves. The liquidation ministry, which from the start only led a sham existence, has disappeared. Even the last moment of commonality between the states of the monarchy has ceased ... "
The Provisional National Assembly for German Austria determined in Article 4 of the law of November 12, 1918 on the form of state and government in German Austria , “the kuk and kk ministries will be dissolved”. At the request of the German-Austrian state government and under its supervision, the former kuk ministers, who deal with foreign policy, the military and finances, were still dealing with liquidation tasks for a few weeks or months.
Joint minister until October 31, 1918
The Austro-Hungarian ministers who met in the Council of Ministers for Common Affairs and were responsible for both halves of the empire until October 31, 1918, were directly subordinate to the Emperor and King and did not belong to the Lammasch Ministry. The last incumbents were:
| Kuk Minister | Official | annotation |
|---|---|---|
| Foreign minister |
Gyula Count Andrássy the Younger until November 2, 1918, then Ludwig Freiherr von Flotow |
After Andrássy's resignation Flotow was entrusted with the management; from November 12, 1918 to November 8, 1920 he acted as head of the liquidating Foreign Ministry under the supervision of the State Office for Foreign Affairs (see State Governments Renner I , II , III and State or Federal Government Mayr I ). |
| Minister of War | Rudolf Freiherr Stöger-Steiner von Steinstätten | in office since April 12, 1917; from November 12 to the beginning of December 1918 head of the liquidating War Ministry under the supervision of the German-Austrian State Office for the Army (see State Government Renner I ); the liquidating War Ministry was converted into the Military Liquidation Office in April 1920, which existed until 1931 |
| Finance minister |
Alexander Freiherr von Spitzmüller-Harmersbach , in office since September 7, 1918, until November 4, 1918, then Paul Freiherr von Kuh-Chrobak |
Kuh-Chrobak, entrusted with the management, was head of the liquidating joint finance ministry from November 12, 1918 to December 31, 1920 under the supervision of the State Office of Finance or the Federal Ministry of Finance (see State Governments Renner I , II , III and State or Federal Government Mayr I ). |
See also
literature
- Klaus Berchtold: Constitutional History of the Republic of Austria , Volume 1, Springer, Vienna / New York 1998, ISBN 978-3-211-83188-5 , pp. 2–34.
- Helmut Rumpler , Peter Urbanitsch (ed.): The Habsburg Monarchy 1848–1918. Volume VII: Constitution and Parliamentarism. Two volumes, Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, Vienna 2000, ISBN 978-3-7001-2869-4 and ISBN 978-3-7001-2871-7 .
- Elisabeth Kovács, Pál Arató (SJ), Franz Pichorner, Lotte Wewalka: The fall or salvation of the Danube monarchy? Publications of the Commission for Modern History of Austria, Commission for Modern History of Austria, Volume 1 ISBN 978-3-205-77295-8 .
- Hugo Portisch , Sepp Riff: The end of the monarchy. From empire to republic. Documentation, 1987, at, 90 min.
Individual evidence
- ↑ Article in: Reichspost , October 24, 1918, p. 1 (online at ANNO ). .
- ↑ Friedrich Funder : From yesterday to today. From the Empire to the Republic , Herold Verlag, Vienna / Munich ³1971, p. 456 f. and p. 467.
- ↑ A Ministry of Lammasch. In: Neue Freie Presse , October 26, 1918, p. 1 (online at ANNO ). .
- ^ A government Lammasch. In: Arbeiter-Zeitung , October 26, 1918, p. 2 (online at ANNO ). .
- ↑ Dear Dr. Lammash !. In: Wiener Zeitung , October 28, 1918, p. 1 (online at ANNO ). .
- ^ Homann von Herimberg, Emil (1862-1945), administrative officer , Austrian Biographical Lexicon.
-
↑ also: Kazimierz, * 1863 † 1941
Galecki, Kazimierz , in: Baza osób polskich - Polish personal database, baza-nazwisk.de - ^ Rudolf Neck (Ed.): Austria in the year 1918. Reports and documents , Oldenbourg, Munich 1968, p. 94 f.
- ↑ Stenographic Protocol. House of Representatives. XXII. Session. 94th meeting, Wednesday, October 30, 1918 (= p. 4697) .
- ↑ Stenographic Protocol. Mansion. XXII. Session. 40th meeting, Wednesday, October 30, 1918 (= p. 1269) .
- ↑ RGBl. No. 383/1918 of October 29, 1918 (= p. 1021).
- ↑ RGBl. No. 387/1918 of November 2, 1918 (= p. 1027) .
- ^ Rudolf Neck (Ed.): Austria in the year 1918. Reports and documents , Oldenbourg, Munich 1968, p. 132 f.
- ^ Law on the State and Government Form of German Austria. In: Wiener Zeitung , November 11, 1918, p. 7 (online at ANNO ). .
- ^ The proclamation of German Austria as a republic and part of Germany. In: Neue Freie Presse , November 12, 1918, p. 3 (online at ANNO ). .
- ↑ StGBl. No. 5/1918 .
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Prime Minister: Lammasch
Minister: Banhans (Railways) | Galecki (Galicia) | Gayer (interior) | Hampe (cult and teaching) | Homann (Public Works) | Horbaczewski (Public Health) | Lehne (national defense) | Paul (People's Food) | Honest (finance) | Seipel (Social Welfare) | Silva-Tarouca (arable farming) | Wieser (trade) | Vittorelli (Justice)