Election to the National Council in Austria in 1923
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The National Council election on October 21, 1923 was the second National Council election in the history of Austria . The Christian Social Party under Federal Chancellor Ignaz Seipel received most of the votes and mandates . In second place came the Social Democratic Workers' Party of German Austria (SDAP). The Greater German People's Party , with Vice Chancellor Felix Frank as the top candidate, became the third strongest force.
Changes to the electoral law
The National Council was reduced from 183 to 165 seats.
Election campaign
During the election campaign , the Christian Social Party relied fully on Ignaz Seipel , whom they printed on their election posters as a “tried and tested helmsman” who had to be preserved. Another series of posters criticized the social housing operated by the social democratically governed city of Vienna, which was inefficient and would ultimately lead to a higher tax burden. In this context, a motive in the name of the former Christian Social Mayor Karl Lueger called for the rescue of Vienna.
The Social Democrats criticized the government's austerity policies and their negative effects on civil servants and workers. They spoke out against planned cuts in health insurance and unemployment insurance , as well as against a deterioration in the area of protection against dismissal . The strong influence of the Roman Catholic Church on Austrian politics was also criticized , in particular because Ignaz Seipel, the incumbent Chancellor, was also a prelate and thus held an ecclesiastical office. Two other election posters opposed the strengthening of the Austrian National Socialists and the re- strengthening of Austrian monarchism .
The Greater Germans led an openly anti-Semitic election campaign together with the Landbund . So they called on "German Aryans " to come to their election rallies to stand up for the withdrawal of the voting rights of "50,000 Eastern Jews " who, in the view of the Greater Germans, were responsible for the housing shortage in Vienna. They accused the Social Democrats of wanting to “force the Viennese people step by step under Jewish and Czech bondage”. The anti-Semitism of the Greater Germans and the Landbund was criticized almost exclusively by the Jewish electoral community. She warned of an increase in hatred of Jews in Austria and complained that there was already structural discrimination against the Jewish population and that more were planned.
Despite a pacted electoral association between the Landbund and Greater Germans, the Landbund ultimately decided to stand independently due to a dispute over list places. Since the party ran with different list names in the individual federal states, 63,000 remaining votes in Styria , which were not sufficient for a basic mandate, could not be counted for the party in the second investigation according to the current electoral law . Thus, the Landbund only achieved five mandates, although the total number of votes obtained would have corresponded to eight mandates.
Note
The state and municipal council elections in Vienna took place in 1923 on the same day as the National Council election .
Bottom line
Official end result
| Candidates | be right | proportion of | Mandates | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1923 | ± | 1923 | ± | ||
| Christian Social Party (CS) | 1,459,047 | 44.05% | + 2.25% | 80 | +1 |
| Social Democratic Workers' Party of German Austria (SDAP) | 1,311,870 | 39.60% | + 3.61% | 68 | −1 |
| Association of the Greater German People's Party and the Landbund | 259.375 | 7.83% | N / A | 10 | -12 |
| Carinthian standard list 1) | 95,465 | 2.88% | N / A | 5 | -5 |
| Land federation for Austria 2) | 76,441 | 2.31% | N / A | 1 | +1 |
| Jewish electoral community | 24,970 | 0.75% | N / A | 0 | - |
| Burgenland Farmers' Union ( Landbund for Austria ) 2) | 23,142 | 0.70% | N / A | 0 | - |
| Communist Party of Austria (KPÖ) | 22,164 | 0.67% | -0.22% | 0 | - |
| Civil-democratic labor party | 18,886 | 0.57% | -0.87% | 0 | -1 |
| Party of the Carinthian Slovenes | 9,868 | 0.30% | N / A | 0 | - |
| Czechoslovak minority party | 7,580 | 0.23% | nk | 0 | - |
| Hrvatska stranka ( Croatian Party ) | 2,557 | 0.08% | nk | 0 | - |
| People's party loyal to the emperor | 1,235 | 0.03% | nk | 0 | - |
| Association of all creative people | 6th | 0.00% | nk | 0 | - |
1) Electoral community of the Kärntner Landbund, the Christian Social Party and the Greater German People's Party.
2) The addition of the election results was rejected by the Constitutional Court because of different list names.
National Council by club membership
By running several electoral communities and regional parties, 3 of the 4 parliamentary groups consisted of mandates from different electoral parties, and not all members of a list belonged to the same association.
| Christian-Social Association of German Members of the Austrian Parliament | 82 (−3) |
| Christian Social Party | 80 |
| Carinthian standard list | 2 |
| Association of Social Democratic Members of the National Council of German Austria | 68 (−1) |
| Social Democratic Party | 68 |
| Association of Members of the Greater German People's Party | 10 |
| Association of Greater Germans and the Land Federation | 8th |
| Carinthian standard list | 2 |
| Association of Representatives of the Land Federation for Austria | 5 |
| Association of Greater Germans and the Land Federation | 2 |
| Carinthian standard list | 2 |
| Burgenland farmers' union | 1 |
consequences
Reactions
In the reporting after the election, two things were particularly emphasized: On the one hand, the still clear bourgeois majority against the Social Democrats and, on the other hand, the unpredictable weak performance of the Greater Germans and other bourgeois movements apart from the Christian Socials. Despite the gains, the SDAP had no serious opportunity to take a seat in a federal government due to the lack of left coalition partners. In its edition of October 22, 1923 , the Linzer Volksblatt wrote about the "defeat of the Greater Germans and the Small Parties", "a full victory of the Christian Social Party" and saw the "socialist onslaught repelled" . The Greater German-minded Vorarlberger Tagblatt highlighted the “defeat of the Landbund all along the line”, emphasized the renewed “non-social democratic majority”, although a longed-for two-thirds majority of the bourgeoisie was not achieved.
Government formation
No doubt was left that this result would again lead to a Christian-Social-Greater German coalition government and so Ignaz Seipel remained Federal Chancellor.
Web links
- www.wahlen.cc ( Memento from February 27, 2012 in the Internet Archive ) Results of the elections in votes and percentages (PDF; 11 kB)
- www.bmi.gv.at official election brochure 1923 (PDF; 610 kB)
- Editions digitized by the Austrian National Library : Daily overview of October 22, 1923 (online at ANNO ).
Individual evidence
- ↑ Robert Kriechbaumer : The great stories of politics. Political culture and parties in Austria from the turn of the century to 1945 (= series of publications by the Research Institute for Political-Historical Studies of the Dr. Wilfried Haslauer Library, Salzburg . Volume 12 ). Böhlau, Vienna / Cologne / Weimar 2001, ISBN 3-205-99400-0 , p. 502-504 .
