Pfrimer coup

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The Pfrimer coup was one of Walter Pfrimer , the national director of the Styrian homeland security , and his adjutant general Carl Ottmar (Earl of) Lamberg-initiated coup , which on 12. September 1931 by the Austrian state of Styria took his exit. In this way, a “home guard government” was to be brought into power in Austria with the aim of fundamentally reshaping Austria's political system in the sense of home guarding. After initial successes in Styria, Pfrimers attempted to gain power in completely false assumptionsTo seize Austria , but already on the following day.

backgrounds

In the years after the Palace of Justice fire (1927), the Heimwehr had vehemently called for a fundamental change in Austria's political system in a class and authoritarian sense. They tried to implement this system change, which they had also promised their foreign financiers, through constant agitation on the streets - mainly in the form of huge Sunday marches in markets and cities - and permanent pressure on the federal government, also behind the scenes. This constant pressure was one of the main reasons why Johannes Schober became Federal Chancellor in 1929 . Schober, the "strong man" on whom the home guards had so much hoped, turned out to be a bitter disappointment. In the dispute over the amendment of the Austrian constitution, he worked with the Social Democrats on a compromise that was completely unacceptable from the point of view of the Heimwehr and otherwise showed little willingness to give in to their demands.

The failure in the constitutional dispute and the global economic crisis finally ushered in a phase of stagnation and the growing divergence of the Heimwehr movement, which they wanted to overcome in May 1930 with the so-called " Korneuburg Oath ". However, this attempt to impose an ideology on the Home Guard movement, which was heterogeneous from the beginning, did not lead to its resurgence. In order to finally win back the initiative and still implement the required system change in the direction of an authoritarian corporate state , the Federal Leader of the Home Guard, Ernst Rüdiger Starhemberg , who was newly elected in September 1930 , not only forced himself to participate in the government, but also to get the Home Guard who had always been an avowed opponent of parliamentarism, participated in the National Council elections of 1930 under the designation " home bloc " .

The election result of the home bloc fell far short of expectations and further weakened the internal cohesion of the home defense movement. After another election debacle in Upper Austria , Starhemberg finally resigned. The new federal leader was Walter Pfrimer, who was a representative of the radical direction within the Heimwehr movement and had already used violence several times in Styria to enforce political demands. In view of the fact that all paths taken so far had failed to implement the desired system change, the effects of the global economic crisis were becoming more and more noticeable, the disintegration of the home guards continued and they were also exposed to increasing pressure from the growing Austrian National Socialists, Pfrimer now put everything on a card: A coup d'état was supposed to finally implement the demands of the home guards and thus solve all these problems in one fell swoop.

When Starhemberg temporarily left the leadership of his deputy in 1931, he planned the putsch under the strong influence of Carl Ottmar (Count von) Lamberg.

sequence

On the evening of September 12, Pfrimer struck and had around 14,000 men of the Styrian Homeland Security mobilized, who occupied numerous Styrian villages (including almost all of Upper Styria ) during the night and the following morning , blocked traffic routes and arrested district captains and mayors. In the occupied places Pfrimer had a proclamation to the "People of Austria" and a "Provisional Constitutional Patent" posted, with which the takeover of power in the federal and state levels was announced. Since the enterprise - based on the model of Mussolini's " March on Rome " - was conceived as a "March on Vienna ", 600 homeland guards (including a home guard unit from Upper Austria ) marched by motor vehicle via Waidhofen an der Ybbs to Amstetten , from where they wanted to advance to Vienna with other Heimwehr formations via St. Pölten . It quickly became apparent, however, that the other Home Guard associations were not ready to support Pfrimer's company. Hence the "march on Vienna" ended already on September 13 in front of Amstetten, where the home guards from the army were stopped without major resistance.

On the morning of September 13, it was already clear that Pfrimer's coup d'état was doomed to fail. There was no help from the other Heimwehr associations, the Styrian Governor Anton Rintelen , who was actually a sympathizer of the Heimwehr, demanded the immediate cessation of Pfrimer's company and in the meantime the Republican Protection Association and the Federal Army had also been alerted and marched against the Homeland Guards . It was noticeable, however, that the armed forces in particular were advancing slowly into the centers of the uprising, in order to give the homeland guards the opportunity to withdraw and bring weapons and equipment to safety. Now Pfrimer himself realized that his company had failed. He gave the order to withdraw and fled Austria. 140 homeland security officers were arrested for participating in the attempted coup, around 4,000 reports were filed and around a fifth of the stock of weapons and men's equipment of the Styrian homeland security was confiscated.

follow

The fact that Pfrimer's company did not turn into a complete political catastrophe for the Styrian Homeland Security was not least due to the fact that certain circles of the Styrian state government, above all the governor himself, did not want to break up homeland security. For this reason, the state authorities showed exceptional leniency against the putschists everywhere. For example, the jury trial against the Pfrimer, who had voluntarily returned to Austria, and his seven co-defendants, which took place in Graz from December 14 to 18, 1931, ended with an acquittal . With this judgment, which many contemporaries perceived as scandalous, all other proceedings relating to the Pfrimer coup were also settled.

The organizational structures of the Styrian Homeland Security were therefore not permanently damaged by Pfrimer's coup. However, in the period that followed, the gap widened between the radical and the Austrian federal government, which tended to be hostile to the homeland security, which advocated a political reorganization of Austria and later turned to the NSDAP , and that which can be described as "loyal to the government". This dispute, which ultimately led to the split in the Styrian Home Guard, in turn had considerable effects on the Austrian Home Guard movement as a whole, not least because the Styrian Home Guard provided around a third of the armed formations of the Austrian Home Guard and was thus their largest and strongest segment.

The background to Pfrimer's enterprise has not been fully clarified to this day. From today's perspective, it is striking that in connection with the coup, especially investigations into the question of the extent to which homeland security had ties to the executive, civil service or the armed forces, did not lead to any results.

literature

  • Josef Hofmann: The Pfrimer Putsch. The Styrian Home Guard Trial of 1931. Stiasny Verlag, Graz et al. 1965 ( publications of the Austrian Institute for Contemporary History 4).
  • Bruce F. Pauley: Cocktail and Swastika. Styrian Homeland Security and Austrian National Socialism 1918–34. Europa Verlag, Munich et al. 1972, ISBN 3-203-50383-9 .
  • Walter Wiltschegg: The Home Guard. An irresistible popular movement? Verlag für Geschichte und Politik, Vienna 1985, ISBN 3-7028-0221-5 ( studies and sources on contemporary Austrian history 7).

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ See Wiltschegg (1985), p. 178.