Parliament shut itself off

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"Parliament's self- shutdown " is the term coined by the Austrian Chancellor at the time , the Christian Socialist Engelbert Dollfuss , for the fact that the Austrian National Council failed to preside on March 4, 1933 . According to the overwhelming opinion of constitutional lawyers, it was a crisis of rules of procedure that should have been settled amicably. This solution was prevented by Dollfuss on March 15, 1933, with the use of the executive , the MPs could not meet. As a result, the Christian Social Federal Government ( supported by the Fatherland Front from May 20, 1933 ) successively banned the other parties and established the Austro-Fascist dictatorship based on the corporate state model.

The events of March 4, 1933

On that day there were three motions for a railroad strike on the agenda; the railroad workers protested against the payment of March salaries in three installments. The Christian Socials applied for disciplinary measures against the striking railway workers , while the Social Democratic Workers' Party (SDAP) and the Greater German People's Party each made their own applications in this case. While the social democratic motion was rejected by a majority, the National Council accepted the motion of the Greater Germans with a three-vote majority (82 to 79).

As a result, a discussion of the rules of procedure arose as to whether the Christian Socialists' proposal should still be voted after the Greater German proposal had already been accepted. National Council President Karl Renner (SDAP) interrupted the meeting for a little less than an hour and then announced that there had been irregularities during the vote. In the further course he corrected the result of the vote to 81 to 80. The motion of the Greater Germans was still considered accepted.

Afterwards there were loud protests by Christian Social Members who called for a new vote. According to the shorthand protocol, Karl Renner soon found himself unable to continue chairing the meeting and resigned. In fact, this resignation was not due to inability to act, but on the advice of Otto Bauer and Karl Seitz , which Renner was informed of by party secretary Adolf Schärf .

In his memoirs, Schärf says that he had a bad idea about this advice and took Robert Danneberg to accompany him when he informed Renner. Schärf: Both of them, neither Bauer nor Seitz, considered that it was not appropriate, on the one hand, for Social Democracy, as the relatively strongest party, to demand the function and office of the first president, on the other hand, however, if the exercise of this office of the party was, so to speak, a sacrifice ordered to say no immediately.

Now the second president of the National Council, the Christian Socialist MP Rudolf Ramek , took over the chairmanship and declared the vote to be invalid, which resulted in violent protests by the Social Democrats. Then Ramek resigned from his position. The third president was the Greater German Sepp Straffner , who immediately resigned from his position in Affekt.

Schärf and two other social democratic contemporary witnesses confirm that at least Karl Renner's resignation was due to voting-related reasons:

Otto Bauer wrote in 1934:

“On the following day, Hitler won his great election victory in Germany; In our eagerness to ... protect the railway workers, we hadn't considered the direct impact the upheavals in Germany could have on Austria. With Renner's resignation we provided the Dollfuss government with the pretext for the elimination of parliament: that was undoubtedly a 'left deviation' ... "

Wilhelm Ellenbogen (1863–1951) later recalled:

“The tragedy of fate, however, wanted the Social Democratic MP Scheibein to confuse his ballot paper with that of his neighbor Abram , so that two Abram votes appeared, whereupon the majority demanded that this vote be declared invalid, in the hope that the result would be the acquisition of an independent MP could be improved. The negative response from President Renner led to controversy against him, whereupon he resigned from his position as President because unfortunately Bauer (which he later admitted was a mistake) advised him to do so. "

After the resignation of the three Presidents of the National Council, the meeting could no longer be ended properly, which created a situation that the Austrian Federal Constitution and the National Council's rules of procedure had not foreseen. The parliament did not have a quorum and split up.

Interpretation Dollfuss'

Engelbert Dollfuss (1933)

For Dollfuss the events of March 4, 1933 were an unexpected help in his intentions to rule in an authoritarian manner. He immediately spoke of the fact that the (already constantly divided and therefore incapable of constructive work) parliament had eliminated itself. The state is by no means in an emergency situation because the government is able to act.

Dollfuss now wanted to govern on the basis of the War Economic Enabling Act (KWEG) from 1917, which he had already tried out; a law that was supposed to serve to quickly enact economic regulations in the First World War , but not to solve a parliamentary crisis . Dollfuss was therefore determined not to allow the National Council to meet again. Through this coup his government against parliament Dollfuss putsch broke like with the previously valid Constitution of 1920. Federal President Wilhelm Miklas made him grant.

The events of March 15, 1933

The attempt by the Social Democratic and Greater German opposition to continue the meeting on March 15, 1933, which was interrupted on March 4, and to close it properly, was prevented by the police on behalf of the government under threat of use of weapons. The resigned third President of the National Council, the Greater German MP Sepp Straffner , had revoked his resignation; with him were already large German and social democratic members in the meeting room. No more MPs were allowed into parliament, which was surrounded by police; those present in the meeting room were escorted out of the house by the police.

Police President Franz Brandl had requested a written order from Dollfuss. The head of the police operation presented the order to prevent the "undeclared assembly" (the government referred to the right of assembly, which was not applicable to the National Council). Straffner then announced that he would continue the March 4th session and immediately closed the session.

At the same time as the police operation, State Secretary Emil Fey of the Ministry of the Interior (Dollfuss himself carried out the function of Minister of the Interior) ordered home guard associations to the former Bohemian Court Chancellery on Judenplatz in the 1st district, which should help with the implementation of the legal coup. Police President Brandl had the home guard units observed by four vehicles of the police raid command without informing his superior Fey and informed the Mayor of Vienna Karl Seitz . In the Council of Ministers on March 17, Fey was indignant about this and claimed that the Home Guard should only have intervened "in the event of the outbreak of the general strike as emergency aid from the state security executive".

The head of the police operation in parliament passed the order to President Straffner, who, on the basis of this piece of evidence, filed a criminal complaint against Dollfuss for the crime of public violence (Section 76 of the Criminal Law 1852). In the Council of Ministers on March 17, Dollfuss criticized the fact that Brandl had followed the order so hesitantly that MPs could get into parliament before the police blew up the building. In view of the fact that Police President Brandl was not fully on the side of the government, he was forced into retirement on March 16, 1933.

The role of the Federal President

Federal Chancellor Engelbert Dollfuss and Justice Minister Kurt Schuschnigg used the situation for a legal coup . The federal government wisely failed to suggest that the Christian-Social Federal President Wilhelm Miklas dissolve the National Council and call new elections, which he could only order on the proposal of the government. Although a petition signed by over a million people asked him to recall the Dollfuss government and to initiate new elections at the suggestion of an interim government he had appointed, Miklas remained inactive, which enabled Dollfuss to continue to rule dictatorially.

The session of the rump parliament on April 30, 1934

After the Austrian Civil War , the government passed an authoritarian, corporate state constitution through the KWEG . In order to be able to pass this resolution in parliament, the rules of procedure of the National Council were changed with a further KWEG regulation, which enabled the resigned second president, Ramek, to continue the session on April 30, 1934, the formal on March 4, 1933 had not ended.

On April 30th, only a "rump parliament" met; because the mandates of the Social Democratic MPs had been declared expired due to the party ban on February 12, 1934, while the majority of the Greater German MPs (“National Economic Bloc”) boycotted the meeting as unconstitutional. Two remaining Greater German MPs protested against the actions of the Christian Social Members, who again rejected the process as unconstitutional and called for a referendum on the new constitution. They declared that the Greater Germans had no objection to an authoritarian system of government, but they wanted to achieve this with the people and not against the people and at least not by the minority forcing something on the majority. In addition, they played down the government's argument that one of the reasons for the authoritarian system was the danger that Hitler Germany posed for Austria.

The “ Constitution of the Federal State of Austria ” of May 1, 1934 was passed against two votes on April 30, 1934 , and the session of March 4, 1933 ended (with which the National Council ceased to exist).

Lesson from the process

To ensure that the National Council never "switched itself off", Section 6 (2) to (4) of the Federal Act of July 4, 1975 on the National Council's Rules of Procedure (GOG NR) stipulates that if all three presidents are prevented from exercising their office - the eldest member of the parliament present at the seat of the National Council presides over the years, provided that he belongs to a party that also has one of the three presidents. This deputy has to convene the National Council immediately and elect three new presidents. If he does not comply with this obligation within eight days, the aforementioned rights are transferred to the next oldest member. The chairmen elected in this way remain in office until at least one of the presidents prevented from exercising their functions can exercise their office again.

literature

  • Emmerich Tálos , Wolfgang Neugebauer (Hrsg.): Austrofaschismus. Politics - Economy - Culture. 1933–1938 , 5th edition, Lit, Münster a. a. 2005, ISBN 3-8258-7712-4 .
  • Stephan Neuhäuser (Ed.): "We will do a great job". The Austrofascist coup d'état 1934 , Norderstedt 2004, ISBN 3-8334-0873-1 .
  • Norbert Leser: Between Reformism and Bolshevism , Vienna 1968.
  • Adolf Schärf : Memories from my life , Vienna 1963.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Renner's resignation in the shorthand protocol
  2. ^ Adolf Schärf: Memories , p. 117.
  3. ↑ resignation Rameks in stenographic protocol
  4. ^ Straffner's resignation in the stenographic protocol
  5. ↑ Otto Bauer: The uprising of the Austrian workers. Its causes and effects , Prague 1934.
  6. ↑ Wilhelm Ellenbogen: People and Principles. Memories, Judgments and Reflections of a Critical Social Democrat. Edited and introduced by Friedrich Weissensteiner , Böhlau, Vienna 1981, ISBN 3-205-08744-5 , p. 81.
  7. ↑ Democracy Center - The Salvation of the Fatherland. Contemporary sources on the coup d'état of March 4, 1933 (PDF file; 99 kB)
  8. ↑ Reichsgesetzblatt No. 117/1852, p. 511 .
  9. ↑ Engelbert Steinwender: From the city guard to the security guard. Viennese police stations and their time , Volume 2: Corporate State, Greater German Reich, Period of Occupation. Weishaupt Verlag, Graz 1992, ISBN 3-900310-85-8 , p. 22.
  10. ↑ Federal Law Gazette No. 238/1934 .
  11. ↑ Federal Law Gazette No. 78/1934 .
  12. ^ Stenographic minutes of the meeting Minutes of the meeting (pp. 3395, 3396) on ALEX.