People's Manifesto

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Völkermanifest was the unofficial name for a manifesto that Emperor Karl I issued on October 16, 1918 in his capacity as head of state of the kingdoms and states represented in the Reichsrat ( called Austrian states since 1915 ), about the complete collapse of Old Austria as a result of the First World War to avoid. The manifesto, addressed to my loyal Austrian peoples , which was officially drafted by the Hussarek Ministry , but partly unofficially by the emperor himself and published on October 17, 1918 in a separate edition of the official Wiener Zeitung , failed to have an impact.

Days before, Prime Minister Max Hussarek von Heinlein was described as willing to resign because the planned Ministry of Nations , which was supposed to organize the orderly restructuring of Cisleithania with the help of a cabinet in which all nationalities of Old Austria would be represented, remained an illusion: the Slavic politicians from the north and south of Cisleithania refused to participate.

As Vienna's best-known newspaper abroad, the Neue Freie Presse , wrote on October 18, 1918, Prime Minister Max Hussarek von Heinlein was informed by representatives of the nations concerned on October 17, 1918 that the nations did not want this gift from him but take what he wants to give as right. (...) The last speech by the Prime Minister was an almost incomprehensible dropping of the rudder and the power of government is now without any noticeable influence on developments. According to the manifesto, Austria should now be organized as a union of free peoples . The New Free Press commented that a federal state made up of peoples who mostly hate each other (...) will not be easy to found.

Since the peoples of Cisleithania were called in the Manifesto to form national councils , efforts that had previously been regarded as treasonable separatism were now authorized by the monarch. This was used by the political representatives of the peoples of the monarchy to openly strive for independence within a few days. The unsuccessful Hussarek Ministry resigned on October 27, 1918; the liquidation ministry appointed by the emperor on the same day (as the media called it before his appointment) no longer had any influence on the dissolution of the previous state. At the end of October, Austria-Hungary as a real union of two states and the Austrian half of the empire were history (see end of the dual monarchy ).

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ daily newspaper Wiener Zeitung , no. 240, October 17, 1918
  2. ^ Daily newspaper Neue Freie Presse , Vienna, No. 19450, October 18, 1918, p. 1

literature

  • Rudolf Neck (Ed.): Austria in 1918. Reports and documents , R. Oldenbourg Verlag, Munich 1968, p. 64 ff.
  • Gordon Brook-Shepherd : About Crown and Empire. The tragedy of the last Habsburg emperor. Fritz Molden Verlag, Vienna 1968, p. 194 ff.
  • Zbyněk A. Zeman: The collapse of the Habsburg Empire 1914–1918 , Publishing House for History and Politics, Vienna 1963, p. 225 ff.