Dollfuss, Engelbert

Chancellor Engelbert Dollfuss


1892-1934



- became Chancellor of Austria in 1932

Engelbert Dollfuss was a Christian Socialist.On 20 May 1932 he was charged with forming a coalition government after the resignation of his party colleague Buresch's government, in which he had served as Minister of Agriculture. Dollfuss's coalition had a fragile one-vote majority in parliament; moreover, one of the coalition partners, the Heimwehr, was closer to the opposition Greater Germans with its right-wing extremist positions. In addition, there was a strong social democratic opposition in parliament, which, after the revelations of the so-called St. Gotthard affair, caused unrest among disaffected workers. Chancellor Dollfuss therefore decided to stage a coup d'état on the basis of the 1917 War Enabling Act. On 15 March 1933 he dissolved parliament, then ordered the disarmament of the Schutzbund, the armed workers' organisation, banned the Communist Party of Austria, and abolished freedom of the press and assembly. On April 30, he replaced the parliamentary constitution with a totalitarian constitution on the Italian corporate model.


He established the basis of the new regime as the so-called Patriotic Front, formed by the fusion of the Christian Social, the German National Party and the Heimwehr. At the same time, on 19 June, the Nazi Party was banned in Austria. Because the Schutzbund refused to surrender their arms, Chancellor Dollfuss began shelling their headquarters, Karl-Marx-Hof, with field artillery in early 1934. Three days of street fighting took place in Vienna, Linz and elsewhere. After suppressing the resistance, Dollfuss completed the fascisation of Austria by banning the free trade unions, the Social Democratic Party and all other parties that were not part of the Patriotic Front. A significant number of those threatened with persecution found asylum in democratic Czechoslovakia!


In foreign policy, Dollfuss focused on cooperation with Italy and Hungary, with whom he signed the so-called Rome Protocols on economic and political cooperation in March 1934. He also cultivated very good relations with the Vatican. The political system he introduced in Austria came to be called Austrofascism.


On 25 July 1934, the Austrian Nazis, now in resistance, attempted a coup d'état with the help of Germany. There was an armed appearance of illegal SS fighters in Carinthia and Styria. During the attempted uprising in Vienna, Chancellor Dollfuss was also assassinated by the Nazi Otto Planta in his palace. However, the prepared intervention of the German army on behalf of the putschists was thwarted by the attitude of Mussollini, who moved several divisions to the Austrian border. The police then suppressed the putsch in a matter of hours. When the Western powers protested against this attempted annexation of Austria, Germany denied its involvement in the whole event. The chancellor was the previous minister of justice K. Schuschnigg.

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Zdroj: www.hdg.de, www.lsg.musin.de