Engelbert Dollfuss
Engelbert Dollfuss was an Austrian politician and dictator who served as chancellor of Austria between 1932 and 1934. Having served as Minister for Forests and Agriculture, he ascended to Federal Chancellor in 1932 in the midst of a crisis for the conservative and nationalist government. This crisis culminated in the self-elimination of the Austrian Parliament, a coup sparked by the resignation of the presiding officers of the National Council. Suppressing the Socialist movement in the Austrian Civil War and later banning the Austrian Nazi Party, he cemented his rule through the First of May Constitution in 1934. Later that year, Dollfuss was assassinated as part of a failed coup attempt by Nazi agents. His successor Kurt Schuschnigg maintained the regime until Adolf Hitler's Anschluss in 1938.
Early life
Dollfuss was born to a poor, peasant, lower middle-class family in the hamlet of Great Maierhof in the commune of St. Gotthard near Texingtal in Lower Austria. Young Dollfuss spent his childhood in his step-father's house in the nearby commune of Kirnberg, where he also went to elementary school. The local parish priests helped to finance Dollfuss's education, as his parents were unable to do so by themselves alone. He attended high school in Hollabrunn. After graduating from high school, Dollfuss intended to become a priest, and thus he enrolled at the University of Vienna to study theology, but after a few months changed course and started studying law in 1912. As a student, he earned a livelihood by giving lessons. He became a member of the Students' Social Movement, a student organisation dedicated to social and charitable work among the workers.As World War I broke out, Dollfuss was reported to be recruited in Vienna but was rejected because he was two centimetres shorter than the minimum. Fully grown, he was less than 1.52 m in height, and later was nicknamed "Millimetternich", a portmanteau of Millimeter and Klemens von Metternich. The same day he was rejected in Vienna, Dollfuss went to St. Pölten where the recruiting commission for his district was located and insisted on being recruited, and, even though he did not meet the minimum height standards, he was accepted. As a volunteer, he had a right to choose a regiment in which he would serve, and Dollfuss opted for the Tyrolese militia also known as the Kaiserschützen. In September 1914 he graduated from the Brixener Officer's School with the rank of Ensign and was transferred to the Imperial-Royal 2nd Tyrolian Rifle Regiment in Bosen. He was soon promoted to the rank of Lieutenant. He served for 37 months at the Italian Front, south of Tyrol. By 1916 he was promoted to First lieutenant. He was awarded the following medals: 1916 the Silver Bravery Medal 1st Class, 1917 the Karl Troop Cross, Wound Medal with one wound stripe and the Bronze Military Merit Medal two times and in 1918 the Military Merit Cross 3. Class with War Decoration and Swords and after the war the Austrian War Memorial Medal with Swords.
After the war, he was still a student and was employed by the Lower Austrian Peasants' Union, which helped him to secure his material existence, and it was here where Dollfuss gained his first political experience. Being recognised for the abilities he showed at the Union, he was sent for further studies to Berlin. In Berlin, he began to garner dislike for some of his professors, as academia there was substantially influenced by liberalism and socialism. In his studies, he devoted himself to the Christian principles of economics. In Germany, he became a member of the Federation of German Peasants' Union and of the Preussenkasse – essentially, a central bank for member cooperatives, where he gained practical experience. In Germany, he met his future wife Alwine Glienke, a descendant of a Pomeranian family. Dollfuss often met with Carl Sonnenschein, leader of social activities of students and the pioneer of the Catholic movement in Berlin.
After returning to Vienna, he was a secretary of the Lower Austrian Peasants' Union. He devoted his efforts to consolidating that industry. Dollfuss was instrumental in the founding of the regional Chamber of Agriculture of Lower Austria, becoming its secretary and a director; the Federation of Agriculture and the Agricultural Labourers' Insurance Institute; in organising the new Agrarian policy of Lower Austria and in laying the foundations for the corporative organisation of agriculture. A few years later, he was a representative of Austria at the International Agrarian Congress, where his proposals made him internationally known in that sphere. He was seen as an unofficial leader of the Austrian peasantry.
On 1 October 1930 Dollfuss was appointed the president of the Federal Railways, the largest industrial corporation in Austria. There, Dollfuss came into contact with all branches of the industry. In March 1931, he was appointed Federal Minister of Agriculture and Forestry.
Chancellor of Austria
On 10 May 1932, Dollfuss, aged 39 and with only one year's experience in the Federal Government, was offered the office of Chancellor by President Wilhelm Miklas, also a member of the Christian-Social Party. Dollfuss did not immediately respond, instead spending the night in his favourite church praying, returning in the morning for a bath and a spartan meal before finally replying to the President that he would accept the offer. Dollfuss was sworn in on 20 May 1932 as head of a coalition government between the Christian-Social Party, the Landbund – a right-wing agrarian party – and Heimatblock, the parliamentary wing of the Heimwehr, a paramilitary ultra-nationalist group. The coalition assumed the pressing task of tackling the problems of the Great Depression. Much of the Austro-Hungarian Empire's industry had been situated in the areas that became part of Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia after World War I as a result of the Treaty of Saint-Germain. Postwar Austria was therefore economically disadvantaged.Dollfuss's support in Parliament was marginal; his coalition had only a one-vote majority.
Dollfuss as dictator of Austria
Ascent to power
In March 1933, a constitutional impasse arose over irregularities in the voting procedure in the Austrian parliament. The Social Democratic president of the National Council, Karl Renner, resigned to be able to cast a vote as a parliament member. As a consequence, the two vice presidents, belonging to other parties, resigned as well in order to be able to vote. Without a president, the parliament could not conclude the session. Dollfuss took the three resignations as a pretext to declare that the National Council had become unworkable and advised President Wilhelm Miklas to issue a decree adjourning it indefinitely.On March 7, Dolfuss announced his government had assumed emergency powers based on the "Wartime Economy Authority Law," which had been passed in 1917. From that point onwards, he governed by emergency decree, effectively seizing dictatorial powers. When the National Council wanted to reconvene on 15 March, days after the resignation of the three presidents, Dollfuss had the police bar entrance to the chamber, effectively eliminating democracy in Austria.
Dollfuss was concerned that with German National Socialist leader Adolf Hitler as Chancellor of Germany from January 1933, the Austrian National Socialists could gain a significant minority in future elections. In addition, the Soviet Union's influence in Europe had increased throughout the 1920s and early 1930s. Dollfuss banned the Communist Party of Austria on 26 May 1933 and the DNSAP on 19 June 1933. Under the banner of the Fatherland Front, he later established a one-party dictatorship rule largely modelled after fascism in Italy, banning all other Austrian parties – including the Social Democratic Labour Party. Social Democrats however continued to exist as an independent organization, nevertheless, though without its paramilitary Republikanischer Schutzbund, which until banned on 31 March 1933 could have mustered tens of thousands against Dollfuss's government.
The Fatherland Front
Dollfuss modelled the Fatherland Front according to Catholic corporatist ideals with anti-secularist tones and in a similar way to Italian fascism, dropping Austrian pretenses of unification with Germany as long as the Nazi Party remained in power there. In August 1933, Benito Mussolini's regime issued a guarantee of Austrian independence. Dollfuss also exchanged "Secret Letters" with Mussolini about ways to guarantee Austrian independence. Mussolini had an interest in Austria forming a buffer zone against Nazi Germany. Dollfuss always stressed the similarity of the regimes of Hitler in Germany and Joseph Stalin in the Soviet Union and was convinced that Austria and Italy could counter totalitarian national-socialism and communism in Europe.In September 1933 Dollfuss merged his Christian Social Party with elements of other nationalist and conservative groups, including the Heimwehr to form the Vaterländische Front, though the Heimwehr continued to exist as an independent organization until 1936, when Dollfuss's successor Kurt von Schuschnigg forcibly merged it into the Front, instead creating the unabidingly loyal Frontmiliz as a paramilitary task-force. Dollfuss was shot and wounded in an assassination attempt on 3 October 1933 by Rudolf Dertil, a 22-year-old who had been ejected from the military for his pro-Nazi views and had joined the Nazi Party in 1932. Dertil was sentenced to five years in prison for attempted murder. In the aftermath of the attempted assassination, Dollfuss declared martial law, which allowed for the resumption of capital punishment in Austria.