Background
Kurt von Schuschnigg was born in Riva, South Tyrol, on 14 December 1897, the son of an Austro-Hungarian army officer.
Kurt von Schuschnigg was born in Riva, South Tyrol, on 14 December 1897, the son of an Austro-Hungarian army officer.
Studied law at the Universities of Freiburg and Vienna.
During World War I he served at the front and was taken prisoner by the Italians at the end of the war. He set up as a lawyer in 1924 and became a prominent figure in the clerical-conservative Christian Social Party.
Elected in 1927 as the youngest deputy to the Austrian National Council, von Schuschnigg was soon regarded as ‘the coming man' in Christian Social circles and in 1932 he was taken into the cabinet as Minister of Justice. From 1933 he also served as Minister of Education under Chancellor Dollfuss. Following the latter's assassination, von Schuschnigg was appointed Federal Chancellor on 25 July 1934 and also held at various times the posts of Defence Minister, Foreign Minister and from 1937 that of Minister for Public Security. A Catholic Pan-German and a rigid advocate of the Ständestaat (corporatist State), Schuschnigg upheld the authoritarian constitution initiated by his predecessor, based on the traditionalist principles of Catholicism, autocracy and legitimacy. Skilfully playing off his rivals against one another, he was able to hold back the fascist Heimwehr and smaller para-military organizations and in 1936 succeeded in ousting the Austro-fascist leader, Prince Starhemberg, from the government and the Fatherland Front. On 11 July 1936 von Schuschnigg concluded the so-called ‘July Agreement’ by which Austria undertook to preserve a friendly attitude to the Third Reich and to define itself as a German State. Though von Schuschnigg rejected National Socialism and völkisch ideology, he agreed to release several thousand Nazis from prison, to include several Austrian Nazis in his cabinet and even to allow the penetration of his Fatherland Front by pro-Nazi elements. This was a price he was prepared to pay in the hope of overcoming
Austria’s diplomatic isolation and obtaining German recognition of her sovereignty and independence. This policy of concessions was severely undermined by the establishment of the Rome-Berlin axis and the withdrawal of Mussolini’s support for Austrian independence in 1937.
Having failed to win over moderate nationalists and having alienated the workers by his earlier role in crushing the Social Democrats, von Schuschnigg found himself lacking a mass, popular base to rally Austrians against growing German pressure. Summoned to Berchtesgaden on 12 February 1938, the Austrian Chancellor was brutally bludgeoned by Hitler into accepting the appointment of the crypto-Nazi, Arthur Seyss-Inquart, as his Minister of the Interior (with control of the police) and into legalizing the Nazi Party in Austria.
Hitler lectured his guest on the history of Austria - ‘just one interrupted act of high treason’ - and warned him that ‘the German Reich is one of the great powers, and nobody will raise his voice if it settles its border problems’. The threat to Austrian independence drove von Schuschnigg to one last, desperate gamble. He announced a plebiscite on 9 March 1938 (to be held four days later) in which the Austrian people were to be asked to vote in favour of an Austria which was ‘free and German, independent and social, Christian and united’. Under intense Nazi pressure with the massing of German troops on the Austrian border, the plebiscite was called off and an enraged Hitler insisted on von Schuschnigg’s resignation (which took effect on 11 March) and his replacement by Seyss-Inquart. Following the Anschluss (during which German troops were enthusiastically welcomed by Austrians as ‘liberators') von Schuschnigg was temporarily interned in a Viennese hotel and kept under Gestapo surveillance. Re-arrested in 1941 he was sent to Dachau and spent the rest of the war in various concentration camps. He was liberated by American troops in the South Tyrol in 1945. Two years later he emigrated to the United States where he became a Professor of Government at the University of St Louis and a naturalized American citizen in 1956.
Von Schuschnigg returned to Austria in 1967 and settled in the Tyrol.
(Engl. trs. Austrian Requiem, 1947.)
1947(Engl. trs. The Brutal Takeover, 1971.)
1969
