The Hotel Schiff is a hotel in Linz. In 1934 it was the starting point of the Austrian Civil War.
The Gasthof Zum Goldenen Schiff was built in 1788 on a site which had been used since 1563 by the Brethren of the Poor.
The Hotel zum Goldenen Schiff, was established in the 19th century. It was here in 1895 that the first public demonstration of the gramophone was given and in September 1896 the first cinematic performance occurred following Roithner's variety show. From March to April 1897 the first regular film screenings in Linz were held here. In 1909 John Wind bought the hotel and developed cinema here.
In 1920, the hotel, restaurant and cinema became the property of the Upper Austrian Social Democratic Workers' Party of Austria (SDAPÖ). The existing facilities were now augmented with the offices of the Linz SDP party secretariat, a library and reading room. Until the suppression of the SDP by the Austro-fascists, the Hotel Schiff was an important meeting place and of the SDAPÖ and their paramilitary arm, the Schutzbund. In 1922 cinema, the Central Theater, opened.
On 12 February 1934 the police legally raided the Hotel Schiff, looking for weapons. Those inside violently attacked the police: the Austrian Civil War had begun. The armed conflict soon spread to nearby areas of Linz, and within a few hours later there were violent confrontations between Schutzbund on the one hand and the right-wing Heimwehr, police and army on the other. The Hotel Schiff was finally seized later that same day and occupied by army units.
In 1948, three years after the Second World War, the building was returned to the Social Democratic Party. The building still houses the offices of Social Democratic Party, and until 2006, the Central Cinema.
Engelbert Dollfuß was an Austrian Fatherland Front politician 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 government. In early 1933, the so called "Selbstausschaltung des Parlaments" happened, which made the Austrian parliament unable to govern. Suppressing the Socialist movement in February 1934 during the Austrian Civil War and later banning the Austrian Nazi Party, he cemented the rule of authoritarian conservatism through the First of May Constitution. Dollfuss was assassinated as part of a failed coup attempt by Nazi agents in 1934. His successor Kurt Schuschnigg maintained the regime until Adolf Hitler's Anschluss in 1938.
The July Revolt of 1927 was a major riot starting on 15 July 1927 in the Austrian capital, Vienna. The revolt was sparked by the acquittal of three nationalist paramilitary members for the killing of two social democratic Republikanischer Schutzbund members and culminated with police forces firing into the outraged crowd and killing 89 protesters, and five policemen died. More than 600 protestors and around 600 policemen were injured.
Otto Bauer was one of the founders and leading thinkers of the left-socialist Austromarxists who sought a middle ground between social democracy and revolutionary socialism. He was a member of the Austrian Parliament from 1907 to 1934, deputy party leader of the Social Democratic Workers' Party (SDAP) from 1918 to 1934, and Foreign Minister of the Republic of German-Austria in 1918 and 1919. In the latter position he worked unsuccessfully to bring about the unification of Austria and the Weimar Republic. His opposition to the SDAP joining coalition governments after it lost its leading position in Parliament in 1920 and his practice of advising the party to wait for the proper historical circumstances before taking action were criticized by some for facilitating Austria's move from democracy to fascism in the 1930s. When the SDAP was outlawed by Austrofascist Chancellor Kurt Schuschnigg in 1934, Bauer went into exile where he continued to work for Austrian socialism until his death.
The Ostmärkische Sturmscharen was a right-wing paramilitary group in Austria, founded on 7 December 1930. Recruited from the Katholische Jugend, later from journeymen and teacher organisations, it formed an opposition to both to the nationalist Heimwehr forces and the Social Democratic Republikanischer Schutzbund. The Christian Social politician Kurt Schuschnigg was its Reichsführer.
Adolf Schärf was an Austrian politician of the Socialist Party of Austria (SPÖ). He served as Vice-Chancellor from 1945 to 1957 and as President of Austria from 1957 until his death.
Wilhelm Miklas was an Austrian politician who served as President of Austria from 1928 until the Anschluss to Nazi Germany in 1938.
The Austrian Civil War, also known as the February Uprising, was a series of skirmishes between the right-wing government and socialist forces between 12 and 16 February 1934 in the First Austrian Republic. The clashes started in Linz and primarily took place in Vienna, Graz, Bruck an der Mur, Judenburg, Wiener Neustadt, and Steyr, as well as in other industrial cities of eastern and central Austria.
The First Austrian Republic, officially the Republic of Austria, was created after the signing of the Treaty of Saint-Germain-en-Laye on 10 September 1919—the settlement after the end of World War I which ended the Habsburg rump state of Republic of German-Austria—and ended with the establishment of the Austrofascist Federal State of Austria based upon a dictatorship of Engelbert Dollfuss and the Fatherland's Front in 1934. The Republic's constitution was enacted on 1 October 1920 and amended on 7 December 1929. The republican period was increasingly marked by violent strife between those with left-wing and right-wing views, leading to the July Revolt of 1927 and the Austrian Civil War of 1934.
Austria was part of Nazi Germany from 13 March 1938 until 27 April 1945, when Allied-controlled Austria declared independence from Nazi Germany.
The Fatherland Front was the right-wing conservative, nationalist and corporatist ruling political organisation of the Federal State of Austria. It claimed to be a nonpartisan movement, and aimed to unite all the people of Austria, overcoming political and social divisions. Established on 20 May 1933 by Christian Social Chancellor Engelbert Dollfuss as the only legally permitted party in the country, it was organised along the lines of Italian Fascism and was fully aligned with the Catholic Church and did not advocate any racial ideology, as later Italian Fascism did. It advocated Austrian nationalism and independence from Germany on the basis of protecting Austria's Catholic religious identity from what they considered a Protestant-dominated German state.
The Republikanischer Schutzbund was an Austrian paramilitary organization established in 1923 by the Social Democratic Workers' Party (SDAPÖ) to secure power in the face of rising political radicalization after World War I.
Emil Fey was an officer in the Austro-Hungarian Army, leader of the right-wing paramilitary Heimwehr forces and politician of the First Austrian Republic. He served as Vice-Chancellor of Austria from 1933 to 1934, leading the country into the period of Austrofascism under Chancellor Engelbert Dollfuß. Fey played a vital role in the violent suppression of the Republikanischer Schutzbund and the Social Democratic Workers' Party during the 1934 Austrian Civil War.
The Czechoslovak Social Democratic Workers Party in the Republic of Austria was a political party in Austria, working amongst the Czech minority. The party was founded on December 7, 1919, as the Vienna branch of the Czechoslovak Social Democratic Workers Party separated itself from the party centre in Prague. The party worked closely together with the Social Democratic Workers Party of Austria (SDAPÖ), and cooperated with the Austrian Social Democrats on all political issues. The party contested parliamentary elections on joint lists together with SDAPÖ.
The Social Democratic Party of the Free City of Danzig was a political party in the Free City of Danzig. After the creation of the Free City of Danzig in 1919, the Danzig branch of the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) separated itself from the party, and created the Social Democratic Party of the Free City of Danzig. The new party did however maintain close links with the SPD, and its political orientation was largely the same as that of the SPD.
Robert Danneberg was an Austrian politician, a member of the Social Democratic Workers Party of Austria (SDAPÖ) and a prominent Austro-Marxist theoretician. Danneberg was one of the architects of Red Vienna and he was killed in the Auschwitz concentration camp in 1942.
The Federal State of Austria was a continuation of the First Austrian Republic between 1934 and 1938 when it was a one-party state led by the conservative, nationalist and corporatist Fatherland Front. The Ständestaat concept, derived from the notion of Stände, was advocated by leading regime politicians such as Engelbert Dollfuss and Kurt Schuschnigg. The result was an authoritarian government based on a mix of Italian Fascist and conservative Catholic influences.
The Social Democratic Party of Austria is a social-democratic political party in Austria. Founded in 1889 as the Social Democratic Workers' Party of Austria and later known as the Socialist Party of Austria from 1945 until 1991, the party is the oldest extant political party in Austria. Along with the Austrian People's Party (ÖVP), it is one of the country's two traditional major parties. It is positioned on the centre-left on the political spectrum.
Franz Rauscher, born in Vienna, Austria, was an Austrian Social Democrat politician.
Since its foundation in 1889, the Social Democratic Party has often been one of the main political forces in Austria. At the start of the First World War it was the strongest party in parliament, and on the ending of that war in 1918 the party leader Karl Renner became chancellor of the First Republic. The party lost power in 1920, but retained a strong base of support in the capital Vienna. A period of rising political violence culminated in the banning of the Social Democratic Party under the Austrofascist dictatorship (1934–38).
The self-elimination of Parliament was a constitutional crisis in the First Austrian Republic caused by the resignation on March 4, 1933 of all three presidents of the National Council, the more powerful house of the Austrian Parliament. The law had no mechanism for the National Council to operate without a president, and Engelbert Dollfuss, the Chancellor, stated that Parliament had eliminated itself and that his government had the authority to rule by decree under emergency provisions dating from the First World War. This was a decisive step in the transition from a democratic republic to the fascist Federal State of Austria, as opposition attempts to reconstitute the National Council were unsuccessful.