Engelbert Dollfuss was an Austrian politician who served as Chancellor and Dictator 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. 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 the rule of Austrofascism 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.
The president of Austria is the head of state of the Republic of Austria.
Arthur Seyss-Inquart was an Austrian Nazi politician who served as Chancellor of Austria in 1938 for two days before the Anschluss. His positions in Nazi Germany included deputy governor to Hans Frank in the General Government of Occupied Poland, and Reichskommissar for the German-occupied Netherlands. In the latter role, he shared responsibility for the deportation of Dutch Jews and the shooting of hostages.
Kurt Alois Josef Johann von Schuschnigg was an Austrian politician who was the Chancellor of the Federal State of Austria from the 1934 assassination of his predecessor Engelbert Dollfuss until the 1938 Anschluss with Nazi Germany. Although Schuschnigg considered Austria a "German state" and Austrians to be Germans, he was strongly opposed to Adolf Hitler's goal to absorb Austria into the Third Reich and wished for it to remain independent.
Wilhelm Miklas was an Austrian politician who served as President of Austria from 1928 until the Anschluss to Nazi Germany in 1938.
Guido Schmidt was an Austrian diplomat and politician, who served as Foreign Minister from 1936 to 1938.
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.
The Government of Austria is the executive cabinet of the Republic of Austria. It consists of the chancellor, who is the head of government, the vice chancellor and the ministers.
Austria was part of Nazi Germany from 13 March 1938 until 27 April 1945, when Allied-occupied Austria declared independence from Nazi Germany.
The Fatherland Front was the right-wing conservative, authoritarian, 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, was fully aligned with the Catholic Church, and did not advocate any racial ideology, as Italian Fascism later 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.
Oswald Menghin was an Austrian Prehistorian and University professor. He established an international reputation before the War, while he was professor at the University of Vienna. His work on race and culture was serviceable to the German nationalist movement of the 1930s. At the time of the Anschluss he served as Minister of Education in the cabinet formed by Arthur Seyß-Inquart. He avoided indictment as a war criminal and resumed his career in Argentina after the war.
The Anschluss, also known as the Anschluß Österreichs, was the annexation of the Federal State of Austria into the German Reich on 13 March 1938.
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, corporatist and clerical fascist 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 Federal Chancellery of Austria is the ministry led by the chancellor of Austria. Since the establishment of the First Austrian Republic in 1918, the Chancellery building has served as the venue for the sessions of the Austrian cabinet. It is located on the Ballhausplatz in the centre of Vienna, vis-à-vis the Hofburg Imperial Palace. Like Downing Street, Quai d'Orsay or – formerly – Wilhelmstrasse, the address has become a synecdoche for governmental power.
Sebastian Kurz is an Austrian former politician who served twice as the 26th chancellor of Austria, initially from December 2017 to May 2019 and then a second time from January 2020 to October 2021. On 23 February 2024, Kurz received an eight-month suspended sentence after being convicted of perjury by a court in Vienna over his involvement in a parliamentary inquiry.
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 National Council was left without a presiding officer, when all three chairmen resigned to try to tip the balance in a knife-edge vote. 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 authoritarian and quasi-fascist Federal State of Austria, as opposition attempts to reconstitute the National Council were unsuccessful.
Susanne Raab is an Austrian politician of the Austrian People's Party (ÖVP) who serves at the cabinet level. She has been instrumental for integration of the country's immigrant population, which is ruled by the "Amended Ministerial Law 1986".
Markus Gstöttner is an Austrian politician of the Austrian People's Party (ÖVP). He is local councillor, member of the Vienna State Parliament and former head of cabinet of Federal Chancellor Karl Nehammer. Previously, he was deputy head of cabinet of Chancellor Sebastian Kurz in the federal government Kurz I, in the federal government Kurz II and under Chancellor Alexander Schallenberg.
