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.
Julius Raab was a conservative Austrian politician, who served as Federal Chancellor of Austria from 1953 to 1961. Raab steered Allied-occupied Austria to independence, when he negotiated and signed the Austrian State Treaty in 1955. In internal politics Raab stood for a pragmatic "social partnership" and the "Grand coalition" of Austrian Conservatives and Social Democrats.
Kurt Alois Josef Johann von Schuschnigg was an Austrian Fatherland Front 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 accepted that Austria was a "German state" and that Austrians were Germans, he was strongly opposed to Adolf Hitler's goal to absorb Austria into the Third Reich and wished for it to remain independent.
The Heimwehr or Heimatschutz was a nationalist, initially paramilitary group that operated in the First Austrian Republic from 1920 to 1936. It was similar in methods, organization, and ideology to the Freikorps in Germany. The Heimwehr was opposed to parliamentary democracy, socialism and Marxism and fought in various skirmishes against left-wing and foreign groups during the 1920s and 1930s. Some of its regional groups also opposed Nazism while others favored it. In spite of its anti-democratic stance, the Heimwehr developed a political wing called the Heimatblock that was close to the conservative Christian Social Party and took part in both the cabinet of Chancellor Carl Vaugoin in 1930 and in Engelbert Dollfuss' right-wing government from 1932 to 1934. In 1936 the Heimwehr was absorbed into what was at the time the only legally permitted political party in Austria, the Fatherland Front, and then later into the Frontmiliz, an amalgamation of militia units that in 1937 became part of Austria's armed forces.
The Creditanstalt, full original name k. k. priv. Österreichische Credit-Anstalt für Handel und Gewerbe, was a major Austrian bank, founded in 1855 in Vienna.
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 Austria. 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.
Eduard Hedvicek was the secretary of Engelbert Dollfuß, the Austrian Chancellor before the Anschluss. On 25 July 1934 he unsuccessfully tried to prevent Dollfuß's assassination by Otto Planetta. He testified at the trial of the murderers as a "Crown" (prosecution) witness and was awarded the Gold Medal of Merit Signum Laudis by the Austrian government for his heroic efforts. He was imprisoned by the Nazis after Germany annexed Austria. His imprisonment was a matter of personal revenge for Ernst Kaltenbrunner, the SS-Obergruppenführer and Chef der Reichssicherheitshauptamtes of the Nazi government and a famous Austrian Nazi, who himself was involved in Dollfuß's assassination and was for this and other crimes hanged after the war.
Rudolf Ramek was an Austrian Christian Social politician, who served as Chancellor of Austria from 1924 to 1926.
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.
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.
Otto Planetta was an Austrian National Socialist who assassinated the Chancellor of Austria, Engelbert Dollfuß, in 1934.
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 July Putsch was a failed coup attempt against the Austrofascist regime by Austrian Nazis from 25 to 30 July 1934.
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.
Prince Ernst Rüdiger Camillo von Starhemberg, often known simply as Prince Starhemberg, was an Austrian nationalist and politician who helped introduce austrofascism and install a clerical fascist dictatorship in Austria in the interwar period. A fierce opponent of Anschluss, he fled Austria when the Nazis invaded the country and briefly served with the Free French and British forces in World War II.
Sepp Straffner was an Austrian federal railway official and politician in the Greater German People's Party. He was a pupil at Hallstatt near Salzkammergut, then a student in the Forestry Service at Goisern. He attended high school in Linz. Between 1899 and 1907 he was an official with the Tyrol and Salzburg service of the State Railways at Innsbruck. He went on to study law at the universities of Vienna and Innsbruck.
The thousand-mark ban was an economic sanction imposed on Austria by the German Reich government on May 29, 1933, which came into effect on July 1, 1933. Henceforth, German citizens had to pay a fee of 1,000 ℛℳ to the German Reich before any travel to or through Austria, except for local border traffic. The payment of the fee was noted in the passport and was therefore easy to check. Likewise, because of the widespread visa requirement in Europe upon re-entry, a clandestine entry into Austria via detours can be recognized immediately.
