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Republic of German-Austria

The Republic of German-Austria (German: Republik Deutschösterreich, alternatively spelt Republik Deutsch-Österreich) was an unrecognised state that was created following World War I as an initial rump state for areas with a predominantly German-speaking and ethnic German population within what had been the Austro-Hungarian Empire, with plans for eventual unification with Germany. The territories covered an area of 118,311 km2 (45,680 sq mi), with 10.4 million inhabitants.

"German Austria" redirects here. For Austria within Germany from 1939 to 1945, see Austria within Nazi Germany.

Republic of German-Austria
Republik Deutschösterreich (German)

Unrecognized rump state

Vienna

German

German-Austrian

Unitary directorial republic (1918–1919)
Unitary parliamentary republic (1919)

 

State Council

Karl Seitz

 

Karl Renner

 

12 November 1918

10 September 1919

Krone

Austria, Czech Republic, Italy, and Slovenia

In practice, however, its authority was limited to the Danubian and Alpine provinces which had been the core of Cisleithania. Much of its claimed territory was de facto administered by the newly formed Czechoslovakia, and internationally recognized as such.


Attempts to create German-Austria under these auspices were ultimately unsuccessful, especially since union with Germany was forbidden in the Treaty of Versailles, and the new state of the First Austrian Republic was created in 1920.

Background[edit]

The Austrian Empire of the Habsburgs had been reconstituted as a dual monarchy by the Compromise of 1867. It comprised the Magyar-dominated "lands of the Crown of Saint Stephen", the core of which was the Kingdom of Hungary and was sometimes referred to as Transleithania,[note 1] and the German-dominated remainder of the empire, informally called "Austria" but semi-officially given the name Cisleithania.[1][2] Cisleithania included the core "Austrian" provinces,[note 2] together with Carniola, Dalmatia, the Austrian Littoral (Gorizia and Gradisca, Trieste and Istria) to the south, and Bohemia, Moravia, Silesia, Galicia and Bukovina to the north and east.[4][5] The dual monarchy, or Austria-Hungary as it came to be known, was effectively two states with the Habsburg monarch as Emperor of Austria in Cisleithania and King of Hungary in Transleithania. For the most part, each had their own institutions. There were separate parliaments and separate governments and ministries for "imperial Austria" and "royal Hungary".[6]


Austria-Hungary was a multinational entity comprising Germans and Hungarians, as well as nine other major nationalities, who increasingly demanded the right to self-determination. Historically, the Germans had been dominant in the Habsburg monarchy, and their power and influence greatly outweighed their numbers.[7] Even within Cisleithania the Germans represented only 37% of the population.[8] However, Upper and Lower Austria, Salzburg, Carinthia, Vorarlberg and most of Styria and Tyrol had a predominantly German population.[9] These territories were the core "Austrian" provinces and had a population of 6.5 million.[10] While Bohemia and Moravia were predominantly Czech, Germans constituted a majority in a strip of territories that edged their borders, recently self-proclaimed as provinces of the Sudetenland and German Bohemia.[9] The German population of Bohemia and Moravia was 3 million.[10]


From 1914 to 1918, Austria-Hungary fought in the First World War as one of the Central Powers and an ally of Germany. By May 1918, the empire was facing increasing military failure and defeat, as well as domestic unrest caused by food and fuel shortages. Additionally, the demands of the empire's nationalities were becoming increasingly radicalised, encouraged by the American president Woodrow Wilson's commitment to self-determination in his Fourteen Points published in January 1918. In October, the independence of Czechoslovakia and the State of Slovenes, Croats and Serbs (the latter unified with Serbia that December to form the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes, later called Yugoslavia), Hungary withdrew from the dual monarchy and the Austro-Hungarian army surrendered to Italy at Vittorio Veneto. With the empire collapsing, the Habsburg administration signed an armistice on 3 November and the last Habsburg emperor, Karl I, relinquished his powers on 11 November.[note 3][13][11]

History[edit]

Declaration of the Republic[edit]

On 21 October 1918, the deputies representing German-speaking areas in the Abgeordnetenhaus, the lower chamber of the Reichsrat, the imperial Parliament of Cisleithania, declared that they were the new Provisional National Assembly for German-Austria.[14] With the impending collapse of the empire becoming apparent earlier in the month, the three main political groupings representing German-speakers in the lower chamber began negotiations on the way forward. The largest group was the German nationalists, a collection of smaller parties, with a total of 109 deputies elected in the last imperial elections, in 1911. Their primary objective was Anschluss or union with Germany. The conservative monarchist Christian Social Party was the next largest with 65 deputies and the Social Democrats, who favoured a democratic republic, had a representation of 37 deputies.[15]


In early October 1918, the Social Democrats were the first to call for all "German-Austrians" to be united in a German-Austrian state. They had recognised the right of all nationalities of the empire to self-determination and they said this should equally apply to German-Austrians. The German nationalists were willing to accept the Social Democrat position to allow further negotiation to take place. The Christian Social Party accepted it as well, but said they had reservations because of their "religious and dynastic convictions".[16] Calling themselves "the Germans of the Alps and Sudetens",[9] all 208 deputies met on 21 October, and unanimously voted that they now constituted the "Provisional National Assembly" for German-Austria.[17] They declared that:

National anthem[edit]

Despite the prohibition of the use of the term "German-Austria", the republic's unofficial national anthem between 1920 and 1929 was "German Austria, you wonderful country" (Deutschösterreich, du herrliches Land). Its words were penned by then-Chancellor Karl Renner, a signatory of the Treaty of Saint Germain.

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