A strong monarch and autocratic tendencies

The December Constitution of 1867 finally turned the Habsburg Monarchy into a constitutional monarchy, which restricted the absolute power of the monarch. The Austrian parliament or Reichsrat was built on shaky foundations, however, because it was merely entrusted with ‘participation in the legislative and administrative right of the monarch,’ as it was formulated revealingly in the book Österreichische Bürgerkunde published in 1911. In the Habsburg Monarchy the constitution was approved by the Emperor, who passed on some of his power to parliament through it. The extent of parliament’s rights was precisely described in the constitution – everything else was in the absolute power of the Emperor. Franz Joseph also reserved the right of repeal, since the constitution stemmed from his imperial authority and not from the sovereignty of the people.

This was the big difference to a parliamentary monarchy as was traditional in Great Britain, for example. The parliament there represented the sovereignty of the people, which granted the monarch precisely defined and generally symbolic rights as head of state.

The powerlessness of the Austrian parliament, which hamstrung itself through the all-pervasive nationality conflicts, became increasingly evident. The lack of respect for parliamentarianism, due not least to the appalling political culture that prevailed in the Reichstag, is clearly hinted at in an utterance by Foreign Minister Count Ottokar Czernin, who described the parliamentarians quite simply as ‘wasteful baggage’.

To a certain extent, this reflected the basic attitude of the old elites, who sought a return to the monarchic autocracy of neo-absolutism as an antidote to the complicate realities in the era of popular political parties. Extreme conservatives were not averse to the idea of a coup d’état that would invalidate the constitution. They saw the introduction of a monarchic dictatorship as a solution to the political stalemate.

One figurehead in this regard was Minister-President Count Karl Stürgkh, head of the Cisleithanian government from November 1911. His suspension of the Reichsrat in March 1914 was an expression of his conviction that the future of the monarchy could be safeguarded only by a strong imperial regime.

Stürgkh’s assassination on 21 October 1916 by Friedrich Adler, secretary of the Social Democratic party and editor-in-chief of the Socialist magazine Der Kampf, was intended as a signal of opposition to the surreptitious introduction of absolutism.

With the suspension of parliamentarianism and censorship of the media, Adler, son of the Social Democratic party head Viktor Adler, no longer considered that he had any legal possibility of expressing his protest. His trial turned into a political showcase. Adler’s passionate plea was a reckoning with his own party, which he accused of lack of principle, but also a wake-up call for the forces of democracy in Austria, which had become reconciled to the weak parliamentary culture in the country.

Translation: Nick Somers