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The beginnings of the Christian Social Party are to be found firstly in the Catholic Social Reform movement of a certain Freiherr Karl von Vogelsang, and secondly, in the Vienna small trades movement, whose aim was to maintain the competitiveness of small businesses against large-scale industry.

Bertha von Suttner was born Countess Kinsky von Wchinic und Tettau in Prague on 9 June 1843. Her father, Count Franz Michael Kinsky, field marshal in the Austro-Hungarian army, died at the age of 75 before she was born. As a result, Bertha von Kinsky was brought up by her mother (née Körner). The Kinsky family was one of the most prominent Bohemian aristocratic dynasties, and Bertha von Kinsky thus received the education of a young lady in aristocratic circles. Apart from German, she learnt French, English and Italian. She also received piano lessons and read classical literature.

In the elections to the Imperial Diet of 1891, the Christian Socials emerged ahead of conservative-clerical groupings, making its first appearance as an autonomous political movement.

The article by Bertha von Suttner appearing in early September 1891 in the Neue Freie Presse entitled “The next peace conference in Rome” marked "the birth of the Austrian Peace Movement".
 

When the First World War broke out in July 1914, Alfred H. Fried wrote the following lines in the August/September 1914 issue of his pacifist magazine Friedens-Warte: “In the spirit of Clausewitz, we can say that war is the continuation of peace work, but with other means. […]. For decades we have been carrying out dedicated work to achieve this goal, gladly devoting our energies to it. We can say with a clear conscience that we have done our duty. We have not suffered a defeat, as our opponents triumphantly claim.”
 

Following the first general, equal, direct and secret Imperial Diet elections held in 1907, the Christian Socials entered the House of Deputies as the strongest party.

Before the First World War, Bertha von Suttner was in frequent contact with the Erste Österreichische Bürgerliche Frauenbewegung [First Austrian Bourgeois Women’s Movement].

After the outbreak of the First World War, which the Christian Socials regarded as an unavoidable "war of atonement", there were high hopes of a rapid victory of the Central Powers and the preservation of the status quo.

The very much smaller Allgemeiner Österreichischer Frauenverein [General Austrian Women’s Association], described by Gisela Urban in 1930 as “radical”, was opposed to the First World War from the outset. Unlike the BÖFV, its members continued their pre-1914 commitment to pacifism.

After the outbreak of war most Social Democrats – at least in the first two years of the war – pursued a “truce policy”. Very little was left of their pre-war pacifist commitment; they now supported the war.

The German National camp was made up of different competing groups and parties that referred to themselves, depending on ideological position, as "Greater German", "Pan-German", "Smaller German", "Nationalist", "German Nationalist", "German-Austrian" etc.

The increasing militarisation in Austria-Hungary in the nineteenth century was based on a polar and dichotomous gender structure. As the historian Daniela Lackner points out, “men were systematically stylised as symbols of militarism, violence and war, while women through a differentiation mechanism were clearly on the side of civilian life, peace and peaceability.”
 

Pacifists whose opposition to militarism and war was motivated by religion appeared for the first time in the Habsburg Monarchy during and after the First World War.

In the decades before the outbreak of the First World War there were close contacts between the Esperanto and peace movements. The overlaps in terms of personalities and content led the historian Bernhard Tuider to speak of “parallel movements”.

Shortly before the outbreak of the First World War, Adolf Müller, former member of the Austrian Peace Society, founded his own association, the Österreichischer Verband für allgemeine Völkerverständigung “Para Pacem”. It evolved after the war into the Österreichische Völkerbundliga [Austrian League of Nations], which in 1945 became the Österreichische Liga für die Vereinten Nationen [Austrian United Nations Association].

Julius Meinl, chairman of the food concern of the same name, was one of the few people to realistically anticipate the disastrous food and supply situation in the Austrian half of the Monarchy and to deduce from this that Austria-Hungary needed to embark as soon as possible on peace negotiations.

The defeat of Austria by the Prussians at the Battle of Königgrätz in 1866 and the subsequent withdrawal of the Habsburg Monarchy from the German Federation led to a major regrouping within the German National camp.

Although the German National movement made only very slow progress in the 1870s, its significance increased in the following years, driven by the Alliance (Dual Alliance) concluded between the Habsburg Monarchy and the German Reich in 1879 and the pro-Slav policies of the Minister President Graf Eduard Taaffe.

The 1890s saw an increasing surge of the nationalities struggle and hence also of German nationalism. The national camp was boosted by the school dispute in Celje in 1895 and the language regulation for Bohemia and Moravia issued by Minister Presisdent Badeni in 1897.

In view of the authoritarian measures that destroyed the political life and tender roots of democratisation during the First World War in Austria-Hungary, the political representatives of the Czech people remaining in the country had little scope for action. Politicians in exile took over the initiative and worked actively for the creation of an independent Czech state.

The loss of authority in the organs of government happened at breakneck speed (particularly in the sight of the failure to provide for people’s everyday needs) and created a vacuum into which the advocates of Czech state independence could penetrate. This originally avant-gardist idea became a feasible option for more and more people as the year 1918 wore on.

When concrete steps for a coup d’état were being taken in Prague in autumn 1918, the protagonists were surprised at the passivity shown by the organs of government, exposing the inner exhaustion of the old system and the lack of orientation in the Viennese central government. The sole objective seemed to be the avoidance of a violent escalation.

After consensus had been achieved in Czech national society on overcoming the heteronomy, the task now was to take concrete steps for change. But the plans of the political leaders were thwarted by the dizzying momentum of events.

In October 1914, just a few months after the war began, shortages and scarcities could be felt everywhere. The authorities thus took the first measures in terms of rationing and intervention.