Parliament building in Vienna, photograph, around 1898

The Austrian parliament (‘Reichsrat’) had not been convened since March 1914. At the outbreak of the war its splendid home on the Ring was demonstratively transformed into a military hospital.

The Austro-Hungarian Compromise in 1867 transformed the Habsburg Monarchy into an alliance of two sovereign states. Austria-Hungary was a dual system in which each half of the empire had its own constitution, government and parliament. The citizens on each half were also treated as foreigners in the other half.