Specials DIVERSITY EMPLOYERS MAGAZINE Spring 2011 - Anniversary Commemorative Issue

Austria

The political entity called Austria emerged around 955 when German king Otto I secured the territory by defeating the advance of the Magyers and installing a Margrave, an administrator, over the Eastern March.

Austria came under the rule of the House of Habsburg in 1278 when Rudolf I of Habsburg defeated and killed King Ottokar II of Bohemia. Austria would remain part of the Habsburg-ruled Austrio-Hungarian empire until the end of the First World War in 1918 when both Austria and Hungary became separate independent republics.

The first Austrian republic was not a peaceful one. A new (1920) constitution created a federal state, with a bicameral legislature and a democratic suffrage, but it was overtaken by events. The country was suffering the effects of the Great Depression. Economic help provided by the League of Nation, to avert economic collapse after World War I, was given on condition that Austria remain independent for the next 20 years. Though the peace treaties of Versailles and Saint-Germain forbade unification with Germany, most German Austrians desired the union. In 1933 Chancellor Engelbert Dollfuss dissolved parliament and ruled by decree. In April he introduced a new constitution that vested control on the executive. Dollfuss was killed in July in an attempted Nazi coup. In 1936 Adolf Hitler persuaded the new chancellor, Kurt von Schuschnigg, to acknowledged Austria as a German state.

In an attempt to assert Austrian autonomy Schuschnigg called a national referendum on independence in 1938. Hitler forced him to resign and, on March 12, the German chancellor sent troops to annex Austria and set up a Nazi government. Austria was now a province of the German Third Reich going into World War II.

On April 27, 1945, just as the Allies were entering the country, Austrian elder statesman, Karl Renner, quickly repudiated the Nazi regime and set up an Austrian government made up of socialists, conservatives and communists. On May 9, 1945, Austrian occupation was divided into four zones controlled, respectively, by the United States, France, Britain, and the USSR. On May 15, 1955 the State Treaty re-establishing the Austrian republic was signed between Austria and the four Allies. Austrians see the 27th April 1945 as the date of the restoration of the Second Republic.