9. 1919

THE WAR HAD SEEMED like it would never end. Then suddenly, it was over. The Balkan front crumbled in the wake of the armistice in Bulgaria at the end of September 1918. This time it was clear that it would not be possible to liberate enough additional forces from elsewhere to stem the tides in the South East. The Central Powers had lost.

Faced with defeat, the prewar nationalistic tensions within the empire began to reappear even more forcefully. Now Czechs, Croats, Slovenians, Hungarians, and Serbs all sought political independence.¹ The young emperor attempted to save what he could of the centuries-old order by making a peace offer to President Wilson on October 4. Twelve days later, in a last desperate effort to reconcile his recalcitrant nations, Karl abandoned the traditional policy of his family and now tried to spearhead the opposition. He issued a manifesto announcing the reconstruction of Austria-Hungary as a federal state with autonomy for the lands of Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia.² The attempt failed miserably. In fact his manifesto only compounded the crisis—it had been widely interpreted as proclaiming the dissolution of the empire and legalizing the secession of its nations. Rudolf Sieghart later stated: “World history knows no similar case in which the dissolution of an empire has been organized in all forms from above.” And in his last speech to the upper chamber of the Austrian parliament, the same writer summed up the ironic essence of the manifesto: “Even before the Austrian nations give up their state, the state gives them up.”³

Two days after Karl's proclamation, the Entente replied that mere autonomy for Habsburg lands was not enough. The emperor had to give carte blanche to the secessionists and to the enemies of the monarchy. On October 21, the Revolution broke out in the streets of Vienna and in the following weeks spread to Hungary, Bavaria, and Berlin. The South front collapsed when the Hungarian leader Michael Karolyi called back the Hungarian troops, thus preparing a last-minute Italian victory on the battlefield.⁴ When Ludendorff's army surrendered on November 11, 1918, Germany was no longer a monarchy and in a process of rapid political dissolution. Even worse was the fate of its southern ally: Austria-Hungary had been entirely wiped off the political map.

The former Habsburg dominions, so rich in territories, individuals, and nations, had shrunk back to—well, to what? It was even difficult to pick a name for the territory that remained after national secessions had amputated most of the old empire. The leftover land hosted a population of 6.3 million, of predominantly German ethnicity. Obviously it could no longer be called Austria-Hungary: Hungary was gone. Neither did it make sense to call it only Austria because historically this name did not refer to national borders, but circumscribed the limits of the Habsburg possessions: Österreich—the Eastern Empire. The remaining citizens spontaneously baptized their land Deutschösterreich or “German-Austria.” The name speaks to their uneasiness and lack of identity.

The emperor's manifesto had proposed that all nations of the empire establish “national councils.” The German members of the Reichsrat had immediately accepted the idea and formally met on October 21 in Vienna, calling their gathering “provisional national convention of German-Austria.” In their second meeting on October 30, then, the provisional parliamentarians had claimed for themselves the supreme control of the German-Austrian state. Even though they did not try to determine the form of the new state (Emperor Karl had not yet formally abdicated), they appointed a government composed of Social Democrats, Christian Socialists, and German Nationalists. Leadership fell to the socialist Karl Renner, who became state chancellor in Austria's darkest hour.

Twelve days after the appointment of the provisional government, the emperor abdicated and left the country. The socialist parliamentarians pushed for both the immediate proclamation of a new republic and its unification with the German Reich, where the socialists were the leading political power. The leaders of the new state had no more urgent business than to dissolve that state. One day after the German armistice, the new German-Austrian republic, in the very act of her brith, declared an Anschluss (“annexation”) joining the new German Republic. It was November 12, 1918.