Introduction
On 16 July 2011, the funeral procession for Otto Habsburg marched through the first district of Vienna to the Habsburg dynasty's traditional vault, the Kapuzinergruft. It was the entombment of a remnant of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Yet, the procession also carried an important chapter of the First Republic of Austria to the vault. After the death of his father and former Emperor Charles in exile in April 1922, Otto became the figurehead of a political current of interwar Austria: the Legitimist movement. Its aim was to restore the Habsburg monarchy that had been dissolved at the end of World War I.
Historiography usually treats Legitimism as a peripheral aspect of interwar Austria. There are no monographs and few articles dealing solely with this issue. Historians who touch upon the issue usually attribute little importance to it. The few works that focus on the topic are unpublished academic works.Footnote 2 This article argues that contrary to the rare treatment of Legitimism in scholarly historical literature, it should be considered an important element of the traditionalist Austrian dictatorship known as Austro-Fascism.
The main part of the present argument is based on documents from the archives of the General Secretariat of the authoritarian regime's unity party, or “Fatherland Front” (Vaterländische Front—VF). This archive was considered to have been lost during World War II until it was discovered in Moscow in the 1990s. The largest part of it was finally transferred to the Vienna State Archive in 2009. Political reports, police reports, ideological, programmatic, and bureaucratic writings and correspondence provide interesting insights into the Legitimist movement and its relationship to the regime. The files used here document aggressive verbal attacks against the government on the part of Legitimists, something that might not be expected in a dictatorial system where officially no opposition was tolerated. Using these I will sketch the highly ambiguous role of the Legitimist movement for the authoritarian regime.
“Legitimism” by definition only accepts the legitimacy of the traditional monarch and his or her heirs as heads of state. “Monarchism,” on the contrary, may strive to bring to power a monarch other than the traditional one and may accept the legitimacy of other forms of state than the one it seeks. For Legitimists, the particular dynasty's right to the throne is considered God-given and indissoluble. Abdication of the “legitimate” head of state is seen as impossible. In the Austrian case, in November 1918 Emperor Charles in fact never abdicated, but merely renounced his participation in state affairs, a fact that Legitimists could use as a supportive argument for their cause.Footnote 3
Evolution of Legitimist Organizations in AustriaFootnote 4
In the first years after the fall of the Habsburg monarchy, Legitimist ideas were cultivated in numerous private family circles. Especially among former aristocrats, imperial army officers, and civil servants, as well as conservative parts of the middle classes, these ideas remained popular. Several Legitimist organizations eventually emerged that engaged in political activity. The Kaisertreue Volkspartei (Emperor-loyal People's Party) was headed by the former Colonel Gustav Wolff and came to be known as the Wolff-Verband. In Graz, former cavalry Captain Fritz (von) Riedl founded the Bund der Österreicher (League of Austrians), the primary objective of which was to combat pan-German ideas in Styria. Several Viennese private groups united to form the Wiener Casino around people like former Captain Johannes (Prinz von) Liechtenstein, former Envoy Friedrich (Ritter von) Wiesner, Hans Carl (Freiherr von) Zessner-Spitzenberg, and former General Colonel Alois (Fürst) Schönburg-Hartenstein, who later entered the Dollfuß government as state secretary and minister of defense. With the permission of the former Emperor Charles, the latter two groups united to form the Reichsbund der Österreicher (Imperial League of Austrians) in 1921. The Wolff-Verband and the Reichsbund der Österreicher became the most important political representatives of Legitimist ideas in Austria until 1933. In 1932 the Eiserner Ring (Iron Ring) was created as an umbrella organization for all Legitimist associations. Toward the end of the First Republic, the Eiserner Ring consisted of more than fifty different organizations. The Legitimist movement reached the height of its political influence in the later years of the authoritarian Schuschnigg government from 1936 onward. Numerically the Legitimist movement was small in size but all the more politically influential, owing to its ideological affinity with the authoritarian government.
It has been argued that Legitimism lacked leadership and financial means because the Austrian aristocracy had largely withdrawn from politics in a long-term process that started in the late eighteenth century under Emperor Joseph II.Footnote 5 Yet, even if large parts of the old aristocracy had withdrawn from public life by the interwar period, a certain number of former aristocrats did engage in political activity.Footnote 6 No doubt aristocrats remained an important element and driving force of interwar Austrian Legitimism.
The Reichsgedanke
Legitimists differed in opinion over the geographical extent of the monarchy to be restored. Although some claimed all former Habsburg territory, including the independent successor states, others took a more realistic and diplomatic stance and limited their ambitions—at least rhetorically—to post-World War I Austria. The latter group took into consideration the strong opposition against a restoration of the Habsburgs on the part of the Little Entente countries and of France. However, the old Austrian Reichsgedanke (imperial idea) was generally understood as a metaphysical concept not limited to the narrow boundaries of interwar Austria. Conservative political and intellectual circles in Austria, as well as in Germany, cultivated various versions of this idea.Footnote 7 It was the idea of a supposedly peaceful unification and cohabitation of the peoples of the Danube basin or even of all Central Europe under one imperial authority of Catholic faith. This Austrian “mission” was traced back to the origins of Austria in early medieval times under the Counts of Babenberg. It was further supposed to have been cultivated under the Habsburgs and the Holy Roman Empire whose imperial rank they transferred to the Austrian lands in 1804. It was the idea of a large mission not limited to actual political boundaries and realities.Footnote 8
We can observe a certain ideological integration of these ideas into the Austro-Fascist state's official ideology. The Dollfuß-Schuschnigg regime interpreted the Reichsgedanke in its own way. The authoritarian government used it as an ideological counterpart to Hitler's Reich, which was seen as pagan and Prussian in spirit as opposed to the Catholic Austrian ideal. In order to reconcile the idea of a Habsburg restoration with opposing political realities, a theoretical division was made between Staatsform and Staatsinhalt (“form” versus “content” of the state).Footnote 9 The “content” was supposed to remain the one pursued by the Austro-Fascist leadership: a Ständestaat (corporatist state), whereas the form of government might become a monarchy under the leadership of the Habsburgs. Occasionally, Italy served as an example of preserving a monarchy despite a political revolution.Footnote 10
The Reichsgedanke was repeatedly brought up in ideological writings and pamphlets of the regime. It was separated from the requirement for an immediate Habsburg restoration that was understood as a goal to be realized only in the far future. This discrepancy between petty state Austrian reality, on the one hand, and the intellectual assumption of an Austrian imperial idea, on the other hand, was one reason for the failure of the authoritarian government's ideology to gain support of the masses. In a similar way, the regime's nationalist pretension to create the “real” and “better” German state independent from Germany remained a theoretical concept that did not develop a popular basis.
The International Factor
All domestic Austrian political decisions concerning the Habsburgs and their restoration to power must be considered in the context of the hostile international situation surrounding the issue. The European interwar order of Versailles bestowed two major taboos upon Austrian politics: the restoration of the monarchy and unification with Germany. According to the peace treaty of Saint Germain, Austria was not bound to a specific form of government. However, after Charles's attempts to return to power in Hungary in 1921, the ambassadors of the Entente unilaterally signed an agreement not to tolerate a Habsburg restoration.Footnote 11
Whereas England took a rather moderate stance,Footnote 12 France and the Little Entente of Yugoslavia, Romania, and Czechoslovakia wished to prevent any form of restoration.Footnote 13 The alliance of the Little Entente was formed in the aftermath of World War I to counter especially Hungarian revisionist tendencies. It unconditionally rejected the idea of monarchy in both Hungary and Austria. Yugoslavia and Romania especially observed this task in a very scrupulous manner. In order to avoid diplomatic frictions with the Little Entente and France, Legitimists limited their restoration ambitions to Austria's post-World War I boundaries. In this sense also the official Referat für Traditionspflege (Section for the Cultivation of Tradition) within the Fatherland Front was careful in its correspondence with countries like Czechoslovakia.Footnote 14 This self-restriction fulfilled the minimum requirement of diplomacy, considering the state of international politics. Nevertheless, the Little Entente countries and France continued to view Austrian Legitimists with the greatest suspicion. As Gerald Stourzh points out, this situation produced a dilemma: an element that could be used for domestic political stabilization—a Habsburg restoration—would lead simultaneously to international isolation.Footnote 15
Mussolini held a certain sympathy for a Habsburg restoration. However, with the emergence of the Rome-Berlin axis, the Nazis, who at all costs wished to prevent a return of the Habsburgs, exerted pressure on Italy not to tolerate Legitimist tendencies in Austrian politics.Footnote 16 Hitler feared that a renewed Austrian monarchy would pose an obstacle to his expansionist ambitions. In this sense, Legitimists repeatedly argued that a restoration was the only means of saving Austria from a Nazi occupation. However, Nazi Germany was determined to react with military force in case of a return of the Habsburgs to power.Footnote 17 In a way the Nazis overestimated Legitimist influence. Yet, after the Anschluss, it was Legitimist groups that were among the first to go into underground resistance against the Nazi regime, whereas other political groups on both the Left and the Right remained paralyzed or hesitant to engage in illegal activity in 1938. Legitimist resistance was comparatively large, even if often unprofessional because of its lack of experience in illegal activity.Footnote 18
Legitimism and the New Regime
Legitimists welcomed the new authoritarian constitution of May 1934 that contained a number of points they had demanded: abolition of parliament and introduction of an authoritarian and corporatist state order, substitution of the name Republik Österreich with Bundesstaat Österreich (Federal State of Austria), reintroduction of the two-headed eagle into the national emblem, and exclusion of the so-called Habsburgergesetze (Habsburg laws) of 1919 from the constitution. Through these laws the Habsburgs had been deprived of their political rights, expelled from Austria (if they did not officially renounce any claim to power), and their property had been confiscated.
After the murder of Dollfuß in the course of the failed Nazi coup of 14 July 1934, Kurt Schuschnigg became chancellor. Schuschnigg was a member of the Legitimist Reichsbund der Österreicher and was known for his loyalty to the Habsburgs. Even though this conflicted with his conviction that he, like all Austrians, belonged to the German people, nonetheless he honored the ideal of the Habsburg monarchy and wished to prevent its being drawn into the hazards of petty day-to-day politics by putting it into reality prematurely. The regime rejected so-called “banal restoration-politics,”Footnote 19 which would draw “the great Habsburg idea” into any narrow-minded politics or club-activities.Footnote 20 According to Otto Habsburg's private documentation and Schuschnigg's remarks in later years, in the middle of 1935 the chancellor was optimistic about the possibility of a restoration and accordingly elaborated diplomatic strategies together with Otto. This changed later on, when the international situation did not permit any form of Legitimist action on the part of the regime.Footnote 21 Shortly before the Anschluss, Schuschnigg declined Otto's offer to try to save Austria from the Nazis by taking over the chancellorship.
The Schuschnigg government took several measures that pursued Legitimist ideals. It abolished the restrictions formulated in the Habsburg laws of 1919 and restored large parts of the Habsburg's family possessions. Furthermore, the government decided to reintroduce former imperial uniforms into the Austrian army.Footnote 22 As a follow-up to this traditionalization of military uniforms, voices were raised to do the same with the uniforms of the Federal Railways and of the police, the new Republican flat hats being considered traditionswidrig (countertraditional).Footnote 23
On the whole, the regime sought out Legitimists and Habsburgs as its allies. Within the Front, for example, a decree forbade any verbal offence against the Habsburg dynasty.Footnote 24 A circular of the Fatherland Front of July 1935 signed by General Secretary Generaloberst Adam and by Ernst Rüdiger Starhemberg as its Bundesführer (Federal leader) sums up the official position of the Front in the following way:
The Fatherland Front demands respect toward the Austrian tradition, which also means respect toward the Habsburg dynasty and understanding for the achievements of the monarchy of the house of Habsburg whose significance must also be judged from a pan-German and European point of view. The Fatherland Front welcomes any form of promotional activity adequate to deepen this understanding and prohibits from its ranks all utterances which aim to belittle or revile the dynasty.Footnote 25
At times the Referat für Traditionspflege within the Fatherland Front drew a parallel between the last Habsburg Emperor Charles who died in exile in 1922 and Dollfuß who was murdered by the Nazis in 1934: two martyrs to the Austrian idea.Footnote 26
The Referat für Traditionspflege Footnote 27
The establishment of a Referat für Traditionspflege (Section for the Cultivation of Tradition, in short Traditionsreferat) under (Baron) Zessner-Spitzenberg early in 1937 within the Fatherland Front was a late attempt of the regime to gather Legitimist sympathizers under the government flag. Yet, by the time the Traditionsreferat took up its work, it was already outdated. During his visit to Vienna in February 1937, German Foreign Minister Konstantin von Neurath had made clear to Schuschnigg that Germany would not tolerate a return of the Habsburgs in any form. Italy, originally not opposed to a restoration in Austria, followed suit.
Guido Zernatto, General Secretary of the Front, was skeptical from the outset and did all he could to prevent the Traditionsreferat from growing and gaining influence. He also tried to hinder activities of the Volkspolitisches Referat (Section for Nationalist Politics), which was established almost contemporaneously for the integration of the German Nationalists and National Socialists into the government camp. However, the Volkspolitisches Referat obtained certain backing from Germany and thus had a much stronger position with Zernatto than did the Traditionsreferat.
The Traditionsreferat summed up its tasks in the following way:
(1) Cultivation and promotion of the Austrian tradition in order to deepen the “Austrian idea” … especially in school and youth education ….
(2) Emphasis of the unbroken uniformity of this tradition in the sense of the words of the Federal President: “There is no old and no new Austria, there is only an enduring ‘eternal’ Austria.”
(3) Protection of this tradition and all its values from ridicule, defamation or distortion ….
(4) …Uphold the memory of the dynasty and of the old imperial army as the most precious roots of the mighty Austrian tradition.
(5) Practical collaboration to pursue the clear development of an Austrian conception of history ….Footnote 28
Judging from this program, it was a mainly ideological task that the Traditionsreferat aimed to perform. It had the object of mending the rupture caused by the fall of the Habsburg Empire ideologically. Thus, the gap between the monarchy and the authoritarian state was to be bridged. At the same time it maintained that it was not to deal with politics and rejected the idea of being part of the Legitimist movement.Footnote 29
Honorary Citizenship for Otto
Starting in 1931 there was a trend among Austrian towns to grant honorary citizenship to Otto Habsburg. This trend grew stronger in the years of the Schuschnigg government, and according to the Reichsbund the so-called Kaisergemeinden (imperial communities) reached a total number of about 1,600 in March 1938.Footnote 30 By promoting honorary citizenship for Otto Habsburg, Legitimists wanted to pave the way for his return. The regime did not actively participate. However, the granting of honorary citizenship was explicitly tolerated and welcomed in official statements of the Fatherland Front.Footnote 31
The promotion of honorary citizenship for Otto also shows that there was no complete overlap between Legitimism and the governing conservative political elite. More progressive and Republican elements among the Christian Socials rejected the idea of a return of the monarchy. Heinrich Gleißner, governor of Upper Austria, for example, forbade by decree the granting of further honorary citizenships to the former archduke.Footnote 32
In Vorarlberg after World War I, a broad popular consensus existed to join the Swiss Confederation instead of becoming part of the emerging Republic of Austria.Footnote 33 This oppositional attitude toward the Austrian state manifested itself in a certain distance to the Habsburg tradition. In February 1935 the town council of the Community of Hörbranz provoked a local crisis when it announced plans to grant Otto honorary citizenship. The provincial government of Vorarlberg sent a deputy who tried to persuade influential local organizations to drop the issue. The deputy argued: “We in Vorarlberg don't have to imitate everything that's happening in the other provinces of Austria. In Vorarlberg it would be improper to grant Otto honorary citizenship. It is against the general opinion of the province, against the opinion of the provincial government and also against that of the governor. Such an issue would cause unnecessary excitement in the province.”Footnote 34
In the evening of the same day, the session of the town council started in an atmosphere of “tense silence which was unusual for Hörbranz.” Because the provincial government's deputy failed to persuade the Diet to drop the issue, he read aloud a decree of the provincial governor who dismissed the mayor and dissolved the Communal Diet of Hörbranz. This incident illustrates how the particularist tendencies of the Vorarlberg province manifested itself in a political distance toward the Habsburgs.
In this case the Vorarlberg governor followed a policy that was opposed to the general tendency of the authoritarian regime that explicitly tolerated and welcomed honorary citizenship for Otto Habsburg. At the same time, however, the governor owed his very authority to the new authoritarian legislation of the Dollfuß-Schuschnigg regime. He based his dismissal of the mayor and the dissolution of the Communal Diet explicitly on §39 of the Constitutional Law for the Transition to the Corporative Constitution of 19 June 1934 (Verfassungsübergangsgesetz) Footnote 35 that empowered provincial governors both to dismiss and to appoint mayors and members of the Communal Diets, contrary to the democratic structures that had been in place before. Thus, the incident in Hörbranz is also an example of the workings of the new authoritarian political structure that emerged after the abolition of parliament in 1933.
The province of Burgenland constituted another special case. For centuries the area of today's Burgenland had been part of the Hungarian Kingdom, even during the period of the Dual Monarchy from 1867 onward. Through the Peace Treaties of Saint Germain 1919 and Trianon 1920, the Burgenland, whose name had not even existed until then and was a new administrative creation, was officially granted to Austria by the victorious powers, thanks to the region's largely German-speaking population. It took two further years of armed conflict until Hungary actually handed over the territory and officially recognized the new border in 1921/22.Footnote 36
In April 1934 at first the head of the Fatherland Front in Burgenland explicitly welcomed honorary citizenship for Otto Habsburg.Footnote 37 However, after a while, rumors emerged among the population of Burgenland that the former archduke might soon return to Austria. Once in power, the rumor went on, Otto would turn over the Burgenland to Hungary. Fearing that the Hungarians would then take revenge for any past loyalty to Austria, the local population adopted new Hungary-friendly attitudes. Therefore, in 1936 the head of the Fatherland Front in Burgenland urged the general secretariat in Vienna to strictly limit “monarchist manifestations such as handing over certificates of honorary citizenship.”Footnote 38 He asserted that from this demand “one shall not deduce a monarchy-hostile tendency but … a national political necessity. It is unfair that the Burgenland public is at unease because of such manifestations. An atmosphere emerges in the province that is actually opposed to the innermost conviction of the population.”
The example of honorary citizenship for Otto Habsburg shows that the general political line of the Fatherland Front concerning the treatment of the Habsburgs (in this case encouragement of such honorary citizenships) was not always followed. Legitimist ideas were often controversial even among political elites loyal to the Schuschnigg government.
The “Vereinigung zur Errichtung eines Kaiser Franz Joseph-Denkmals in Wien” and the Regime
There was one Habsburg-friendly association that gained the support of the entire political elite of the Austro-Fascist state: the Vereinigung zur Errichtung eines Kaiser Franz Joseph-Denkmals in Wien (Association for Erection of an Emperor Francis Joseph Memorial in Vienna).Footnote 39 It was founded late in 1934 mainly by high-ranking military officers and former aristocrats. In 1935 Federal President Miklas became honorary chair of the association.Footnote 40 It only had the one official purpose that its name suggested, and it claimed to be an organization above party interests. Indeed, the leaders of the association hardly missed an occasion to communicate to the Fatherland Front that they did not pursue Legitimist goals.Footnote 41
The Fatherland Front refused to integrate the memorial association into its structures or to engage a special councillor, as the head of the organization had proposed.Footnote 42 However, the General Secretary of the Front agreed to grant moral support. Members of the Front were encouraged to join the Denkmalsvereinigung (not as officials of the Front but as private persons). Front officials abroad were permitted to join the association except those operating in Yugoslavia and Czechoslovakia where the issue of the former monarchy was too delicate. The association in return adopted a regulation to grant membership only to members of the Fatherland Front; in fact, only to long-term members of the Fatherland Front.Footnote 43
Eventually all of the government political camp, as well as representatives of the Austrian Catholic Church, joined the honorary board of this organization: Federal President Wilhelm Miklas (as honorary chair of the association), Schuschnigg, Starhemberg, Archbishop Theodor Cardinal Innitzer, all ministers and secretaries of state, the mayor of Vienna Richard Schmitz, numerous former government ministers, members of the nobility, officials of the provinces and of communities throughout the country, representatives of the professional corporations, as well as representatives of the paramilitary organizations.Footnote 44 Relations between the regime and the Denkmalsvereinigung came close to a full symbiosis. Nevertheless, because of the events of March 1938, the memorial was never realized despite extensive preparation and organization.Footnote 45
Legitimism as Opposition
From what has been discussed, we can say in sum that Legitimism was met with strong sympathy by the authoritarian Dollfuß-Schuschnigg regime. Indeed, Habsburg-friendly ideas served as important pillars for the regime's ideology. The extensive official support for the Emperor Francis Joseph memorial demonstrates the integrative power of the Habsburg tradition for the conservative and authoritarian political elite. Yet, there is another side to the picture. In spite of this sympathy, there also was considerable friction between the Legitimist movement and the regime.
In 1935 or 1936 the Reichsbund der Österreicher formulated its programmatic goals in the following way:
1. Re-introduction of the legitimate monarchy on the basis of the Federal State of Austria in her present boundaries.
2. Further development of the corporatist constitution of the state also providing the possibility for the people to participate in forming the political will within the state.
3. Complete restoration and further development of the foundations for the rule of law in the sense of the old Habsburg idea of Empire and Law.
4. Further development of the social legislation in order to secure the foundations of a state that is socially just in all respects.
5. In a cultural sense: Diffusion of Christian education, family building and conduct of life in the whole state. …
6. Relations with the successor states in the Danube region shall be further developed in the direction of close economic ties.Footnote 46
Several of these points imply criticism of the governments’ political course. The corporative institutions of the so-called Ständestaat, which were created to replace parliament as representative body, were important for the regime in an ideological sense. However, de facto these corporations remained weak, had little influence, and never fully developed their structures. In its program the Reichsbund demanded that these new structures should actually be developed to facilitate greater popular participation (point 2). It stressed this point much more than the authoritarian Schuschnigg government might have approved, even though the Reichsbund accepted the government's political line. Furthermore, the Reichsbund criticized the lack of rule of law under the authoritarian government (point 3) and demanded improvement of social legislation (point 4). The conservative Austro-Fascist government in fact had abolished a lot of reforms that the Social Democrats had implemented in the first years of the Republic and followed policies that were clearly to the disadvantage of the workers. Thus, demanding more social legislation and social justice constituted a clear criticism of the authoritarian Schuschnigg-regime.
With points 1 and 6, the Reichsbund aimed to steer free of international criticism, especially from the Little Entente countries, by limiting its restoration ambitions to the territory of the post-1918 Austrian Republic and simply calling for economic links with the successor states of the former Habsburg monarchy. Point 5 displays the strong link that existed between the church and Legitimist ideas, a link that also brought the Legitimist movement close to the Dollfuß-Schuschnigg regime. Thus, in this document we find both the aim of gaining the support of a large part of the population and an implicit criticism of the authoritarian regime, even as the program reiterates other points that made it congenial to the regime.
If we examine the movement's populist activities, its formal and informal gatherings in public or in private, we also find what officials of the Schuschnigg-regime called a “legal opposition.”Footnote 47 In a way the Legitimist movement became a site for political opposition to the regime. Although the leaders of the Legitimist movement stressed their loyalty to the government,Footnote 48 speakers at Legitimist rallies would attack the regime harshly. It is difficult to say who actually attended these rallies as an audience. From the general atmosphere of such meetings, which I describe more fully below, we can assume that large parts of the audience found themselves in opposition to the government.
Early in 1937, for example, the district propaganda manager of the Fatherland Front Oskar Koszik reported on a rally of the Reichsbund der Österreicher in Vienna's Leopoldstadt district that he had attended as the official representative of the Front. He described the audience: “15% Old women, 15% old men, 30% Jews, the rest were middle aged men and women, hardly any youth, but I saw many faces which were formerly active in the Home Guard movement of the district.”Footnote 49 In fact, the Legitimist movement was much more popular among the older generation who still felt some loyalty to old Imperial Austria. Legitimist ideas had also been quite popular among the paramilitary Heimwehr (Home Guard) that Schuschnigg had dissolved in October 1936. Interestingly, Koszik counted “Jews” as a distinct category besides “men” and “women.” It hints that a certain degree of anti-Semitism was also present among members of the Fatherland Front.
Koszik continued his report and stated that a man named Prisching stepped up to the lectern to deliver his speech. The Fatherland Front officer tried to keep him from doing so, because Prisching was not one of the officially approved speakers for the night. Koszik reported the reaction of the audience and of Prisching to his attempt to prevent the latter from speaking:
[Prisching:] The present functionary of the Fatherland Front wants to keep me from speaking? I will not be kept from it and I will speak as plainly as I am used to! […wie mir der Schnabel gewachsen ist!] Rapturous applause. …Now came the following grave sentence: We are not on the Dollfuß-road but far away from it. … One gets the impression that these people do not wish for the return of the dynasty but for the abolition of the present system. [Prisching:] Only the Emperor can wipe away the financial malpractice and disorder in the state! Great, rapturous applause.Footnote 50
In Vienna's Hietzing district in November 1936, a group of Fatherland Front officials observed similar scenes at another gathering of the Reichsbund. A speaker specifically targeted the new political order:
We have had enough political experiments …. It is always the people who pay while the gentlemen up there are fine. We need an imperial authority so we don't have to go hawking for new ministers every six weeks …. If this continues soon everyone in Austria will have been minister and well provided for. We don't need a corporate, Christian, social or German state or whatever all this stuff is called. We only need an imperial Austria.Footnote 51
Further on, the speaker implied that Legitimists were the only ones who could save Austria from Nazi Germany, and one of the Front officials reported: “[L]egitimists are the only ones who still march along the Dollfuß-road. The others (here he looked at me [the reporting Fatherland Front official], as this was said after my interjection) want to sell Austria to the North ….All the people in the audience took a position against us and applauded loudly.” In this exalted atmosphere at the meeting, the Front official soon discovered the limits of his authority even though he represented the regime: “As someone made a statement directed openly against the Fatherland Front … [I] demanded temperance since otherwise as representative of the Fatherland Front I would be forced to dissolve the meeting. The situation improved a little bit. However, this was not important, since it became clear that in practical terms I could do nothing. Besides, the police officer was absent.” We can conclude from the rest of the report that the reason for this absence was the disloyal political stance of the police officer.
Two days later a Legitimist gathering took place at an inn in Vienna's Döbling district during which the government was insulted as lacking integrity and sense (Anstand und Verstand). These two properties Otto Habsburg would bring back to Austria together with prosperity (Wohlstand). The government, a speaker stated, tried to reshape the fatherland “and we, the Reichsbund, observe that they have failed this test.” Interestingly, even the Catholic Church was attacked, which might not have been expected from Legitimists: “I call upon all those gentlemen, also to the gentlemen of the church, who think that we loyalists to the Emperor won't succeed: if you don't make up your mind soon, we will not see you and already tomorrow maybe you will be overlooked.”Footnote 52
The chancellor's policy toward Nazi Germany was another target of Legitimists’ criticism. They claimed that the July agreement of 1936 was a cold-blooded contract that was supposed to bring Austrians into line (kalte Gleichschaltung).Footnote 53 Legitimist speakers agreed fully that Austrian independence had to be preserved. Yet, treaties such as the July agreement were of no use, they said, because “Austrian independence and sovereignty is given to us only on paper. This cannot reassure us because we know that treaties can be broken.”Footnote 54 Whether thanks to his foresight or simply as polemic, in this case the speaker judged the situation correctly. The only real means of confronting the danger, another speaker unsurprisingly claimed, was to empower the Legitimist movement.Footnote 55
We see that despite its ideological affinity with the chancellor and with the Austro-Fascist regime, Legitimism became a site for opposition where the regime could be attacked overtly. It is very likely that this role of a tolerated opposition in a dictatorial system provided the Legitimist movement with more political momentum than it would otherwise have developed. Interestingly, it was a Fatherland Front officer who made this very observation in his report on a Legitimist meeting in Waidhofen an der Ybbs in November 1937:
Even if the group of Legitimists in Waidhofen a. d. Ybbs is small—there were about 350 to 400 persons—one could observe at this meeting that it maintains a certain momentum. Maybe one of the reasons for this is that here, as everywhere else, Legitimism finds itself in a certain kind of opposition to the Front. Out of this [implicit] opposition, which is never admitted and always denied, a kind of illegal momentum [emerges] which in other areas might cause cleavages among the patriotic population. In an area like Waidhofen, however, where one can speak of a National Socialist majority, this [momentum] may have a positive effect for us.Footnote 56
Obviously the Front was used as oppositional activity of Legitimists since the report continues:
One has the impression of a true cooperation between the Front and Legitimism in Waidhofen which surely is brought about by the situation of the – one has to say it plainly – patriotic minority. They need each other and therefore work together and not against one another. … Out of these and earlier observations I may conclude that it is impossible to regulate the position of the functionaries of the Front toward the Legitimist movement in general. Local differences demand tactful treatment of this problem which can be very useful for us in some places and in others harmful.
This last statement adequately describes the government's and especially Schuschnigg's policy toward Legitimism; Schuschnigg never fully rejected Legitimists’ pretensions but never officially supported them either.
Anti-Semitism
Anti-Semitism was widespread in Austria and could be found in different degrees of intensity in many political groups since the late nineteenth century. Neither the Fatherland Front nor the Legitimist movement was free from this phenomenon. They did not officially adopt anti-Semitism in their political programs. Yet, neither group officially rejected anti-Semitism either. In his report on the above-described Legitimist rally in Vienna's Leopoldstadt district, the Fatherland Front official Koszik stated: “It is sometimes said that Legitimists are Jews, so [the speaker] pleased himself in the fathomless vulgarity to say: In the end even I might be called a Jew. (Laughter) Well, whosoever wishes to may have a look. (Laughter again, shouts: Right away!)”Footnote 57
New Legitimist groups popped up asking for permission to conduct legal activities as officially recognized associations. The Fatherland Front usually investigated the background of the people involved. Legally the Fatherland Front was the only political organization allowed. All political activity had to be carried out within its extensive structures. Associations that were suspected of aiming at political activity, therefore, were denied official registration.Footnote 58
At times the Front suspected illegal German nationalist or Nazi activity behind new Legitimist associations. Thus, in late January 1938 an association called Sozial-Christlich-Deutscher Monarchistenbund Oesterreichs Footnote 59 (Social Christian German League of Monarchists of Austria) was prohibited, one argument being that it might promote Legitimism on an anti-Semitic basis. Furthermore, the party officer concerned with this file raised doubts as to whether the association in question was actually Legitimist or merely of monarchist orientation. Thus, the officer doubted the association's loyalty to the Habsburgs and the Austrian tradition. Interestingly, the applicants stressed that the association would be authoritarian in character. It seems this was done in order to gain the approval of the regime. However, the Fatherland Front did not comment on this point. Another association applied for official registration as Oesterreichischer schwarzgelber Heimatbund (Austrian Black-yellow Homeland League; black and yellow were the traditional heraldic colors of the Habsburg family).Footnote 60 It was suspected of planning to introduce the Aryan paragraph barring racially defined Jews from joining into its statutes. In order to avoid fragmenting the Legitimist movement into organizations that either admitted or barred Jewish membership, this association, too, was denied official registration. The Fatherland Front did not reject anti-Semitism but avoided it as the issue was controversial and would have caused cleavage within its own ranks.
Camouflage
Researching Austrian Legitimism, we encounter the interesting phenomenon by which illegal political groups of all colors took advantage of this tolerated form of implicit or discrete opposition to the regime. Underground political activists from all political camps aimed to use it for their own political ends. In March 1936 an official of the Fatherland Front complained to the General Secretary about Legitimist associations in Carinthia “who in one area are taking into its rows all National Socialists and in another all Communists.”Footnote 61 The Fatherland Front was clearly aware of this problem and required its regional offices to send observers to Legitimist meetings all over Austria.Footnote 62
At a rally of the Reichsbund in Vienna's Leopoldstadt district early in 1937, editor (Redakteur) Riefler was one of the speakers. In his speech he “confessed” that he had grown up influenced by social democratic thought before turning to Legitimism, and that he still retained a certain affinity for materialist views. He asserted that workers “will not be brought into line.”Footnote 63 They would never forget the tragedy of the bloody civil war of February 1934 that represented a chasm between them and the government. A few months later at a Legitimist gathering in Amstetten (Lower Austria), Riefler stressed this point even further with an alleged quotation of the “old emperor”: “One can't speak against the people with guns.”Footnote 64 The reporting Front official noted that in workers’ circles this hint “would revive some disagreeable and superfluous memories [of the 1934 Civil War].” The fact that the official calls reminiscences of the civil war “superfluous” illustrates well the regime's attitude toward the brutal events of February 1934.
Concerning Riefler the reporting official observed that “his whole appearance matched a mass gathering in a Viennese workers’ district. His accordingly strong voice and vivid gesticulation naturally did not find the expected response at this rural gathering which … consisted of peasants.”
In December 1936 a worker called Hans Schneider stepped up to the lectern to speak at a Legitimist meeting in the Vienna district of Simmering and declared (like Riefler) that he used to be a social democrat before turning Legitimist. He criticized the Fatherland Front as being a “house of cards”Footnote 65 that only persuaded Austrians to join its ranks by using force, and that consisted of nothing more than administrative paperwork. After eighteen years in the Republic, Schneider claimed, workers had “even fewer rights” (noch rechtloser) than they had enjoyed under the monarchy. In his report to the Fatherland Front office, the Vienna district official formulates his suspicions clearly: “[I]t is likely that because of his permission to speak in the Reichsbund der Oesterreicher, that he (maybe still a social democrat) uses this occasion to sow distrust against the Fatherland Front among patriotic Austrians, to shake the confidence in the Front and to dupe the Reichsbund der Oesterreicher and all its functionaries.”Footnote 66
Early in 1938 the Legitimist Ring Österreichischer Soldaten got hold of a Communist leaflet which called for an infiltration of Legitimist organizations in the course of a rally on 11 January: “Comrades … have to [establish] connections with the [Legitimist] functionaries as discreet sympathizers, especially with the paramilitary Rös and its new section, the so-called Iron Legion, since detailed information on the latter is still missing. Further on the comrades have to increase their enthusiasm in an unobtrusive and natural way so they will be granted official functions. This done skillfully, we must succeed in gaining control there. … With us the right of the enslaved, Sch.”Footnote 67
In summer 1936 regional sections of the Fatherland Front were required to report on the attitudes toward Legitimism among the working class. The Fatherland Front of Styria reported in detail and stated that workers there were rather indifferent toward a restoration of the Habsburg monarchy. Instead, they were more concerned with their economic situation and unemployment. Only if a restoration improved their economic situation, workers would favor it. In this sense unemployed workers in Upper Styria hoped for an improvement of their situation through a restoration and showed Legitimist ambitions.Footnote 68 Another report suggests that it was mainly older workers who maintained a certain sympathy for the Habsburgs, whereas younger ones had none at all. Workers of social democratic persuasion were reported to favor a return of the Habsburgs over a National Socialist regime or a Fascist regime of the Heimwehr. Workers of Nazi persuasion obviously opposed any form of Legitimism.Footnote 69
A Mass Movement?
Although after 1918 Legitimism originated in elitist private family circles of the former aristocracy, army officers, state officials and parts of the middle classes, Legitimists aimed to create a great popular movement and to gain mass support. To this end Legitimist organizations bore names that gave the impression of being popular movements, such as Gustav Wolff's Kaisertreue Volkspartei or a smaller group called the Kaisertreue Volksbewegung (Emperor-loyal People's Movement).Footnote 70
In a pamphlet from the later years of the Schuschnigg government, the Reichsbund states: “Federal Chancellor D[okto]r v[on] Schuschnigg and Vice-Chancellor Prince Starhemberg have made clear that the Legitimist movement … has the right to be considered if it becomes a popular movement. The Reichsbund der Österreicher thus has the task to prove that the Austrian people wishes for the return of the legitimate monarchy.”Footnote 71
In November 1937, Friedrich Wiesner held a speech claiming that “Austrian Legitimism has long ceased to be a mere movement of army officers and nobles. Today it is represented in all sectors of the population. … [E]specially the growing support of the workers is noticeable, who are increasingly favorable of a social monarchy.”Footnote 72 Otto Habsburg, too, sketched his idea of a “social monarchy” or Volksmonarchie in a letter to the so-called Kaisergemeinden (towns that had granted him honorary citizenship). It was supposed to be a new monarchy that would take care of the needs of the working class.Footnote 73 This was linked with the assumption that the Habsburg monarchy was born out of the Austrian Volksseele (soul of the people).Footnote 74 Here again we find the aim to popularize the Legitimist movement and to broaden its basis.
At another occasion Wiesner claimed that the Eiserner Ring comprised 230,000 members and fantasized a number of 1.2 million Legitimists all over Austria.Footnote 75 To reach this number, Wiesner counted the members of all the associations that had granted Otto Habsburg honorary membership and added the entire populations of the towns that had granted him honorary citizenship.Footnote 76 Obviously, this was not a serious way of estimating support for Legitimism. Yet, he was right in the sense that granting honorary citizenship was one way of seeking popular mass support for Legitimism. A local feast and a rally with political speeches usually followed these awards. Otto answered each of the awards with a personal letter.Footnote 77 There was the hope that a large number of Austrian towns with Otto as honorary citizen would convince politicians in Austria and abroad that it was a democratic necessity to allow the Habsburgs to return to the Austrian throne.
The “Association for the Erection of an Emperor Francis Joseph Memorial” discussed above raised its funds through donations. In order to do so more effectively, it established local bureaus all over Austria that were to popularize the idea of a memorial for the former emperor. A letter of September 1936 to the General Secretary of the Fatherland Front, Guido Zernatto, from the executive committee reads:
Therefore we ask Your Highness for the cooperation … of the Fatherland Front and the support of the Austrian Heimatdienst … both in Vienna and – which is particularly important – in the country in order to establish voluntary local work units and to organize propaganda and the collection of donations from all parts of the population. In this way, the Emperor Francis Joseph Memorial can actually become a memorial of the people. If we manage to obtain [the participation of] only a quarter of the circa 2 million tax payers of Austria or of the circa 2.5 million members of the Fatherland Front as our members … then the memorial … will be secured financially in 2 or 2.5 years.Footnote 78
Again, the plan was to gain popular support both ideologically and financially, and make the memorial a “people's memorial.”
An article published in the Yugoslav newspaper Politika in August 1937 recounts the aim of the Legitimist movement to attract a mass constituency as follows: “In spite of all cooperation with the Fatherland Front, those masses to which Legitimism is trying to appeal remain cold toward these manifestations from the past.”Footnote 79 In a very critical manner, the author concludes that Legitimist ideas were only interesting for “retired army generals, imperial personal secretaries and big people who lost everything with the disappearance of the Habsburgs.” Further on the journalist claims to have had a confidential talk with an Austrian Legitimist leader who described the situation of his movement in the following way: “We have two sorts of enemies: Those who constantly yell at us and say that we represent a great danger that could manifest itself as soon as tomorrow. They make better propaganda for us than do our followers, because in this way they give proof of the importance of the Legitimist movement. Much more dangerous [however] are those who remain silent and do not hold us in esteem, for we can only live and develop if the world is convinced that we are mighty.”Footnote 80
We do not know whether this conversation actually took place. Yet, in the context of the other findings, this statement gives a rather accurate picture of the strategy of the Legitimist movement. It was the aim to make the movement seem more popular than it actually was by pointing to an alleged mass following. The article closes with a statement characteristic of Yugoslav political opinion toward a Habsburg restoration in Austria: “[W]e do not have a reason to change our stand toward a return of the Habsburgs.”
The Legitimist movement sought to establish an elitist and authoritarian form of government and tried to achieve this goal through populist action. In part this can be interpreted as the movement's “concession” to the demands of modern mass politics that had developed in Austria since the 1880s. Legitimist leaders realized modern politics could only be successful if it were legitimated by mass support. By gaining popular support, the movement could place increasing pressure on the Schuschnigg government and on the Western Powers, ultimately to place Otto Habsburg in power. However, the political strength of the Legitimist movement lay rather in its good relations with the regime as a result of ideological affinity and not in its mass following.
Opposition to Legitimists
Even if the Legitimist movement did not maintain the mass following, which it claimed to have gained, it did have political enemies who made quite an effort to counteract its activity. The British interwar journalist in Austria, G. E. R. Gedye, for example, had never attributed much importance to the issue of a Habsburg restoration. However, in the year 1937 he began to wonder if he had not been wrong. If he had not taken the issue seriously, “the Nazis clearly did, and signaled the fact by honouring the Legitimists with their hostility and their stink-bombs.”Footnote 81 Sensing that a Habsburg restoration posed a threat to their Anschluss-ambitions, National Socialists disturbed Legitimist meetings and—in the common style of Fascist political practiceFootnote 82—tried to break them up violently.Footnote 83 In January 1938 the Nazis distributed leaflets, for example, that called for an extensive disruption of meetings of what they called the “Jewish” Legitimist movement through physical attacks against speakers and prominent members.Footnote 84 In 1937 a leaflet of an alleged Anti-Habsburg-Liga harshly criticized Schuschnigg's Habsburg-friendly politics.Footnote 85 It claimed to be speaking for the working people and for the peoples of the former Habsburg monarchy. Furthermore, a Communist leaflet called on its party members to infiltrate Legitimist organizations—giving instructions on how to do so. It speaks against “Ottonism” and “Fascism in black-yellow plating” (Faschismus schwarzgelber Auflage),Footnote 86 alluding to the traditional colors of the Habsburg family. Thus, Legitimism attracted the animosity of illegal political groups both on the left and right.
Conclusion
Historians have raised doubts about whether Schuschnigg actually managed to exploit all the potential of moral support for the regime that Legitimism bore.Footnote 87 The Legitimist movement seems to have played an ambiguous role for the Austro-Fascist regime. Despite strong international resistance to any Habsburg-friendly Austrian course, the dictatorial system of Austro-Fascism granted the Legitimist movement a certain freedom of activity in domestic Austrian politics. The regime did not take a powerful stance against this “legal opposition,” as it was sometimes called. On the contrary, guidelines for the official treatment of the Legitimist movement were often vague and contradictory, and state officials stressed the importance of maintaining the Legitimists as allies.
Thus, the relationship of the Schuschnigg government to interwar Austrian Legitimism offers a classic example of what Juan Linz described as “limited pluralism,” when an authoritarian regime tolerates a certain degree of oppositional activity, either officially or unofficially. For Linz the pluralistic element is the most distinctive categorical feature of authoritarian regimes as opposed to totalitarian ones.Footnote 88 He describes the specific role of the oppositional groups involved:
There is semi-opposition by groups which are not dominant or represented in the governing group and which engage in partial criticism but are willing to participate in power without fundamentally challenging the regime. … They might be highly critical of the government and some aspects of the institutional order, but they distinguish between these and the leader of the regime and accept the historical legitimacy or at least necessity of the authoritarian formula.Footnote 89
The fact that the Legitimist movement could form an informal opposition tolerated by the regime can be interpreted in two ways. We can assume either that it was a willing act of the government to tolerate Legitimist opposition to a certain degree, or that the regime did not have the authority and power to suppress this movement, so close to its own ranks. From the cases treated above, we can conclude that to a certain extent both of these interpretations are true. Statements of Fatherland Front officials and of Schuschnigg himself display a friendly attitude and tolerance toward the Legitimist movement. Yet, we can observe the great difficulties that Fatherland Front officials had in controlling the course of Legitimists’ meetings. Indeed, the authority of government officials at such meetings was rather limited. Thus, toleration of a certain degree of Legitimist opposition was both a result of the regime's friendly attitude toward the movement and of the regime's weak factual power.
Legitimism played an ambiguous role and performed a dual function in the interwar Austrian dictatorship. On the one hand, it contributed to the regime's ideology and served to stabilize the system. On the other hand, it played the role of officially tolerated opposition and limited pluralism. Whether in the former or in the latter function, Legitimism represented an important facet of Austro-Fascism and displays the regime's highly conservative and reactionary character that was not balanced by the revolutionary ideology and impetus so typical of other, more pronouncedly Fascist regimes.
