1918: The Citizenship Act and the Granting of Citizenship on Racist Grounds

The Citizenship Act of December 5, 1918 declared that German-Austrian citizens include “all persons who can claim right of residence in a municipality of the German-Austrian Republic”. Anyone who moved to German-Austria could also become a citizen, unless they had previously had the right of residence in Dalmatia, Istria or Galicia. Thus, the numerous war refugees from Galicia in particular could not opt for citizenship of the Republic of German-Austria.

The Treaty of Saint Germain from September 19, 1919 based the granting of citizenship on international law. Article 80 determined that persons who are “different from the majority population in regard to race and language” in a successor state can plead for the citizenship of another successor state “according to which the majority of the population there consists of persons who speak the same language and are of the same race as them”. In a racist interpretation of Article 80, the Austrian Interior Ministry refused to grant citizenship to “Ostjuden”, Jews who had fled from Eastern Europe, on the basis of a decision that had been reached by the Austrian Administrative Court on June 9, 1921.  The Austrian Interior Minister Leopold Waber, who had established the clearly antisemitic guideline for the granting of citizenship, maintained that: “Because Jews are, without question, racially different from the majority of the population, I have made the decision that not a single appeal for citizenship by a Jew will be granted.” From the beginning of the 1990s, reputable historians such as Oskar Besenböck, Hannelore Burger and Margarete Grandner started to reevaluate the racist grounds upon which Jews in the early First Republic had been refused the opportunity to opt for Austrian citizenship.

External Resources (in German only):

The Treaty of Saint Germain:
http://alex.onb.ac.at/cgi-content/alex?aid=sgb&datum=19200004&seite=00000995