Since its opening, the House of Austrian History has also been focusing on how democracy was destroyed in Austria in 1933/34 and what characterised the subsequent Dollfuß-Schuschnigg dictatorship. On this page we provide you with an overview over these years and links on further ressources. You can find background information here on the difficult question how this political system should be named (available in English soon) and what the museum's stance is on this discussion. Our election tool provides an overview of the results and voter flows for the last democratic election in 1930. You can get an impression of the character of the dictatorship from an international perspective on our interactive map Europe of Dictatorships.

If you want to listen to a short introduction into this historical period, please click on this link to our audio guide.

Following an initial period of cooperation, politics was shaped by disputes between the two main parties—the Christian Social Party and the Social Democratic Party. Compromise became harder and harder to reach. Christian Socialism came to define federal politics and from 1920 onwards, the Social Democrats were no longer involved in government. Their power base was in “Red Vienna”. Both parties had armed groups under their command and violent clashes between them became more frequent over the years. Within both main parties there were influential politicians who rejected the democratic regime. This period also marked the start of the rise of the radically anti-democratic Nazi Party. An armed fascist group attempted a hardly organised coup in 1931. Their leaders were not sentenced by the courts, because the justice system was already undermined by the enemies of democracy – an early warning signal for the destruction of democracy.

In 1932, the Christian Social Party, in a coalition with other right-wing political parties, put forward Enbelberg Dollfuss as chancellor. A year later, the federal government exploited a voting glitch in parliament: there was suddenly no chairman left to lead the session, and the government thus prevented the parliament from meeting again. Laws were passed on the basis of an emergency decree. This is how the government began to gradually dismantle democracy in Austria. Federal Chancellor Engelberg Dollfuss banned the Communist Party as well as the NSDAP (National Socialist German Worker’s Party, the Nazis), and prohibited demonstrations. Additionally, the government restricted freedom of the press through censorship. A year later, in February 1934, an armed conflict erupted between the armed branch of the Social Democrats and the government as well as the Home Guard (armed groups supporting the government). These "February Fights" only lasted a few days. The Austrian Armed Forces and the Home Guards defeated the Social Democrats very quickly. As a result, the government also banned the Social Democrat party. On May 1, 1934, the government adopted a new constitution. This now officially ended parliamentary democracy. A “gradual coup d’état” was carried out: step by step, the government assumed sole power. Austria was to be transformed into a “Christian, German Federal State”. The regime’s goal was to include the population in the politics of the state according to “corporations” (occupational groups). This idea, however, was never achieved.

Even before a dictatorship was established in Austria, the Nazis carried out numerous terror attacks. They believed that this was how they could bring the Austrian state to its knees. In the course of 1933, the terror attacks increased and Austria sought protection from fascist Italy. This helped to counteract the pressure from the Nazis. However, Italy began to increasingly align itself with the German Reich. That meant that the Austrian government also tried to appease the relationship with Nazi Germany. In 1936, Kurt Schuschnigg had to therefore make broad concessions to the German Reich. With the support of Adolf Hitler, the Nazis ultimately succeeded at seizing power in Austria. German troops invaded on March 12, 1938. This so-called “Anschluss” (“annexation”) was enthusiastically celebrated by large parts of the Austrian population. Austria thus became part of the German Reich.

The Austrian government tried to build a cult of personality around both chancellors, Dollfuss and Schuschnigg. Fascist Italy’s Benito Mussolini served as a model. The regime presented the Austrian Chancellor as the “saviour of the fatherland” who stood for strength and power. However, this image of the chancellor was only partially accepted in Austria and in other countries. After Dollfuss was murdered by the Nazis in 1934, the government presented the dead Chancellor as a martyr. He died a hero’s death for Austria’s freedom – this new cult around the murdered Chancellor Dollfuss contributed to the fact that Dollfuss remained admired and controversial even in the Second Republic, that is, long after the end of the dictatorship.

Violence Instead of Parliamentarian Debate

Although the right and left wing parties in the parliament of the First Republic were often equally strong, there was no willingness to balance the interests on either side. The media and politics also eroded the trust in parliamentary democracy by using terms, such as “talking shop” or “bogus parliament”. Conflicts erupted into violence on the streets. Politicians opted to speak of the so-called “will of the people”—rather than compromises—and the fact that only a “strong” government could resolve the crisis. The parties accused one another of plotting to overthrow the government or planning a civil war. Both the left and right had paramilitary groups: the Home Guard (Heimwehr) was conservative to extreme right wing, while the Republican Defence League (Schutzbund) was officially affiliated with the Social Democrats.

Parties and political organisations created armed units, against which the state took too little or no action. Conflicts among them became commonplace and more and more people were wounded or killed at political demonstrations and clashes between the groups.

On 12 September 1931, “strong man” Walter Pfrimer led the Styrian Home Guard in an attempted coup. Several places in Upper Styria were occupied and Social Democratic politicians were arrested. However, long before a march on Vienna could take place, the coup failed. When charged with the attempted putsch in a court of law, Pfrimer and the others accused were acquitted. This was not the only instance when the state and judiciary system failed to protect democracy.

On 4 March 1933, a narrow vote in parliament took place, which had far-reaching consequences. All three presidents of the National Council resigned so that they could participate in the vote. The parliament had no legal guidelines in such an instance. Rather than taking action to rectify the situation, Chancellor Dollfuss took it as an opportunity to breach the Constitution himself—from then onward, the government would issue the laws and the parliament was shut down.

It began with Federal Chancellor Dollfuss’s dissolution of the parliament: afterwards the government did away with more and more democratic structures and rights. The Constitutional Court was the most important organ of judiciary control. Constitutional judges with close ties to the government resigned and they were not replaced, rendering the Constitutional Court unable to function. In May 1934, the transition to a dictatorship was complete with a new constitution that legitimated the dictatorial state. Demonstrations were banned. The army and police put up barricades and posted men with machine guns to block the streets of Vienna and prevent the annual May Day demonstration. Social Democrats tried to get around the ban by organising “public outings” or “walks”. Hundreds of people were arrested throughout Austria. Although the death penalty had been abolished when the Republic was founded in 1918, it was reinstated on 10 November 1933. Initially, it was the punishment for murder, arson or malicious damage of property. In 1934, “revolt” was also deemed punishable under the penalty of death.

The armed unit of the Social Democrats had been forbidden since March 1933. Despite this, commemorative pins were fabricated and distributed in celebration of its ten-year anniversary in May 1933. That same year the Communist Party and the Nazi Party were disbanded. In the wake of the battles in February 1934, the government banned all organisations affiliated with the Social Democrat Party and arrested many Defence League’s head officers. The Christian Socialist Party also decided to disband and merge with the Fatherland Front.

The government had banned the Social Democrats’ paramilitary Republican Defence League. Police searches of the Social Democrat Party’s headquarters became more frequent. On 12 February 1934, the first shots were exchanged in Linz, which were followed by numerous battles in Vienna and the industrial regions of Upper Austria, Lower Austria, and Styria. The Social Democrats were far less equipped than the Army and the Home Guard, and usually the battles did not last long. On each side, around 65 died, along with 120–140 unarmed persons. A great number of Social Democrats were arrested, and nine members of the Republican Defence League were executed. 

From September 1933, people deemed “enemies of the state” could be put in prison without trial. Women were almost exclusively detained in police prisons, and men were largely held at the main detention camp in Wöllersdorf, Lower Austria. Nazis, Social Democrats and Communists were taken into custody.

At the camp, prisoners were not very closely monitored, and being held together in large buildings helped them to consolidate networks and deepen their political convictions.

The Fatherland Front Party attempted to unite all the conservative-bourgeois, Christian Socialist and fascist groups. All of the other parties, along with sports, leisure and youth groups were prohibited—with the exception of Catholic groups. This direct or partial organisation was an attempt to infiltrate the whole of society. In May 1934, a new constitution legally sealed the end of the Democratic Republic. It opened with a religious statement as a way of distinguishing it from the Republic’s understanding of the law. Conservative lawyers justified the dictatorship as necessary to enable “Christian” and “German” rule and promised a just society by means of a “corporate” political structure.

The Dollfuss-Schuschnigg dictatorship aimed to strengthen Austria’s identity and differentiate itself from Nazi Germany. It took symbols from the monarchy to construct a tradition towards Habsburg legacy. A new national coat of arms was introduced in 1934: a double eagle with halos instead of crowns—an attempt to depict the dictatorship as religiously protected. The dictatorship sought to partition society into distinct professions and called itself a “corporatist state”. There were to be seven corporations, each with its own symbol. The plan was never realized. The crutch cross became the symbol of the United Party of the Fatherland Front. This symbol emphasized its Christian background and served as a counter-symbol to the Nazi’s swastika. Its design and mass circulation are evocative of fascist symbols.

The Nazi Party was prohibited in 1933. The then illegal party retaliated with attacks and deliberate propaganda campaigns. Thousands of Austrian Nazis emigrated to Nazi Germany. Oftentimes, political conviction made young men see their future in the Nazi state. They formed the “Austrian Legion” and prepared for the Nazi takeover of Austria. 

In July 1934, it attempted a coup, during which Chancellor Engelbert Dollfuss was killed. On 25 July 1934, illegal Nazis disguised as Army soldiers ambushed the State Radio Broadcasting Station (RAVAG) and the Office of the Federal Chancellor. On the radio they falsely reported that Dollfuss had resigned. In reality, Dollfuss had been fatally injured during their attempted coup in the Chancellor’s Office. Despite the fact that the coup immediately failed, over 200 people were killed. The thirteen people involved in the coup were executed.

Even after this violence, propaganda campaigns were not created around the new Chancellor, Kurt Schuschnigg, but around his deceased predecessor. Dollfuss became the symbol of the Fatherland Front. Nazi Germany continued to pressure Austria, even economically, by imposing import embargos and a compulsory tax to discourage German tourists from visiting Austria. In July 1936, Austria capitulated and signed an agreement with Nazi Germany to release the Nazis in prison and lift censorship.

When the agreement between Austrian and Germany was signed in July 1936, both Nazi Germany and the Dollfuss-Schuschnigg dictatorship relaxed their rules on censorship. The first edition of the Nazi propaganda newspaper the Austrian Observer was immediately printed in August. In it, the Austrian Nazis presented themselves with inflated self-confidence. They destroyed the hope placed in Schuschnigg’s government to resolve the conflict with Nazi Germany with open threats and full confidence in their victory.

After his assassination, Dollfuss was heralded as the “hero chancellor” and as a “martyr” who had “sacrificed” himself for Austria. A lottery was set up to collect funds for a large monument, and portraits and memorabilia of Dollfuss were sold. Many embraced this state-organised cult around Dollfuss. The mementos were extremely popular and also made by followers themselves.