1930: Korneuburg Oath

In order to bring an end to the longstanding factional disputes within the anti-Marxist military associations, then federal leader Richard Steidle sought to unite competing groups. Therefore he tried to establish a clear political profile to be conveyed to the outside world, which was clearly fascist.  In doing so, he increased pressure on individual Heimwehr (Home Guard) leaders, such as Julius Raab. This radical rejection of democracy was mostly applauded, exacerbating the political climate until the coup d’état which took place in 1933/34. However, the failure of the putsch of the Styrian Heimatschutz (Homeland Protection) leader Walter Pfirmer in 1931 showed that the oath did not create a homogenous Heimwehr. While the Heimatschutz defected to the Nazi Party in 1932/33, the Heimwehr factions around Ernst Rüdiger Starhemberg, Emil Fey or Steidle continued to associate with that part of the Christian Socialists that – driven by a retention of power and Benito Mussolini – used the breakdown of the National Council’s procedural rules in March 1933 for a gradual coup d’état in order to break with the constitution and establish the “authoritarian corporative state”.

Text of the Korneuburg Oath:

“We want to renew Austria completely. We want the Republic of the Heimwehr.

From every comrade we demand: an unshrinking belief in the mother country, utter fervous of cooperation and a passionate love of homeland. We want to reach for power in the state and reorganize state and economy for the benefit of the entire people.

We must forget our own interests, must subordinate all the ties and demands of the parties to our objective, because we wish to serve the community of the entire German people.

We reject Western democratic parliamentarianism and the party state. We want to replace it with the autonomy of the corporations [Stände] and strong governance that will not be formed from party representatives, but from leading figures from the major corporations and the most capable and proven men of our popular movement.

We shall fight against the corruption of our people by the Marxist class struggle and the liberal-capitalist economic system. We want to realize the autonomy of the economy on the basis of occupational groups. We shall overcome the class struggle and establish social dignity and justice.

We want to increase the prosperity of our people through a native economy of public utility. The state is the embodiment of the nation as a whole; its power and leadership ensure that the corporations remain integrated in the imperatives of the national community.

May every comrade feel and avow himself to be an upholder of the new German state thinking; may he be prepared to sacrifice property and blood; may he know the three powers: belief in God, his own firm will and the word of his leaders.”

(Oath originally translated by Klaus-Jörg Siegfried 1974, Universalismus und Faschismus, Europa-Verlag, p. 96)