President of Austria - History of The Office

History of The Office

Prior to the collapse of the multinational Austro-Hungarian empire towards the end of World War I, what now is the Republic of Austria had been part of a monarchy with an emperor as its head of state and chief executive. The empire noticeably began to fracture in late 1917 and manifestly disintegrated into a number of independent nation states over the course of the following year. Effective 21 October 1918, the Imperial Council parliamentarians representing the empire's ethnically German provinces formed a Provisional National Assembly for their paralyzed rump state and appointed veteran party leader Karl Seitz as one of their three largely coequal chairmen (21 October 1918 - 16 February 1919). As chairman, he also became a member (ex officio) of the Austrian State Council (Deutschösterreichischer Staatsrat). On 12 November 1918, the State Council collectively assumed the functions of head of state according to a resolution of the National Assembly. Following the formal refusal of Emperor Karl I to exercise highest state authority (it was not an abdication: "Ich verzichte auf jeden Anteil an den Staatsgeschäften. Gleichzeitig enthebe Ich Meine österreichische Regierung ihres Amtes.") on 11 November, parliament proclaimed the Republic of German Austria on 12 November. The assembly presidents (Seitz, Franz Dinghofer and Johann Nepomuk Hauser) continued to serve as acting heads of state until 4 March 1919, when the National Constituent Assembly collectively assumed these functions. Anton David (4 March 1919 - 5 March 1919) and Seitz (5 March 1919 - 10 November 1920) were the presidents of the National Constituent Assembly.

Karl Seitz performed the duties of head of state according to a law of 1 October 1920, which transferred these duties to the "former president of the National Constituent Assembly" for the period from 10 November 1920, to the day of swearing-in of the first Federal President (9 December 1920). Since Austria had not finalized its decision to structure itself as a federation prior to the formal implementation of the definitive Constitution of Austria on 1 October 1920, referring to Seitz as Federal President would have been inaccurate. Austria's first Bundespräsident proper thus was Michael Hainisch, Karl Seitz' immediate successor. In a related note, many popular sources quote some more or less random date between October 1918 and March 1919 as the beginning of Seitz' tenure. While most of them are merely misleading, others are plainly wrong: even though Seitz was appointed President of the Provisional National Assembly in October 1918, it would have been impossible for him to be President of Austria as of that month, the republic not even having been proclaimed by then.

The constitution originally defined Austria to be a prototypical parliamentary republic assigning executive as well as legislative almost entirely to the parliament. The cabinet was appointed by the National Council rather than the president, who in turn was elected by the Federal Assembly rather than the people. The president's term of office was four rather than six years. The president was answerable to the Federal Assembly and, in particular, had no authority to dissolve the National Council. Not even having much actual influence on the appointment of Constitutional Court justices, the President of Austria all in all had to be content with almost exclusively ceremonial duties. It was under this constitutional framework that Michael Hainisch and Wilhelm Miklas assumed office on 9 December 1920 and 10 December 1928, respectively.

The parliamentary system prescribed by the constitution was highly unpopular, however, with the authoritarian Heimwehr movement evolving during the 1920s. The Heimwehr was in favor of a system granting more powers to the head of state and eventually daunted the political establishment into enacting an amendment which did precisely that. On 7 December 1929, the constitution was amended to give the president the sweeping executive and legislative authority he formally still has. It also called for the office to be filled by popular vote for a term of six years. The first election was scheduled for 1931. However, owing to the growing worldwide financial crisis, all parties agreed to suspend the election in favour of having Miklas reelected by parliament.

Only three years later, however, the Fatherland Front—an alliance of the Heimwehr and the Christian Social Party—tore down Austrian parliamentarism altogether, formally annulling the constitution on 1 May 1934. Though Austria now was a dictatorship in all but name, power was concentrated in the hands of the chancellor, not those of the president. Wilhelm Miklas was stripped of the powers he'd gained in 1929, but agreed to act as a fig leaf of institutional continuity anyway. He was not entirely powerless, however—during the Anschluss crisis, he provided some of the stiffest resistance ot the Nazi demands. He technically remained in office until 13 March 1938, the day Austria was annexed by Nazi Germany and thus lost sovereignty.

When Austria re-established itself as an independent nation on 27 April 1945, the party leaders forming the provisional government decided not to frame a new constitution, reverting instead to that of 1920, as amended in 1929. Even though this revision was still somewhat controversial at that point, it was part of Austria's most recent constitutional framework, giving it at least some much-needed form of democratic legitimacy, and the party chairs were afraid that lengthy discussion might provoke the Red Army then in control of Vienna to barge in. The constitution thus reenacted effective 1 May therefore still included the provision calling for a president elected by popular vote. Following the November 1945 National Council elections, however, the National Assembly temporarily suspended this provision and installed Karl Renner as the President of Austria as of 20 December. The suspension in question seems to have been motivated mainly by lack of cash: no attempt was ever made to prolong it, and the benign septuagenarian Renner had been the universally respected provisional head of state anyway. Starting with Renner's successor Theodor Körner, all presidents have in fact been elected by the people.