Kurt Schuschnigg

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Kurt Schuschnigg (14 December 1897 – 18 November, 1977), known as Kurt von SchuschniggThe use of the preposition "von" denoted nobility: nobility was abolished in Austria in 1919. until 1919, was an Austrian politician who in 1934 succeeded the assassinated Engelbert Dollfuss as dictator of Austria, as leader of the regime often called Austrofascism''. In 1938, he was imprisoned by Nazi Germany in the Anschluss.

Biography

Early Life

He was born in Riva del Garda (current province of Trento, Italy, then part of Austria-Hungary), and fought in the Austro-Hungarian Army during the First World War. After the war Schuschnigg became a lawyer in Innsbruck.

Political career

He joined the Christian Social Party and was elected to the Nationalrat in 1927. As he did not trust the Heimwehr, he founded the Ostmärkische Sturmscharen in 1930.

In 1932 Dollfuss appointed Schuschnigg as his minister of justice, then in 1933 Schuschnigg became Austria's minister of education.

When Dollfuss was assassinated in 1934, Schuschnigg became Austria's new federal chancellor. He disbanded the Heimwehr, a national paramilitary defence force, in October, 1936.

The Anschluss

In February 1938 at Berchtesgaden, Adolf Hitler forced Schuschnigg to take the Austrian Nazi leader Arthur Seyss-Inquart into his cabinet. On Sunday, February 20, Hitler gave a speech to the German Reichstag in which he warned that Germany would know how to protect the ten million Germans living on its borders - seven million in Austria and three million in Czechoslovakia. Four days later, Schuschnigg answered Hitler's Reichstag speech with a speech of his own in the Austrian Bundestag. Schuschnigg declared that Austria had reached the limit of concessions "where we must call a halt and say: This far and no further."

Schuschnigg attempted to regain control of the situation by arranging for a plebiscite to be held on 13 March. However, this move was undermined when the Wehrmacht invaded two days before the plebiscite was due to take place. Schuschnigg resigned, was imprisoned by the Nazis, and only freed by American troops in 1945.

Later career

After World War II, Schuschnigg emigrated to the United States, where he worked as a professor of political science at Saint Louis University from 1948 to 1967. He died in Innsbruck.

Works

• My Austria (1937)
• Austrian Requiem (1946)
• The Brutal Takeover (1969)

Notes