Schmerling, Anton von#

b. Vienna, Aug. 23, 1805, d. Vienna, May 23, 1893. Law scholar and liberal politician. 1848 member of the Frankfurter Nationalversammlung, there Minister of the Interior, then Prime Minister (Minister Praesident) - (stepped down in Dec. 1848); 1849-1851 Minister of Justice, 1851-1858 President of the Senate (Senatspraesident) at the Supreme Court. 1860-1865 at the head of the government (as State Minister because Archduke Rainer was official Prime Minister), then replaced the federalist Oktoberdiplom by the centralist February Patent and governed with this constitution, supported only by the German Liberal Party (Deutsch Liberale) in the Abgeordnetenhaus (Chamber of Deputies - popularly called S. theatre), and against the growing opposition of the Hungarians and the Slav peoples, who finally overthrew him; president of the Supreme Court, after 1879 at the head of the opposition in the Upper Chamber of Parliament against what he regarded as the federalist policy of E. Count Taaffe. The S. era brought about the Protestantism, Imperial Decree on (1861), a law on the protection of a number of basic rights for Protestants (1862), the Frankfurter Fuerstentag (1863) and Austria´s participation in the German-Danish War (1864).

Literature#