Page - 39 - in THE FIRST WORLD WAR - and the End of the Habsburg Monarchy, 1914 – 1918

The Socialisation of Violence 39 Unser letzter Kampf. Das Vermächtnis eines alten kaiserlichen Soldaten (‘Our Last Battle : The Legacy of an Old Imperial Soldier’). The author, as was soon discovered, was a young officer of the General Staff, a captain in the General Staff Corps by the name of Hugo Kerchnawe. In this book, he summarised the symptoms of crisis in an almost visionary manner. In the novel, voting rights demonstrations and enormous political tensions within Austria-Hungary led to a state crisis, which was exploited by foreign powers. There was a war. Austria received help from the German Empire. Finally, how- ever, German troops marched in, ending the existence of old Austria. It was a utopian novel and a vision with a very real factual basis. In some respects, it anticipated what was to come over the next thirty years. It may have been that Kerchnawe had heard rumours that in the event of large-scale domestic unrest, the possibility had been raised that German troops would be deployed to Austria-Hungary.68 The vision of the last battle of the Monarchy was ever-present, and particularly in political circles, debate now centred solely on whether Austria-Hungary was capable of fighting this battle at all, or whether it would disintegrate piece by piece without a fight. This question, posed time and again, of how Austria-Hungary might succeed or fail to continue as an entity, would however only partially lead to systematic speculation on its demise. In November 1908, Baron Max Wladimir Beck, probably the last prime minister of Cisleithania before the war to carry any weight, was ousted. He had not only made an enemy of the heir to the throne but also of the Christian Socialist Party and had lost his laboriously held majority in the Reichsrat. Beck’s successor was Baron Richard von Bienerth. In Prague, martial law had been in force for some time, and what had initially appeared to have been brought to a halt, namely the internal collapse of the Monarchy, particularly of Cisleithania, continued unabated. Bienerth was succeeded in office by Baron Paul Gautsch von Frankenthurn. In November 1911, he was in turn replaced by Count Karl Stürgkh,69 whose strongest assets were regarded as his skills in accom- modation and mediation.70 However, these assets were only of limited benefit. When nobody was any longer interested in accommodation and his attempts at mediation were rejected, no amount of conciliation could help. In terms of intellectual capacity and political skill, he lagged far behind Beck, and when the nationalities conflict again escalated and the session of the Austrian Reichsrat ended in obstruction and screaming matches, Stürgkh could think of no other remedy than to adjourn the Reichsrat and rule by emergency decree. From March 1914 onwards, the laws of Cisleithania were only accomplished with the aid of § 14 of the ‘December Constitution’ of 1867, in other words, the emergency degree clause.71 However, the suspension of the Reichsrat in Austria was by no means received with shock. It had been anticipated for a long time, certainly since 1912. The Emperor and the heir to the throne had decided to take this step since the political conditions had become increasingly chaotic.72 A state of near