Page - 601 - in THE FIRST WORLD WAR - and the End of the Habsburg Monarchy, 1914 – 1918

On the Convention of the Austrian Parliament 601 The government of the Austrian half of the Empire was increasingly encircled : almost traditionally from the side of the nationalities, their representatives and parties, but also from the side of the population, which began to make it clear that it did not want to bear the pressure much longer. It was encircled by foreign policymakers and, finally, by the military administration. But Stürgkh reacted only very slowly. He could, above all, not bring himself to recall the Reichsrat. Before it came to this, Austria should be changed to such an extent that a blockade of his parliament institutions could not occur again. Occasionally, it seemed as though one could catch a glimpse of a first feature of po- litical decay in the anyhow hesitant preliminary considerations for the re-establishment of the functionality of the Austrian parliament.1383 This does not take into account, however, Hungary’s tendency to become independent, nor the desertion of Czechs and Ruthenians, which had long since provided a glimpse of the political decomposition. Certainly, however, deliberations on the removal of the Galician and Dalmatian rep- resentatives from the Austrian parliament increased in autumn 1916. This was linked above all to the fact that the position of Poland was in the process of being re-defined. And this much was clear : there should be a Kingdom of Poland, which was to be estab- lished above all from the current Russian Poland. Poland was to become a hereditary monarchy with dual dependence on the German Empire and Austria-Hungary. It was to receive its own army, whose high command would be in German hands, in accord- ance with the agreements already reached between Germany and Austria-Hungary in August 1916.1384 For the duration of the war, however, Poland was to remain an occu- pied territory and base area. The Foreign Minister, Count Burián, had only opposed the German wishes for a complete integration of the new Kingdom of Poland into the German economic space. But evidently no-one objected to the creation here of a pecu- liar cripple, since the new kingdom with dual dependence would have comprised only the Russian, but not the Austrian and German territories of Poland. The government in Vienna did, however, hold out the prospect of giving Galicia an increased degree of autonomy.1385 This was precisely the point that was to then in the long term bring about the withdrawal of Galicia from the Reichsrat. In Stürgkh’s eyes, this was a prerequisite for the reconvention of parliament. The second important change was to be in relation to the status of Bosnia and Herzegovina. Whether it would be attached to the Hun- garian half of the Empire or included in a southern Slav solution, was not yet clear, but it seemed only sensible to incorporate Dalmatia in this. This landmass would thus also have withdrawn from the parliament of the Austrian half of the Empire. As a result  – and this certainly played a special role in the deliberations  – the Germans would have become the strongest faction by far in the Reichsrat and would have been able to hold the remaining nationalities, and above all the Czechs, at bay. In view of the increasingly strong influence of the German Empire on Austrian interests and the related German