Page - 715 - in THE FIRST WORLD WAR - and the End of the Habsburg Monarchy, 1914 – 1918

O n 30 May 1917, the Austrian Reichsrat (Imperial Assembly) met again for the first time since 1914. To set the mood, as it were, the representatives were given registers of all emergency decrees that had been passed since 1914 : 198 in total.1629 This was followed by the formal opening in the Reichsrat chamber of the Viennese parlia- ment, and the first requests to speak. On the following day, the Emperor’s speech from the throne was read out. The words that the Monarch had selected for the occasion, and which had been elaborated by the Austrian government, had however been formulated before the Reichsrat reconvened. For this reason, they made no single reference to the statements made by the representatives in the Reichsrat on the previous day.1630 The formulations by the Emperor, which had been expected to provide an insight into how the Empire would be reorganised, were oracular, and even worse : they were vacuous. The Emperor summoned the representatives to work with him to create the conditions needed ‘in order within the framework of the unit of the state and with the secure assurance of its functions, also provide room for the free national and cultural develop- ment of the peoples who are equal before the law’. These were at best platitudes, and on this ‘day afterwards’, they were also wrong. They had been written by a Cabinet that was already finished after just five months, since the Austrian government under Prime Minister Clam-Martinic was facing failure. It was however certainly also in a position to claim successes, but this was of no interest to the representatives, who instead took him to account for everything at once. Clam-Martinic Faces Defeat Since the suspension of the Reichsrat in March 1914, and its closure on 25 July 1914, democratically passed laws had been replaced solely by imperial decrees. An act by the government granted the governors of the Austrian half of the Empire the authority to suspend basic rights and issue emergency decrees. With the aid of the emergency regulations legislation (Art. 14 of the state constitution of 1867), Count Stürgkh had passed a further, second emergency regulation act, which was used to issue 510 decrees on the control of the economy.1631 In 1915, the area of authority of the jury courts was suspended, freeing the way for example to immediately arrange hearings in military courts in cases of high treason. Kramář, too, was initially sentenced to death before a military court. From the documents that had been presented to the House of Repre-