Page - 963 - in THE FIRST WORLD WAR - and the End of the Habsburg Monarchy, 1914 – 1918

The Penultimate Cabinet of Habsburg Austria 963 ship à la Stürgkh, it would have been necessary to rule by means of imperial edicts. The ministers of an Austrian Cabinet would have been exclusively radical representatives of the German nationalist camp. The population was to be kept in check by the police and, above all, the military. This did not augur well. Then, a solution came that was in fact unexpected. The Polish Club informed the Speaker of the House of Representatives that it would approve the next provisional budget, but only on condition that Seidler finally resign. Seidler did so immediately, and the Emperor also accepted the resignation of the Cabinet. Nonetheless, the Czechs still seized the opportunity to continue to demand and justify a ministerial denouncement. Although they remained in the minority, since some of the Poles stayed away from the voting and the issue had become out of date anyway, the end of the Seidler government could hardly have been more spectacular.2331 It in any case concurred with the secrete debate on the Piave battle, in which accusation upon accusation rained down, and no holds were barred even towards the Emperor, and the Empress in particular. The ‘Ital- ians’ were almost flagrantly accused of treason. The hour of the demagogues had arrived. At the moment of his resignation, it emerged that Seidler had clearly acted with the full agreement of Emperor Karl, since the Emperor not only named him his Chief of Staff, but also requested that ‘the course pursued by Seidler’ should be continued.2332 This request was made by the same emperor who was regarded as the inheritor of the principles propounded by Archduke Franz Ferdinand, an emperor who sought an understanding with the Slavs, achieved a return to parliamentarianism in Austria and who one year previously had made every effort to loosen the bonds with the German Empire ; an emperor who just a few months before had attempted to conclude a peace, and who in light of the negotiations with Russia had threatened that Austria-Hungary would sign a separate peace. Now, all that no longer applied. However, there was one issue on which Karl had not changed his position : he was not prepared to accept a restriction on his civilian and military authority. For this rea- son, the man nominated as Seidler’s successor was not perhaps an influential, high-pro- file politician, but one who had parliamentary experience, and who had good relations with non-German politicians, but who was forbidden to pursue any significant polit- ical goals, and who was to be unconditionally subordinate to the German course. The choice fell on the former Minister of Education, Max Hussarek von Heinlein. As his immediate political goals, Hussarek named a Polish-Ruthenian Compromise and a modus vivendi with the southern Slavs. In this regard, however, the Emperor pointed out that agreement with the Hungarians should be sought, and this in effect made his plans impossible to realise. Hussarek claimed that it must be possible to reach an agreement with the Poles and Ruthenians and southern Slavs, since the Czechs would be isolated. Then, the Catholic Bohemians and Moravians would support the government ; in this way, a federalist programme could be realised. Such considerations