Page - 995 - in THE FIRST WORLD WAR - and the End of the Habsburg Monarchy, 1914 – 1918

The Dissolution Begins 995 A 20-member national committee was to assume government and administration and prepare a constituent national assembly. The Germans of Austria were preparing them- selves for the breakup. It was not yet known, however, whether there would be a total breakup. As a state entity, Austria-Hungary would also have had a certain size in the form of a confeder- ation of states. In order to preserve cohesion, might in territorial terms was too little  – actual power was also required. And this was no longer the case. When the Emperor’s Hymn, the so-called ‘national anthem’, was played in Debrecen, there was uproar.2457 In Budapest, there were open demonstrations. On 20 Octobet, Count Károlyi demanded the conclusion of an immediate peace, the transportation home of the Hungarian sol- diers and the appointment of a Hungarian foreign minister. The latter sounded odd, since Count Burián was Hungarian. What the radical Magyars meant by this, however, was that as a result of the reduction of Austria-Hungary to a personal union, the joint ministries had also come to an end. Burián resigned. The Emperor, however, named a new joint foreign minister and minister of the imperial household, namely Count Gyula Andrássy. He was the son of the Gyula Andrássy who had concluded the Dual Alliance Treaty with Bismarck in 1879 ; he was furthermore the father-in-law of Count Károlyi. Andrássy only saw one way out : the revocation of the Dual Alliance and the conclu- sion of a separate peace. He was of one mind with Tisza, who had called into question the maintenance of the alliance with the German Empire because the Czechs and the southern Slavs, i.e. more than half of the Austrian half of the Empire, were inclined towards the Entente.2458 Suddenly, the groups that had been so active in 1917 and had wanted to mediate a separate peace were once more on the scene : the Meinl group, but also the somewhat untransparent Ładisław von Skrzyński, who had played an im- portant role in the initiation of contacts of von Mensdorff and Smuts. He telegraphed Vienna on 24 October 1918 to the effect that France and Great Britain had a particular interest in Austria : France did not want the German Empire to be expanded to include German-Austria following the collapse of the Dual Monarchy. Great Britain was in- terested in a loose confederation of states under the leadership of the Habsburgs, but would have been as equally unwilling as France to do something for Austria as long as it remained the ally of the German Empire.2459 This was, however, at best ‘old hat’. Who was to put it to the test ? Emperor Karl was the most likely candidate, or by necessity the Minister Andrássy. Whilst the government crisis still smouldered in Hungary, An- drássy had found a new dialogue partner, since the Emperor had appointed Heinrich Lammasch as Austrian Prime Minister on 25 October.2460 Lammasch was perhaps not the Emperor’s ‘first choice’, since Emperor Karl had initially offered Karl Renner the post of Austrian prime minister and evidently wanted to take a similar path to Germany, where Social Democrats had also joined the gov-