AUSTRIA: Eve of Renewal

(See front cover)

From the lacy steeple of the Stephans-dom in the centre of the parish churches in the suburbs, all the bells of Vienna bonged out in Jubilee last week. A great glittering crowd had assembled in the sweeping crescent of the Heldenplatz before the former Imperial Palace. Hemmed in by glittering buttons and braid and feathers of the entire diplomatic corps, sat enthroned three scarlet-robed Cardinals and their Brother-in-God the Papal Legate from Rome. Bands played, a choir sang Schubert’s Deutsche Messe and, grave with emotion, little Chancellor Dollfuss stepped forward and laid a wreath at the ornate bronze equestrian statue to Prince Eugene of Savoy, who helped defend Vienna in 1683.

The celebration, last of a series that has been going on all summer, was officially to celebrate the 250th anniversary of that victory. Everyone in the crowd, and all Europe, knew that it celebrated another, more immediate victory for the Dollfuss Government. While choir boys shrilled Schubert’s mass, only a few blocks away a number of disgruntled young Nazis under police guard were on their hands & knees, picking up one by one paper swastikas that they had scattered in the streets. This was the first crow of triumph that the Dollfuss Government has permitted itself since its struggle against Hitlerism began.

The Siege-From the beginning of his administration, when Naziism held the sympathy of about 50% of the Austrian people, it has been the strategy of Chancellor Dollfuss to fight the lush promises of Adolf Hitler with a revival of Austrian patriotism. It was not an easy job. Austria has a colorful, scarcely a’ glorious history. She never won a war without the assistance of powerful allies. The Habsburg Emperors gained at various times control of over half Europe by the practical but not very inspiring habit of marrying heiresses, but there was one time when Austria was truly great, when Vienna saved Europe. In 1683 the Turks under Sultan Mohammed IV made a last attempt to conquer Western Europe. An army of 400,000 men swept into Hungary and across the Danube to camp under the gates of Vienna. They never got inside. Vienna’s defenses were in the hands of a peruked gallant, Count Rüdiger von Starhemberg, who had under him a man destined to be one of the world’s great generals, Prince Eugene of Savoy. Again the victory was not truly Austria’s. What sent the Turkish legions pell mell back across the plains of Hungary was the arrival of the galloping lancers of King John Sobieski of Poland. Whoever won it, it was a great victory. Western Europe was saved for Christianity. The Turks never returned, but they left behind them things to enrich the world: coffee to start the first café in Vienna, the first lilac bushes in the west.

The 250th anniversary of that siege was just what the Dollfuss Government needed. A great memorial exhibition was set up in Vienna’s Belvedere Palace, full of hats, gloves, maps, swords and other relics of Prince Eugene and Count von Starhemberg. Colored prints and picture books were issued. In mountain villages prizes were given for Austrian peasant costumes. Orators made speeches. And it worked. Week by week, hundreds of serious young Austrians who had felt that the only hope for their country was immediate political and economic union with Germany, have felt increasing affection for their own red-&-white-striped banner.

Turning of the Tyrol. At the end of April there were municipal elections in Innsbruck, capital of the Tyrol. Austrian Nazis polled twelve times their strength in 1931. Observers admitted that the Tyrol was probably 75% pro-Nazi. Since then has come Chancellor Dollfuss’ personal success at the London Economic Conference, the patriotism campaign, the winning of the right to increase Austria’s army, Germany’s virtual embargo on tourists to Austria, her unbelievably stupid border skirmishing in which she alienated thousands by killing several Austrian frontier guards, and the active fortification of the Austrian frontier (TIME, Sept. 18). Last week tight-lipped Major Emil Fey, Minister of Public Safety, was able to crow to correspondents:

“Don’t worry about the Tyrol. . . . When they [the Nazis] come over singly, we take them singly and deal with them. If they come over in force we shall fight them in force. . . . Beside the regular troops we have between 60,000 and 70,000 trained Heimwehr men, and we have arms for them in our magazines.”

Dollfuss. What is left of Austria is four-fifths pure scenery, a great patch of jagged mountains, pine forests and narrow little valleys. Along the southern bank of the Danube and sweeping round Vienna is a narrow crescent of good farm land that is supposed to feed a city of 2,000,000 souls. Almost in the centre of this arable crescent, in the village of Texing, province of Lower Austria, Engelbert Dollfuss was born Oct. 4, 1892. There his black-shawled old mother and his stepfather still live. Who his father was foreign correspondents have been unable to prove and his adherents will not say. He graduated from the University of Vienna law school, studied National Economy in Berlin. At the outbreak of the War, Engelbert Dollfuss promptly enlisted in the Kaiserschützenregiment, a corps of Tyrol Alpinists.

Little Engelbert Dollfuss got his fill of mountains. He served 37 months at the front (six times as much active service as the average U. S. soldier saw), won himself a string of decorations and the edelweiss embroidered collar tabs, the capercailzie plumes of a First Lieutenant.* Considering his peasant upbringing and uncertain antecedents, this promotion, in the extremely aristocratic army of Franz Josef, was a notable achievement. For months at a time Lieut. Dollfuss and his men held a tiny valley in the Dolomites against the Italian advance. Natives near Trent still call it Dollfussthal (Dollfuss Valley).

After the War Lieut. Dollfuss went back to his farmers, became Secretary of the Lower Austrian Bauernbund or Farmers’ League, began organizing a farmers’ co-operative trade union, which was later to become one of the country’s most important political parties. Railroads are vital to Austrian farmers. In 1930 the farmers got him a seat on the State Railway Board; by October he was President of the Federal Railways. Next year saw him Minister of Agriculture & Forestry in the Cabinet of Chancellor Otto Ender (now Minister-without-portfolio in the Dollfuss Cabinet) and he held the job through the Government of Chancellor Buresch. In May 1932 that fell, and kindly old President Wilhelm Miklas called on 39-year-old Engelbert Dollfuss to form a Government. He gave no answer, but went to his favorite church and spent the entire night in prayer. In the morning he went home, bathed, shaved, ate a steaming bowl of his favorite potato soup with whipped cream, and accepted.

Hirtenberg. Last February the Great Powers realized for the first time what steel is in the spine of this little fellow who looks like a cross between Actor Ernest Truex and a French bull pup. Italy, busily weaving Austria and Hungary into his chain of military alliances against France and the Little Entente, had sent some 50,000 rifles and 200 machine guns to be “repaired” at the factory in Hirtenberg near Vienna where they were made (see map p. 15). France and Britain “discovered” that these arms were actually bound for Hungarian troops. They sent a sharp ultimatum to the Dollfuss Government that the arms must be either returned or destroyed, and, moreover, that the Austrian Chancellor must submit a sworn statement from the Austrian customs that the arms had recrossed the frontier, or evidence that they had been destroyed.

Chancellor Dollfuss approached the British and French Legations, asked them to withdraw the note. They refused. Promptly he summoned Parliament to extraordinary session, invited the foreign Press, read the entire secret ultimatum, and slapped it down on the rostrum in front of him with the statement that Austria, a sovereign nation, does not answer such notes at all. Four months later Engelbert Dollfuss was in Britain, a darling of the British Press & public during the World Economic Conference. But in the meantime the world had awakened to the folly and menace of Hitlerism. Today no one can pluck the capercailzie on Dollfuss’ cap without plucking the Roman eagle, the French cock, the British lion as well. Six months after the note on smuggled arms, these allies gave Dollfuss permission to enlarge Austria’s army by 36% (TIME, Sept. 11).

“My Conscience.” Four feet eleven inches high is Engelbert Dollfuss, and he weighs less than 125 lb. His nickname, “Millimetternich,” is an affectionate reference to physical smallness combined with political sagacity. His clothes are neat, impeccably brushed but of slightly archaic cut that smacks of the wheat fields and the Bauernbund. His most noticeable characteristics are his smile, which is constant, and the strength of his fingers. Like most Austrians he is a politely limp handshaker, but to hearty knuckle-grinders he can return a grip of steel. In the Dollfuss character, nothing is so important as his ardent, almost fanatical Catholicism. Each morning, before going to the same big sunny office in the Chancellery that Prince Metternich used, he prays for half an hour. Just before church comes his exercise, on his knees too. With his brown-haired German wife Elwine looking on, he plays horsie for half an hour with their two chubby and attractive children: Eva, 5, and Rudolf (better known as Rudi), 2. But Chancellor Dollfuss’ Catholicism is studded with Calvinistic phrases. He is devoid of personal ambition, believes himself directly inspired by God. Correspondents figure that when explaining his policies he uses the phrase “according to my conscience” at least once every ten minutes. Dollfuss, incidentally, like equally devout President Alcala Zamora of Spain, is one of the few statesmen who never prepare a speech, rarely use notes, never stutter at a loss for words. His speeches, like Calvinist sermons, are “directly inspired” too.

Policies. Engelbert Dollfuss took office determined that Austria’s independence shall be preserved. Because Adolf Hitler is determined to end that independence, Dollfuss fights Naziism tooth & nail. Foreign Hitler haters who bury Chancellor Dollfuss with verbal roses are apt to forget that this does not mean that he disapproves of all aspects of Naziism. Firmly as any brownshirt he believes that the Jewish-Socialist Government that ran Vienna for 14 years nearly ruined city and state. He has small use for parliaments. On the other hand as a Christian he has consistently opposed feeding Austrian Nazis their own medicine, such as terrorist raids and barbed wire concentration camps for political prisoners. There will be no open anti-Semitism from any Government of which Engelbert Dollfuss is Chancellor. More subtly, his Minister of Defense, elderly General Karl Vaugoin last week issued a general order. A crucifix must be hung in every room of every military barracks, a picture of the Virgin Mary must be embroidered, painted or printed on all regimental flags, all battalion and company guidons.

Starhemberg. Of the thousands who have rallied round Chancellor Dollfuss, three men are important. Prince Ernst Rüdiger von Starhemberg, a smooth-cheeked, smiling young man, has the same name, the same temperament as his ancestor who led the defense of Vienna in 1683. An out-&-out Fascist, he has spent most of his great fortune founding, drilling, equipping the Heimwehr that is now the backbone of the Dollfuss Government. Once a friend of Adolf Hitler, he fought beside him in the Munich “Beer Hall Putsch” of 1923, broke away when he suddenly realized that Handsome Adolf was committed not only to the conquest of Germany but the absorption of Austria. He is still titular head of the Heimwehr but the direction of it has been quietly taken out from under him by one of his own lieutenants, the Heimwehr commander of the Vienna district, Major Emil Fey, who is in addition Austria’s Minister of Public Safety.

Fey. Major Fey is the sort of character that feature writers love. Hawk-nosed, with a mouth like a wolftrap. Major Fey has a war record even more gallant than that of his Chancellor. There is in the Austrian Army a decoration that could exist in no other country. Marie Antoinette’s smart mother the Empress Maria Theresa realized that the Habsburg Archdukes who commanded her divisions were not military geniuses. She established a medal, open to anyone, from general to corporal, who in wartime should carry out a maneuver against the orders of his superiors and should succeed. The number of aspirants is limited by the assurance that should they fail they face a firing squad. On the tunic of Major Fey hangs the Maria Theresa Order. He still believes in direct action. The Heimwehr is officially unarmed, but its officers carry a supple, square-edged bludgeon of raw oxhide known as an ochsenknüttel. During the great Heimwehr parade of last May, when Chancellor Dollfuss wore his wartime uniform for the first time (TIME, May 29) Major Fey, Minister of the Austrian Government, knocked three Nazis unconscious with his own ochsenknüttel. For months wiseacres have spotted him as the country’s future dictator, a post that the two-fisted Major does not want. He is still personally loyal to Engelbert Dollfuss, wants him to be the Dictator leaving the Major in the post he holds now, the fist of the dictatorship, freed from its responsibilities. For Prince von Starhemberg, his immediate superior, he has an ideal solution. Like Hungary, he would make Austria a kingless monarchy, with Starhemberg taking a place like Hungary’s Horthy as Regent.

Winkler. President of the Agrarian League that put Chancellor Dollfuss in office is Vice Chancellor Franz Winkler, leader of the Dollfuss’ peasant adherents. Dr. Winkler and his followers join with the Heimwehr in opposing Naziism and Socialism, but they fear a permanent Fascist dictatorship for a special reason. The Heimwehr is an aristocratic institution, backed by Austria’s great landowners. Should Austria’s incessant crises ever end the Agrarian League would make the rights of peasant landowners its chief plank.

Corporative State. Twelve days ago in the midst of the Siege of Vienna celebration, Chancellor Dollfuss gave warning that the old Austrian Democracy was completely dead. Orating at Vienna’s huge racetrack, he said:

“The old Parliament with the old leaders, is gone, never to return. The period of Socialist misguidance is over. We will build up a Catholic German State which will be thoroughly Austrian upon a corporative basis. It will be an authoritarian State based on corporations formed on occupational lines, but we decline coordination and terrorism. At the beginning of autumn we stand on the eve of renewal of our country.”

Prince von Starhemberg and Dr. Winkler rushed off in opposite directions to interpret this speech in terms of their own particular beliefs.

Nazis. At Graz, where Vice Chancellor Winkler spoke, he was quickly reminded that there are still Nazis in Austria. Dozens of them rioted at the meeting place, setting off smoke bombs, ringing bells, roaring “Deutschland über Alles,” until 100 were arrested, 20 injured. In spite of diplomatic protests, the Nazi radio station at Munich continued its series of evening blasts against the Dollfuss Government. The speeches given by different Nazi spokesmen every evening are particularly annoying to Austrian officials because they know that almost every Austrian farmer listens to them. They come on at 9 p. m. immediately after an excellent, accurate and extremely useful weather forecast for all Southern Germany and Austria. Bottles filled with Nazi leaflets no longer came down the Danube (TIME, Sept. 18), but Austrian Nazis have discovered a new game. With a nail, hammer and patience it is possible to change the geometric design on Austrian five and two groschen copper pieces to a swastika. The Treasury announced that these mutilated coins would not be accepted as legal tender. Most amusing was the Battle of the Bands. On the frontier near Innsbruck stands a great mountain, the Zugspitze. Up the Bavarian side clambered a sweating, puffing Nazi brass band. Up the other side went the band of Vienna’s favorite Deutschmeister regiment. Near the summit both bands proceeded to frighten eagles from their eyries by blaring Nazi and Austrian patriotic songs, simultaneously.

*The capercailzie, or cock of the woods, is a large grey & black gamebird with red-rimmed eyes, now rare but found intermittently from Siberia to the Pyrenees. In the spring the male amazes observers and the female by standing on the tips of trees making extraordinary sounds and gestures. In winter it feeds exclusively on pine needles, tastes of turpentine. The short, iridescent, curling tail feathers, highly prized for Tyrolean hat ornaments, though called capercailzie plumes, actually come from its smaller cousin the blackcock.