Abdication of Charles I

On 12 November 1918 a republic was proclaimed in front of the parliament building in Vienna. The day before, 11 November, Emperor Charles I signed at Schönbrunn Palace a declaration in which he renounced “all participation in affairs of state”, and in the evening he left Vienna with his family. In popular memory these two days merged into the “abdication” of the last Habsburg. The word, however, appeared in none of his documents, and to the end of his life Charles regarded himself as the rightful emperor. So ended nearly 640 years of Habsburg rule in Austria, two years after Charles succeeded Franz Joseph on the throne.

Two authorities in Vienna

From 31 October two authorities operated side by side in Vienna. The new state, German-Austria, had its own Provisional National Assembly, State Council and the government of State Chancellor Karl Renner. The emperor still had his cabinet under Heinrich Lammasch, which by now dealt only with the liquidation of the old state and at the beginning of November handed over to Renner the affairs of the German lands. The common Ministry of Foreign Affairs also ceased to exist in its former sense. After the departure of Gyula Andrássy on 2 November it was headed, on his predecessor’s recommendation, by Baron Ludwig von Flotow. Since Hungary had broken its union with Austria at the end of October, his task was now only to wind up the monarchy’s embassies, legations and consulates. A British chronology of the war records his appointment under 1 November.

The military capitulation was still decided in the emperor’s name. The Armistice of Villa Giusti of 3 November was signed by a commission sent by the high command, and the leaders of German-Austria refused any part in that decision. Events in Germany brought matters to a head. On 9 November the Hohenzollern monarchy was overthrown in Berlin, and the supporters of a republic in Vienna felt there was nothing left to wait for. The Social Democrats and the German Nationalists wanted a republic at once. The Christian Socials hesitated for a long time. The priest Ignaz Seipel, a minister in Lammasch’s cabinet, still imagined the emperor as a “lifelong spokesman of the people”. In the end they too abandoned the monarchy, and their leaders, together with Renner and Lammasch’s ministers, prepared a text that Charles could sign without a formal abdication. The aim was to avoid an open clash between the monarch and the representatives of the republic.

The declaration of 11 November

On 11 November, the day the guns fell silent in the West, Charles signed at Schönbrunn a declaration published the same day in an extraordinary edition of the official Wiener Zeitung. In it he assured his peoples that he still felt an “unchanging love” for all of them and did not wish his person to be an obstacle to their free development. The key sentences read: “I acknowledge in advance the decision that German-Austria will take on its future form of state. The people have taken over the government through their representatives. I renounce all participation in affairs of state.” With the same document the emperor dismissed the Lammasch government and released officials from their oath of allegiance.

The text was worded so as not to close the way back. Charles did not renounce the crown but merely withdrew from the exercise of power, hoping that the peoples of Austria or Hungary might one day wish to call him back. This was also the view of Empress Zita, to whom are attributed the words that a monarch cannot abdicate, he can only be deprived of his throne. Later Charles wrote to the Archbishop of Vienna, Cardinal Friedrich Gustav Piffl, that he had not abdicated and never would, and he compared his manifesto of 11 November to a cheque extorted from him at gunpoint by a street robber.

That evening the imperial family left Schönbrunn and moved to the hunting lodge at Eckartsau, in the Danube water meadows east of Vienna. The castle was the private property of the dynasty, not of the state. On the same day Victor Adler died of a serious heart condition. The leader of the Austrian Social Democrats and State Secretary for Foreign Affairs in Renner’s government, he had talked with the emperor and empress at Schönbrunn in the last days of his life about the transition from the old order to the new.

Proclamation of the republic

On Tuesday 12 November a public holiday was declared in Austria, and the inhabitants were called upon to take part in the proclamation. That day the Imperial Council of imperial Austria met for the last time. A tribute to Adler was delivered, and the parliament of the monarchy in effect ceased to exist. In the same building the Provisional National Assembly passed the law on the form of state and government of German-Austria. According to some sources it was passed unanimously, according to others with two votes against. The first two articles read: “German-Austria is a democratic republic. All public authority is established by the people” and “German-Austria is a constituent part of the German Republic”. The second article announced union with Germany, the Anschluss, which mattered above all to the Social Democrats and the Nationalists. The same law dissolved the former imperial and common ministries. From then on Flotow headed, with the consent of the new authorities, a “liquidating Ministry of Foreign Affairs” until its affairs were wound up in 1920.

Despite cold and rainy weather, a crowd of about 150,000, according to German-language accounts, gathered in front of the parliament. Workers came from the suburbs with a banner reading “Long live the socialist republic”, along with units of the new People’s Army and two companies of the communist Red Guard led by the journalist Egon Erwin Kisch. Shortly before 4 p.m. the presidents of the Assembly, the Nationalist Franz Dinghofer and the Social Democrat Karl Seitz, came out onto the ramp of the parliament and proclaimed the Republic of German-Austria. As the attendants hoisted the red-white-red flags, the Red Guards tore the white stripe out of them and raised the red cloths alone. Renner and Seitz also spoke.

The ceremony ended in disorder. The communist Karl Steinhardt called for a council republic and tried to force his way into the parliament with an armed group. He was stopped by the Social Democratic organiser of the People’s Army, Julius Deutsch, and party activists. The gate was closed, someone fired a shot, and the Red Guards opened fire towards the building. According to German-language accounts the fleeing crowd trampled two people to death, a man and a child, and many were injured. In the evening Kisch’s men occupied the offices of the Neue Freie Presse and forced it to print a leaflet proclaiming a socialist republic. Not even the Social Democrats supported this attempt, and it came to nothing.

What came next

The Vienna declaration concerned only Austria. On 13 November at Eckartsau Charles signed a similar document for Hungary, where a republic was proclaimed three days later. In Prague on 14 November the National Assembly declared that the Habsburgs had lost all rights to the Bohemian throne, in keeping with the path the Czechs had taken as early as 28 October. The imperial family spent the winter at Eckartsau under the protection of British officers. In March 1919 Charles left for Switzerland without abdicating, and in April the Austrian parliament deposed the Habsburgs and banished the former emperor from the country. Union with Germany was forbidden in 1919 by the Treaty of Saint-Germain-en-Laye, which also imposed a new name on the state: the Republic of Austria. 12 November was celebrated in Austria as a national holiday until the 1930s.