Clam-Martinic becomes Austrian prime minister

A week after Ernest von Koerber’s resignation Austria had a new government. On 20 December 1916 Emperor Charles I appointed Count Heinrich Clam-Martinic, until then minister of agriculture, prime minister of the Austrian half of the monarchy, and the new government was sworn in that day. This is the date given by the edition of the protocols of the Austrian Council of Ministers prepared by the Austrian Academy of Sciences. On the same day the Emperor formally dismissed Koerber’s ministers. The British chronicle of the war gives the date as 21 December, and the official Wiener Zeitung announced the appointments on 22 December. It was the first cabinet appointed by the new emperor and also Austria’s third government of the war.

An aristocrat from Bohemia

Heinrich Clam-Martinic was born on 1 January 1863 in Vienna into one of the most distinguished families of the Kingdom of Bohemia. His uncle Heinrich Jaroslav had been one of the leaders of the Bohemian nobility in the 19th century and an ally of the Czech national politicians. Heinrich Karl himself was a friend and confidant of the heir to the throne, Archduke Franz Ferdinand, with whom he travelled round the world in 1892–1893. From 1894 he sat in the Bohemian Diet, and from 1902, by the Emperor’s appointment, for life in the House of Lords, where at the end of 1913 he became leader of the conservative Right group. He opposed universal suffrage, introduced in Austria in 1907, but favoured a settlement between Czechs and Germans in Bohemia and supported attempts at one. In the war he fought as a major-general on the Russian and Italian fronts. On 31 October 1916 he entered Koerber’s government as minister of agriculture, which was taken at the time as a gesture towards the Czechs.

Several things contributed to Charles’s choice: his good knowledge of Bohemian affairs, his reputation as a man capable of compromise between the nationalities, his openness to social policy, and above all the fact that at the end of 1916 Clam-Martinic belonged to a group of members of the House of Lords demanding that Parliament be allowed to take part in government again. The Austrian Imperial Council had not sat since the spring of 1914, and Prime Minister Stürgkh had governed by decree throughout the war. Clam-Martinic also kept for himself the direction of the ministry of agriculture and responsibility for feeding the population.

A government of balance

The new prime minister drew largely on men from Stürgkh’s government, some of whom Koerber had pushed aside, and carefully balanced the cabinet by nationality. Erasmus von Handel became minister of the interior, General Friedrich von Georgi remained minister of national defence, and Max Hussarek became minister of education. Portfolios went to two Czechs, the minister of public works Ottokar Trnka and the minister of railways Zdenko Forster, and to two Germans: the minister of commerce Karl Urban, a brewery owner and deputy of the German Progressives, and the minister without portfolio Joseph Maria Baernreither, who was to prepare a new ministry of social affairs. Finance went to Alexander Spitzmüller, minister of commerce in Stürgkh’s government, who after Koerber’s resignation had been temporarily entrusted with the chairmanship of the Council of Ministers and, according to some sources, also with the task of forming a government.

Poles were among the ministers. The historian Michał Bobrzyński remained minister for Galicia, the only one of Koerber’s new men whom Clam-Martinic kept in the government. The edition of the Council of Ministers’ protocols also counts the new minister of justice, Baron Józef Schenk, among the Poles. After the Act of 5 November the Polish question was one of the most difficult for the government. The old emperor had then promised Galicia wider autonomy, and the German parties in Austria had long demanded that Galicia be separated from the common parliament. Without the Polish deputies they counted on a permanent majority in the Imperial Council.

Hopes and disappointments

Clam-Martinic wanted to govern under the slogan “Let us be Austrians above all!” and to draw all the nationalities into cooperation with the state. The Czechs, however, received him with reserve. In October they had welcomed his appointment as minister, but by December word had spread that his views had shifted markedly towards German demands. They were also alarmed that two German ministers favoured dividing Bohemia into districts by nationality, which Czech politicians did not accept. It soon emerged that the prime minister and some of those around him were considering so-called octrois, that is, introducing such changes by decree before Parliament met.

Clam-Martinic’s government lasted half a year. The Imperial Council did not meet again until 30 May 1917, and at its first sitting the representatives of the monarchy’s nationalities, among them Czechs, Poles and South Slavs, made declarations that foreshadowed their future aims. The government lost the support of the Poles, failed to win the confidence of the Czechs and disappointed the Germans. On 23 June 1917 it was replaced by the cabinet of Ernst Seidler, and Clam-Martinic became military governor of occupied Montenegro.