Emperor Charles's manifesto

On 16 October 1918 Emperor Charles I signed in Vienna the manifesto “To My faithful Austrian peoples!”, known in historiography as the Völkermanifest. It was countersigned by the prime minister, Max Hussarek von Heinlein, who had headed the Austrian government since July. The document appeared the next day in a special edition of the official Wiener Zeitung, and in the following days in translation in the press of the crown lands. In it the emperor announced the transformation of the Austrian half of the monarchy, Cisleithania, into a federal state of nations. It was the last attempt to save the Habsburg state through reform from above. Coming at least a year too late, it only hastened its disintegration.

A federation of “free peoples”

The manifesto opened with the assurance that since his accession the emperor’s aim had been peace for all his peoples, and with the statement that the monarchy stood “at the gates” of an honourable peace. Now it was necessary “to proceed without delay to the reconstruction of the Fatherland on its natural and therefore most reliable foundations”, in the spirit of the principles that the Central Powers had accepted in their peace proposal of 4 October. The most important sentence read, in the Polish translation of the time published on 19 October in the Gazeta Lwowska: “In accordance with the wish of its Peoples, Austria is to become a federal State, in which each nationality forms its own state organism in the territory it inhabits.”

The manifesto went on to stipulate that this in no way prejudged “the union of the Polish territories of Austria with the independent Polish State”. Trieste and its surroundings were to receive a separate status, in accordance with the wishes of the population. The new system was to guarantee the independence of each national state while protecting common interests. Until the changes had been carried out by legislation, all existing institutions were to continue to function unchanged, and the government was instructed to prepare the reconstruction. The emperor called on the nations to cooperate in this work through national councils composed of the deputies of each nationality to the Imperial Council. The Fatherland was to emerge “from the storm of war as a union of free Peoples”.

The road to the manifesto

Plans for the reconstruction had been drawn up since mid-September. According to the Austrian State Archives, the drafts were prepared by Johann Andreas Eichhoff, a section head in the interior ministry, in consultation with the chief of the general staff, Arthur Arz von Straußenburg. The emperor delayed until 11 October, because he was waiting for President Woodrow Wilson’s reply to the note requesting an armistice. He believed that the reform was necessary in order to conclude peace on the basis of the Fourteen Points. The tenth of them promised the peoples of Austria-Hungary “the freest opportunity of autonomous development”. At the crown council on 15 October Charles justified the reconstruction by the need for peace and demanded full state independence for the individual national territories. In his mind, therefore, the manifesto was also a gesture towards Washington.

The project met obstacles from the start. The Czechs did not want the lands of the Bohemian Crown divided along ethnic lines, and the deliberate vagueness of the text on this point only fuelled their opposition. Even before the manifesto was published, Czech representatives informed Hussarek that they rejected the transformation of Austria into a federal state. When on 15 October the prime minister wanted to read the text to the party leaders, the Czechs did not come to the meeting. The Polish leaders were in Warsaw at the time, the Ukrainians protested against the ambiguities concerning eastern Galicia, and the Yugoslavs who were present declared their solidarity with the Czechs.

Without Hungary

The manifesto did not concern Hungary, even though the national question was most acute there. It stated explicitly that the reconstruction “in no way infringes the integrity of the lands of the Holy Hungarian Crown”. According to the Austrian State Archives, Charles rejected all proposals to extend the reform to Hungary, citing his coronation oath. The foreign minister, István Burián, agreed to the new system for Austria on 15 October only on condition that Hungary’s integrity was recognised. The prime minister, Sándor Wekerle, demanded the inclusion of a clause on the rights of the Hungarian crown and openly threatened to stop deliveries of Hungarian food to Austria.

Budapest, however, did not want to share the fate of the federation. On 16 October, the day the manifesto was signed, Wekerle declared in the House of Representatives that since Austria was becoming a federal state, Hungary would henceforth be linked with it only by a personal union. His programme gave Hungary’s national minorities only language rights. The Romanian Alexandru Vaida-Voevod replied in the House by demanding full self-determination for the Romanians, and the priest Ferdinand Juriga spoke in similar terms on behalf of the Slovaks. The next day the former prime minister István Tisza admitted in parliament: “I acknowledge what the honourable member Count Mihály Károlyi said yesterday: we have lost this war.”

The nations’ answer

None of the nations the emperor addressed accepted his offer. As early as 15 October the Polish deputies in the Delegations declared on behalf of the whole Polish Club (PL) that they regarded themselves as citizens of a free and united Polish state. On 16 October the Czechs and Yugoslavs made a joint statement in the Delegations that their affairs, as international problems, could be settled only by a general peace conference. On 19 October the Czech National Committee in Prague and the Yugoslav National Council in Zagreb confirmed that they would negotiate neither with Vienna nor with Budapest. In Lviv a congress of Ukrainian politicians formed the Ukrainian National Council on 18 October, which the next day resolved to create a separate state from the Ukrainian lands of the monarchy. The Viennese Neue Freie Presse wrote on 18 October that a federal state of nations “which for the most part cannot stand one another” would not be easy to establish. According to the paper, the representatives of the nations had told Hussarek that they did not want this gift, but would themselves take as their right what he had wanted to give them.

The call to form national councils was read as imperial permission for what until recently had been regarded as high treason. Burián recalled that the effect of the manifesto was “catastrophic” and that “the floodgates had been opened”. The army order of 17 October, which thanked the soldiers for their loyalty and announced the division of the state into national states, caused consternation at the front, in his view, where soldiers of different nationalities served in almost every unit. At the same time Burián himself believed that the role of the manifesto was overrated: the disintegration had begun earlier, and the manifesto merely showed everyone a situation of which public opinion was not yet aware.

Too late

The hopes placed in Washington came to nothing. In his reply dated 18 October Wilson declared that autonomy for the monarchy’s peoples was no longer enough for him, since the United States had already recognised the Czechoslovaks as a belligerent, and that it was for the Czechoslovaks and Yugoslavs themselves to decide what would satisfy them. On 21 October the German deputies to the Imperial Council, answering the emperor’s call, met in Vienna as the Provisional National Assembly of German-Austria. The name of the Habsburgs was not mentioned once in their resolutions. By the end of October the national councils were already taking power in their own name, and Hussarek’s government resigned on 27 October. The manifesto that was meant to turn Austria into a “union of free peoples” was remembered as a kind of licence for its break-up.