Körber becomes Austrian prime minister

On 28 October 1916 Emperor Franz Joseph I appointed a new prime minister of the Austrian half of the monarchy. He was Ernest von Körber (also spelled Koerber in sources), until then the joint finance minister of Austria-Hungary, who had already headed the Austrian government at the beginning of the century. The office had been vacant for a week: on 21 October the prime minister, Karl Stürgkh, had been shot dead in a Vienna restaurant. The Emperor’s handwritten letter to Körber, dated 28 October, was published the next day by the official gazette, the Wiener Zeitung. Stürgkh’s ministers were to conduct current business until a new cabinet was formed. In the preceding days the government had been headed temporarily by the interior minister, Prince Konrad Hohenlohe-Schillingsfürst, who had returned to work on 23 October after two months’ sick leave. The Emperor approved the composition of the new government on Körber’s proposal on 31 October, which is why some studies give that date as the start of his second term.

A man from the past

Körber was 65. He was born in 1850 in Trento into a family of officers and officials, studied law at the University of Vienna and spent his whole life in the state administration. He was director-general of the state railways, minister of commerce and minister of the interior, and from January 1900 to the end of 1904 prime minister. At that time he was regarded as a liberal and a skilful official who tried to ease national disputes, especially the Czech-German conflict over language in Bohemia, and also sought an understanding with the Social Democrats. His ambitious programme of building railways and canals was meant to revive the economy and push national quarrels aside, but for lack of money only a small part of it was carried out. Körber too eventually had to govern mainly by decree, bypassing parliament. At the end of 1904 he resigned for health reasons.

In February 1915 he returned to politics as joint finance minister, responsible among other things for the administration of Bosnia and Herzegovina. In the disputes over the monarchy’s war aims he was a sceptic. He opposed the plans of the foreign minister, István Burián, to attach the Kingdom of Poland to the monarchy, the so-called Austro-Polish solution. He believed that a state with so complicated a constitution and national make-up would hardly bear new territories, and that autonomy for the Poles would awaken the same demands among other nations and put the dualist settlement to the test.

Hopes and tasks

After two and a half years in which Stürgkh had governed without the Reichsrat, many hoped that Körber would soften the wartime system of government. His most urgent task, however, was something else: in 1917 the economic part of the Austro-Hungarian Compromise was due for renewal and had to be negotiated with Hungary. The cabinet appointed on 31 October was therefore made up chiefly of experts on Austro-Hungarian affairs and officials. Some ministers carried over from Stürgkh’s government, among them the ministers of national defence, education and public works. Michał Bobrzyński, a historian and former governor of Galicia, became minister for Galicia, and Count Heinrich Clam-Martinic minister of agriculture.

Körber’s cabinet was the last that Franz Joseph appointed. The Emperor died on 21 November 1916, and his successor, Karl I, soon fell out with the prime minister. They quarrelled above all over the summoning of parliament, which Körber considered premature while the young emperor wanted to show himself as a constitutional ruler as soon as possible, and over concessions to Hungary. On 13 December 1916 Körber resigned, and he was succeeded by Clam-Martinic.