Revolution in Vienna and Budapest

On 31 October 1918 the Habsburg monarchy fell apart in both its capitals. In Budapest, after a night in which mutinous soldiers and workers took control of the city, King Charles IV had to entrust the government to the leader of the opposition, Count Mihály Károlyi. In the evening soldiers shot the former prime minister István Tisza, the symbol of Hungary’s war policy, in his villa. In Vienna the German deputies, who the day before had adopted a provisional constitution for the new state, swore in the first government of German Austria, appointed without the emperor’s involvement. Both revolutions were almost bloodless. They took place in the days when the Austro-Hungarian army was disintegrating on the Italian front and the new foreign minister Gyula Andrássy was asking the Allies for an armistice without regard for Germany.

The Aster Revolution in Budapest

The crisis in Hungary began with the resignation of Sándor Wekerle’s government on 23 October. Two days later the left, that is Károlyi’s Independence Party, the radicals of Oszkár Jászi and the Social Democrats of Ernő Garami and Zsigmond Kunfi, formed the Hungarian National Council with Károlyi at its head. Its seat was the Hotel Astoria in Pest. On 26 October the Council issued a twelve-point proclamation in which it declared itself an opposition government. It demanded an immediate end to the war, the return of the soldiers home, a break with the alliance with Germany, full independence for Hungary, the dissolution of the Chamber and elections based on universal and secret suffrage. It did not yet speak of a republic. In the streets people demonstrated for the Council and for Károlyi as prime minister. On 28 October the police opened fire on a crowd that wanted to cross the Chain Bridge to the castle in Buda. According to various accounts three or four people were killed and several dozen wounded.

The king was then at Gödöllő near Budapest, and on 26 October he returned to Vienna. He appointed Archduke Joseph August as his plenipotentiary in Hungary. On 29 October the archduke, contrary to expectations, entrusted the task of forming a government not to Károlyi but to a conservative, Count János Hadik. The answer was strikes in the factories. On 30 October crowds poured into the streets and marched to the Astoria. Soldiers swore allegiance to the National Council and replaced the imperial and royal cockades on their caps with aster flowers, which gave the whole revolution its name. During the night the insurgents seized the most important public buildings, the railway stations, the telephone exchange and the arms depots, freed political prisoners and arrested the city commandant, General Géza Lukachich. The members of the Council, who still wanted to avoid bloodshed, spent that night in the Astoria, uncertain what the morning would bring.

At about three in the morning of 31 October Hadik resigned. He had been prime minister for only a dozen or so hours, the shortest term in Hungarian history. In the morning Archduke Joseph received Károlyi, and soon afterwards Károlyi received his appointment as prime minister from the king by telephone. The government was formed by the parties of the National Council. Its members included Jászi as minister for nationalities, Garami as minister of commerce, Kunfi as minister of social welfare and Béla Linder as minister of war. In the evening the ministers took the oath before the archduke, still in the name of King Charles. This angered the supporters of a republic, who were rapidly gaining the upper hand. The very next day the government asked to be released from its oath and took a new one before the National Council. On 16 November Hungary was proclaimed a republic.

The death of Tisza

István Tisza, prime minister of Hungary in 1913–1917, was seen by the crowd as the chief culprit of the war and all its misfortunes. Few knew that in July 1914 he alone among the monarchy’s leading politicians had long opposed war with Serbia. Afterwards, however, he waged it with iron consistency, and after his resignation in 1917 he continued to call the shots in the Hungarian parliament. On 17 October 1918 he himself admitted in the Chamber that the war was lost. There had been attempts on his life before. According to the Hungarian historian András Siklós, on 16 October an assassin from a circle of anti-war youth tried to shoot him in front of parliament, but the revolver misfired.

Towards evening on 31 October, according to most accounts at about 6 p.m., a group of armed soldiers burst into Tisza’s villa in Hermina Street in Budapest. The gendarmes guarding him were disarmed. Tisza came out to meet them with a revolver, accompanied by his wife and a relative, Countess Denise Almásy. The attackers shouted that the war had gone on for years because of him. When he put down his weapon, shots were fired. Tisza was killed on the spot, and one of the bullets wounded Countess Almásy. According to the account in the Pesti Hírlap, his last words were: “It’s over for me. It had to be so.” The perpetrators fled, and it was never fully established who they were or whether they acted on someone’s orders.

Vienna: the birth of German Austria

In Vienna the revolution took a parliamentary form. Responding to Emperor Charles’s manifesto, the German deputies to the Imperial Council met on 21 October in the Lower Austrian Diet building on the Herrengasse as the Provisional National Assembly of German Austria. They announced the creation of an independent German-Austrian state, without mentioning the dynasty. The Social Democratic leader Victor Adler declared that his party would come out in favour of a republic. Meanwhile the imperial government was losing all influence over events. On 27 October the cabinet of Max Hussarek was replaced by the government of Heinrich Lammasch, called in the press the “liquidation cabinet”.

On 30 October the Austrian Imperial Council met at 11 a.m. and after ten minutes adjourned until 12 November. That same day the National Assembly passed the resolution on the basic institutions of state power, that is the provisional constitution of the new state, which Karl Renner called a constitutional “emergency roof”. Executive power was entrusted to a 23-member State Council. The Assembly declared that only it and its organs could speak for the German Austrians in matters of foreign policy and peace negotiations. The Social Democrats sharply attacked Andrássy’s note, asking in whose name he had sent it. Great processions marched through the streets of Vienna, demanding a republic and singing revolutionary songs.

On 31 October the first government of German Austria, appointed by the State Council without any involvement of the emperor, was sworn in at the parliament building. It was headed by Renner as state chancellor, and Adler was to run foreign affairs. The government included representatives of the three great camps: the Social Democrats, the Christian Socials and the German Nationalists. Austrian historians regard this day as the actual beginning of Austria’s republican history. Formally the monarchy still existed, and the Lammasch cabinet continued alongside the new government. On 11 November Charles renounced participation in affairs of state, and the next day the Republic of German-Austria was proclaimed.