Seidler resigns

On 25 July 1918 Emperor Charles I confirmed the final resignation of the whole cabinet of the Austrian prime minister Ernst Seidler and on the same day appointed Max Hussarek as the new prime minister. This is how the course of events is reconstructed by the edition of the minutes of the Austrian Council of Ministers published by the Austrian Academy of Sciences. The actual resignation had taken place three days earlier, on 22 July, and it was the Polish deputies who decided it. A month before, the emperor had rejected Seidler’s first request to resign and told him to look for a majority. That attempt failed.

The speech on the “backbone” of the state

On 16 July, after a break of two and a half months, the Chamber of Deputies of the Imperial Council met again. Above all, the government needed it to pass a provisional budget (PL) to the end of 1918. On the very first day Seidler sealed his own fate. He declared that if there could be any political course in Austria, it could only be one that ensured full protection of the legitimate interests of the German nation, because “the backbone of this multinational state is and always will be the German nation”. This outraged the Slav deputies in particular. The Polish Club (PL), which had been in opposition since the Brest-Litovsk peace with Ukraine and the handing over of the Chełm Land to the Ukrainians, and which in June in Kraków had declared war on the government, now held the casting vote.

On 20 and 21 July the Council of Ministers discussed the situation. Seidler expected that on 22 July the Poles would vote for a motion of no confidence in the budget committee, and that on 23 July a motion to impeach the government would come before the sitting of the Chamber. He still hoped that on Friday 26 July the provisional budget would pass by a small majority if its opponents did not turn up in full. He also mentioned harsh measures against parliament and government under Paragraph 14 of the constitution, which allowed decrees with the force of law to be issued. Most of the ministers were against this and came out in favour of resigning before the vote on the budget if no majority could be built.

The prime minister’s head for the budget

On 22 July the Polish Club made its consent to the provisional budget conditional on the departure of Seidler’s government. According to the introduction to the edition of the minutes, the Poles let the president of the Chamber understand that the price of their votes was the prime minister’s head. That same day Seidler tendered his resignation, explaining that he personally was the only obstacle to the conduct of state affairs, because the Poles had refused the budget not on account of the budget itself, but on his account. This time the emperor accepted it. The motion to impeach the government was in fact submitted to the Chamber that same day, a day earlier than the prime minister had expected. By a letter of 22 July the emperor dismissed the government, instructing it to carry on its duties until a new cabinet was appointed. At the farewell meeting of the Council of Ministers Seidler insisted that his political course had not been defeated. He laid the blame solely on the bitterness over the Brest-Litovsk peace and the agreements connected with it. The Chamber of Deputies was informed of the resignation on 23 July, and on 25 July Charles confirmed the final dismissal of the whole cabinet.

The Hussarek government

The new prime minister, Max Hussarek von Heinlein, a professor of canon law, had been minister of education and religious affairs in 1911–1917. He was regarded as a conservative, but he had good relations with the Poles and the Slovenes, and his appointment was not meant to signal a change of course. The cabinet remained almost the same as before. Only the prime minister changed, together with the minister of education, where Jerzy Madeyski replaced Ludwik Ćwikliński, and the minister for Galicia. In that post Juliusz Twardowski (PL) was replaced by Kazimierz Gałecki (PL), until then a section head in the finance ministry.

The Poles kept their word. On 26 July the Chamber of Deputies passed the provisional budget, and on 27 July Hussarek was able to tell his ministers that the immediate parliamentary crisis had been overcome. Seidler did not, however, disappear from politics: he soon became head of the emperor’s cabinet chancellery. Hussarek’s government lasted until the end of October, when the monarchy was already falling apart.