Everything about Schuschnigg totally explained
Kurt Alois Josef Johann Schuschnigg (
December 14,
1897 -
November 18,
1977) was an Austrian
politician who in
1934 succeeded the assassinated
Engelbert Dollfuss as
chancellor of Austria and
dictator, as leader of the regime often called
Austrofascism. In
1938, he was imprisoned in the
Dachau concentration camp, as a political prisoner, by
Nazi Germany following the
Anschluss.
Biography
Name
Schuschnigg came into a Tyrolean family of
Carinthian Slovenian descent. The family name was originally transcribed from
Slovenian Šušnik. One of his ancestors was invested with a hereditary title similar to a Baronet in 1898, so he became
Kurt Alois Josef Johann Edler von Schuschnigg. In 1919, after the downfall of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, nobility was abolished by law in the Republic of Austria, and it was no longer permitted to bear the titles, so he became
Kurt Alois Josef Johann Schuschnigg, known always as
Kurt Schuschnigg.
Early life
Schuschnigg was born in
Riva del Garda (current
province of Trento,
Italy, then part of
Austria-Hungary). He received his education at the
Stella Matutina (Jesuit School) in Feldkirch. Schuschnigg fought in the
Austro-Hungarian Army during the
First World War. After the war, he became a
lawyer in
Innsbruck.
Political career
Schuschnigg joined the
Christian Social Party and was elected to the
Nationalrat in
1927. As he didn't trust the
Heimwehr, he founded the
Ostmärkische Sturmscharen in
1930. In
1932 Dollfuss appointed Schuschnigg as his minister of justice, then in
1933 Schuschnigg became Austria's minister of education. When Dollfuss was
assassinated in
1934, Schuschnigg became Austria's new federal chancellor. At the age of 36, he's the youngest person to have ever held this position. He disbanded the Heimwehr, a national
paramilitary defence force, in October,
1936.
The Anschluss
In February 1938 at
Berchtesgaden,
Adolf Hitler forced Schuschnigg to take the Austrian Nazi leader
Arthur Seyss-Inquart into his cabinet. On Sunday,
February 20, Hitler gave a speech to the German Reichstag in which he warned that Germany would know how to protect the ten million Germans living on its borders - seven million in Austria and three million in Czechoslovakia. Four days later, Schuschnigg answered Hitler's Reichstag speech with a speech of his own in the Austrian Bundestag. Schuschnigg declared that Austria had reached the limit of concessions "where we must call a halt and say: This far and no further."
Schuschnigg attempted to regain control of the situation by arranging for a
plebiscite to be held on
13 March. However, this move was undermined when the
Wehrmacht invaded two days before the plebiscite was due to take place. Schuschnigg resigned, was imprisoned by the Nazis, and only freed by
American troops in
1945. After his arrest Schuschnigg was incarcerated in a tiny room for seventeen months while the
SS tormented him both mentally and physically. After losing 85 pounds, he spent the remainder of the war in two different concentration camps,
Dachau and
Sachsenhausen, all accounted for in his book
Austrian Requiem.
Later life
After
World War II, Schuschnigg emigrated to the
United States, where he worked as a
professor of
political science at
Saint Louis University from
1948 to
1967.
He died at
Mutters, near
Innsbruck, in 1977.
Works
- My Austria (1937)
- Austrian Requiem (1946)
- International Law (1959)
- The Brutal Takeover (1969)
- Im Kampf gegen Hitler. Die Überwindung der Anschlussidee (1969)
Further Information
Get more info on 'Schuschnigg'.
|
External Link Exchanges
Do you know how hard it is to get a link from a large encyclopaedia? Well we're different and will prove it. To get a link from us just add the following HTML to your site on a relevant page:
<a href="http://kurt_schuschnigg.totallyexplained.com">Kurt Schuschnigg Totally Explained</a>
Then simply click through this link from your web page. Our crawlers will verify your link, extract the title of your web page and instantly add a link back to it. If you like you can remove the words Totally Explained and embed the link in article text.
As long as your link remains in place, we'll keep our link to you right here. Please play fair - our crawlers are watching. Your site must be closely related to this one's topic. Any kind of spamming, dubious practises or removing the link will result in your link from us being dropped and, potentially, your whole site being banned. |
