Minutes of the cabinet Figl I

The scholarly commented complete edition of the Minutes of the Cabinet Figl I (Protokoll des Ministerrates der Regierung Figl I) will provide fundamental source material concerning the first years of the Second Republic. Members of the Government dealt - often in great openness - with problems of foreign, domestic and economic policy . Therefore, the Minutes of the Cabinet Meetings constitute an important contribution to the reconstruction and renewal of state and political organs of the Second Republic. In an hitherto unavailable measure both opposition and consensus in discussions among the Members of the Government concerning particular problems can be pursued; this is especially useful since general access to the archival sources is still prohibited. In the framework of the research project it is initially intended to prepare the first two out of ten volumes of the projected edition: Vol. 1 - Minutes of Cabinet Meetings No.1 from 20 December 1945 to No.16 of 9 April 1946; Vol. 2 - Minutes of Cabinet Meetings No.17 from 16 April 1946 to No.41 of 22 October 1946. The edition is intended to represent the continuation of the Cabinet Minutes of the Provisional Renner Government and is to make it possible to compare the Renner Government (1945) with the Figl Government. Entirely different problems had to be mastered by the Government of Figl. Among others, the relations between the Government and the occupation forces changed significantly. Thus the Minutes of the Cabinet Figl I provide evidence that the Government definitely enjoyed the less freedom of movement than the Renner Government as objections of the occupation forces, which had in the meantime grown fourfold, became increasingly frequent. Never the less, the freedm of action of the Figl Government certainly exceeded the legal status of the Allied Occupation Administration in comparison e.g. with Germany. Discussions concerning economic problems occasionally took a much more dramatic course than during 1945. In foreign policy South Tyrol became a permanent item on the agenda. At the same time, the first detailed considerations concerning a State Treaty appeared. The continuation of the edition of the Minutes of the Renner Cabinet with the planned edition of the Minutes of the Cabinet Figl (Ministerprotokolle der Regierung Figl) would not only present new knowledge and insights about the reconstruction phase of the Second Republic but it would also contribute towards increasing research opportumties. The edition of these sources would not only be a fund for scholarly research but it would also provide researchers with references to avaible archive material, respectively inform about missing/unavailable sources. This would. save time not only of the staff of the archives, but also of users/researchers who would otherwise conduct extensive individual searches. At the same time, such an edition would stimulate further research project. Last but not least, the planned research project would present an essential, long overdue basis for an international comparison of the political, social and economic starting point in Europe after the Second World War.