Documents on Austrian Foreign Policy 1918-1938

Research project P 14013 Documents on Autrian Foreign Policy 1918-1938 Arnold SUPPAN 24.01.2000 The edition "Außenpolitische Dokumente der Republik Österreich 1918-1938", briefly called ADÖ, gives the reader detailed background information about Austrian foreign policy between the two World Wars. The aim of the series is to document the conduct of external policy, the political decisions and decision-making and the diplomatic activity of the First Austrian Republic. The collection of the most important sources should demonstrate as well the sometimes close connexion between foreign policy and domestic policy withall the economic, legal, social, cultural and military aspects and effects. Unlike the examination of the Austrian domestic policy during the inter-war period, an equivalent appraisal of foreign policy of the Viennese Ballhausplatz has been lacking in international historiography for a long time. We have known merely the few "big facts" of Austrian external relations. But there was actually only little documentation on foreign policy. So this new series should help the historian and the non-specialist reader to understand, value and analyse the composition of the structure of foreign policy making. ADÖ is edited by three independant historians, Arnold Suppan, Klaus Koch and Walter Rauscher, in co-operation with the Austrian Institute of East and Southeast European Studies, Vienna. The works have started in the summer of 1990. The series is intended to run to twelve volumes. In 1993 the first one was published by R. Oldenbourg. Three volumes have already followed. The edition publishes not merely sources of the Federal Chancellery and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. In addition to them it issues relevant material of other ministries (e.g. for the interior, for traffic, trade or national defence), of the Cabinet, the Parliament and the most import= political parties as far as foreign affairs are concerned. This method is doubtlessly one of the special features of the Austrian edition. Thus the issued material comes mainly from several departments of the Austrian Federal Archive, Vienna (,,Österreichisches Staatsarchiv"): There the Archive of the Republic (,,Archiv der Republik") is the main archive for any research on Austrian foreign policy after the disintegration of the Dual Monarchy. But the edition uses also materials of the Archive of General Administration (,,Allgemeines Verwaltungsarchiv"), the Wararchive (,,Kriegsarchiv") and the Partyarchive (,,Parteiarchiv"). Some of the documents come also from the Archive of the Austrian Parliament (,,Österreichisches Parlamentsarchiv") and from the Archive of the Association for the History of the Austrian Working-Class Movement (,,Archiv des Vereins für die Geschichte der österreichischen Arbeiterbewegung"). In every volume the user finds treaties, drafts of treaties, international agreements, memoranda (some of them in French or English), directives, instructions, notes of meetings, dispatches, reports, telegrams, telephone dispatches and private papers. The volumes contain also protocols and, records about the sessions of the national assembly with certain interpellations motions or, manifestos. They cover the debates in the main, committee and the committee for Foreign Affairs as well. Last but not least the meetings of the Cabinet and of the most important parliamentary parties, like the Social Democrats, the Christian Socials and the Pan Germans, are published too. The published documents illustrate on the one hand the totally changed relationship of the new Austrian Republic with its old neighbours like Germany, Italy and Switzerland. They demonstrate on the other hand Austria`s foreign relations with the successor states of the old monarchy Hungary, Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia, last but not least its contacts with the Great Powers, their allies and the neutral states.

The edition "Außenpolitische Dokumente der Republik Österreich 1918-1938 (ADÖ)", gives the reader detailed background information about Austrian foreign policy between the two World Wars. The aim of the series is to document the conduct of external policy, the political decisions and decision-making and the diplomatic activity of the First Austrian Republic. The collection of the most important sources should demonstrate as well the sometimes close connexion between foreign policy and domestic policy with all the economic, legal, social, cultural and military aspects and effects. Unlike the examination of the Austrian domestic policy during the inter-war period, an equivalent appraisal of foreign policy of the Viennese Ballhausplatz has been lacking in international historiography for a long time. We have known merely the few "big facts" of Austrian external relations. But there was actually only little documentation on foreign policy. So this new series should help the historian and the non-specialist reader to understand, value and analyse the composition of the structure of foreign policy making. ADÖ is edited by Arnold Suppan, Klaus Koch and Walter Rauscher at the Austrian Institute of East and Southeast European Studies, Vienna. The works have started in the summer of 1990. The series is intended to run to twelve volumes. In 1993 the first one was published by R. Oldenbourg. Four volumes have already followed. The edition publishes not merely sources of the Federal Chancellery and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. In addition to them it issues relevant material of other ministries, of the Cabinet, the Parliament and the most important political parties as far as foreign affairs are concerned. This method is doubtlessly one of the special features of the Austrian edition. In every volume the user finds treaties, drafts of treaties, international agreements, memoranda, directives, instructions, notes of meetings, dispatches, reports, telegrams, telephone dispatches and private papers. The volumes contain also protocols and records about the sessions of the national assembly. Last but not least the meetings of the Cabinet and of the most important parliamentary parties are published too.