The Minutes of the Cisleithanian Cabinet 1914-1918

The Edition of the Minutes of the Meetings of the Austrian-Cisleithanian Council of Ministers covers half a century from the Austrian-Hungarian Compromise of 1867 up until the end of the monarchy in November 1918. It will therefore close the gap between the already edited minutes leading up to 1867 and from 1918 onwards. Concerning the period of 1867 to 1918, the Minutes of the Common Council of Ministers and of the Hungarian Council of Ministers are also being edited. Unfortunately, the Austrian-Cisleithanian minutes were strongly affected by the 1927 fire of the Justizpalast and today belong to the so-called Brandakten. Yet far from all minutes were destroyed. It is the intent to publish the surviving minutes complete with textual criticism and scientific commentary. At the same time a systematic search is being performed to locate copies of lost minutes. In addition, an index of all meetings and topics from the Kabinettskanzlei will be published. In Cisleithania too, the Council of Ministers was the central institution where governmental activity was concentrated. The wide spectrum of topics that are reflected in the minutes shows all facets of governmental activity. The minutes provide a compelling view on questions of structure and organisation of the state, economic and societal developments and cultural and social problems. An important topic is the reciprocal effects of provincial problems and problems concerning the entirety of Austria-Cisleithania, including the nationality question. Also of importance is the relationship between government and parliament (the Reichsrat). Subsequent to the FWF-project P 20428 G08, the project presented here encompasses the editing of the last volume concerning the time period of 1914 to 1918. Due to the war, the central topics are the mobilisation of troops, the provision of people made destitute by the war, strategically important investments, the raising of funds and questions of supplying the hinterland. In 1918 a revision of the constitution was discussed. After Emperor Karls Völkermanifest of October 16th 1918, the Council of Ministers finally dealt with the transition of Austria-Cisleithania into its succession states and on November 11th 1918 it decided on the proclamation of relinquishment of Emperor Karls share in the affairs of state as well as its own dissolution. The minutes provide researchers and academic teachers with important sources in a scientifically prepared form. They are a documentation of decisive years of Austrian history and its neighbouring states. Therefore, the project represents a contribution to international and interdisciplinary cooperation by making well-grounded scientific fundamentals available. The publication of the Brandakten also represents an effort to save the cultural heritage, because each use of the original documents causes further damage to them.

Although much has been published on WWI lately, the protocols of Cisleithanias government, i.e. of the concil of ministers responsible for the Austrian crownlands of the Habsburg Monarchy, have received little attention. This is partly due to the bad condition this source is in, as many of the protocols have been destroyed or damaged in the 1927 Justizpalast fire. Now, the surviving protocols from the summer of 1914 until the end of the Monarchy are being published as part of the larger long-term project Edition of the Minutes of the Council of Ministers of Austria and of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy. Fortunately, in addition to these protocols and to the registers of cabinet meetings, we have found transcripts, special protocols, and documents from other sources with whom it is possible to partly reconstruct substantially more of the scorched originals than expected. The protocols turned out to contain surprising and controversial aspects of Austrian interior politics. Especially, the topics of economic mobilization, alimentation, and authoritarianism (war-time censorship, repression of citizens deemed unreliable, etc.) run throughout the entire four years under scrutiny. Already in October 1914, the first alimentation crisis set in due to the primacy of the Armed Forces at the expense of the civil population. The entire workforce, if not in arms, was subjected to the requirements of the war industry, and civil liberties and parliamentarism were sacrificed to the security needs of a state that deeply distusted its own citizens. As late as in 1917, the ministerial council fully acknowledged the urgency of the Social Question, and in the face of the Russian revolution the own inabilty to sustain the war machinery. Confronted with a hunger crisis and labor unrest in the homeland, the Emperor re-opened the parliament and invited the opposition Social Democrats to co-operate. This was long before November 1918. The complete project provides researchers and teachers interested in the history of the Habsburg Monarchy with important documents, enriched with a full scientific commentary and auxiliary data in print as well as on-line in digital full text, linked to outside data resources. This opens up an important source for the history of Austria and its neighbor countries, also to a more general public.