Schuschnigg, Kurt von

Schuschnigg, Kurt von

(ko͝ort fən sho͝osh`nĭk), 1897–1977, Austrian chancellor. He served (1932–34) as minister of justice and education and helped Engelbert DollfussDollfuss, Engelbert
, 1892–1934, Austrian chancellor. A Christian Socialist, he rose to prominence as leader of the Lower Austrian Farmers' League and became minister of agriculture in 1931.
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 repress the Social Democrats and organize the corporative statecorporative state,
economic system inaugurated by the Fascist regime of Benito Mussolini in Italy. It was adapted in modified form under other European dictatorships, among them Adolf Hitler's National Socialist regime in Germany and the Spanish regime of Francisco Franco.
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. After Dollfuss's assassination (1934) he became chancellor. In 1936, Schuschnigg forced the resignation of E. R. von StarhembergStarhemberg, Ernst Rüdiger von,
1899–1956, Austrian politician, a descendant of the 17th-century general of the same name. He took part in Hitler's "beer-hall putsch" of 1923 (see Hitler, Adolf) but later opposed Hitler and became (1930) leader of the Heimwehr, an
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 as vice chancellor and became sole head of the semifascist state. Schuschnigg's efforts to prevent German absorption of Austria were successful until he lost (1937) the support of Benito Mussolini. In Feb., 1938, Hitler forced him to take the Austrian Nazi leader Arthur Seyss-Inquart into his cabinet. When German troops massed on the border in March, Seyss-Inquart became chancellor, and the troops marched into Austria unopposed. A Nazi prisoner until 1945, Schuschnigg settled (1947) in the United States and taught at St. Louis Univ. He wrote My Austria (1937, tr. 1938), Austrian Requiem (1946, tr. 1947), and The Brutal Takeover (1969, tr. 1971).

Bibliography

See biography by R. K. Sheridon (1942).

Schuschnigg, Kurt Von

 

Born Dec. 14,1897, in Riva, Italy; died Nov. 18, 1977, in Innsbruck, Austria. Austrian political and state figure; a leader of the Christian Socialist Party.

Schuschnigg was minister of justice from 1932 to 1934 and minister of education in 1933 and 1934. He became chancellor in 1934 after the assassination of E. Dollfuss. In 1936 the Schuschnigg government and the government of fascist Germany concluded an agreement by which Austria virtually subordinated itself to Germany; Austria officially adopted the reactionary thesis of Pan-Germanism, which viewed Austria as a second German state. In February 1938, Schuschnigg signed an agreement with Hitler that resulted in the appointment of National Socialists to important positions in the Schuschnigg government; the agreement hastened the annexation of Austria by Germany.

After the Anschluss (annexation), which took place in March 1938, Schuschnigg was placed in a concentration camp. Schuschnigg was released in 1945 and emigrated to the USA, where he lived until 1967.