Engelbert Dollfuss

Biography

Engelbert Dollfuss was born in 1892 into a poor peasant family in Lower Austria. Supported by local priests, he went to school in Hollabrunn and enrolled at the University of Vienna, switching from theology to law. Though rejected at first for his small stature, he volunteered for the army in 1914 and served for 37 months on the Italian front with the Tyrolean Kaiserschützen, earning several decorations.

After the war he worked for the Lower Austrian Peasants' Union, studied economics in Berlin and became a leading organiser of Austrian agriculture, including as director of the Lower Austrian Chamber of Agriculture. In October 1930 he became president of the Federal Railways, and in March 1931 minister of agriculture and forestry. On 20 May 1932 he became chancellor at the head of a coalition with a one-vote majority, also holding the foreign ministry.

When all three presidents of the National Council resigned in March 1933, he declared parliament unable to function and began to govern by emergency decree. He banned the Communists and the Austrian Nazis, founded the Fatherland Front as the sole permitted political movement, and drew close to Mussolini's Italy. In February 1934 his government crushed the Social Democrats' armed resistance in the Austrian Civil War, and the corporatist May Constitution of 1934 created the authoritarian Federal State of Austria.

On 25 July 1934 Austrian Nazis stormed the Chancellery in a failed coup and shot him dead. His successor Kurt Schuschnigg continued the regime until the German annexation of 1938.