Karl Renner

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Karl Renner (14 December 1870 – 31 December 1950) was an Austrian politician and jurist of the Social Democratic Workers' Party of Austria. He is often referred to as the "Father of the Republic" because he led the first government of the Republic of German-Austria and the First Austrian Republic in 1919 and 1920, and was once again decisive in establishing the present Second Republic after the fall of Nazi Germany in 1945, becoming its first President after World War II (and fourth overall).

Early life

Renner was born the 18th child of an ethnic German family of poor wine-growers in Unter-Tannowitz (present-day Dolní Dunajovice in the Czech Republic), then part of the Margraviate of Moravia, a crown land of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Because of his intelligence, he was allowed to attend a selective gymnasium in nearby Nikolsburg (Mikulov), where one of his teachers was Wilhelm Jerusalem. From 1890 to 1896 he studied law at the University of Vienna. In 1895 he was one of the founding members of the Friends of Nature (German: Naturfreunde) organisation and created their logo.

Political career

In 1896 he joined the

He was the leader of the delegation that represented this new German-Austria in the negotiations of St. Germain where the "Republic of Austria" was acknowledged but was declared to be the responsible successor to Imperial Austria. There Renner had to accept that this new Austria was prohibited any political association with Germany and he had to accept the loss of German-speaking South Tyrol and the German-speaking parts of Bohemia and Moravia where he himself was born; this forced him to give up his share in the parental farm if he, "the peasant proprietor who turned Marxist",^[5] wanted to remain an Austrian government officer.

Renner was Chancellor of Austria of the first three coalition cabinets from 1918 until 1920 and at the same time Minister of Foreign Affairs, backed by a grand coalition of Social Democrats and Christian Social Party. A wide range of social reforms were introduced by Renner's government, including unemployment insurance, paid holidays, the eight-hour workday, and regulations on the working conditions of miners, bakers, women, and children. State aid was also provided for the disabled, together with health insurance for public employees. In addition, a law was passed that provided for collective bargaining and the mediation of disputes.^[6]

From 1931 to 1933, Renner was President of Parliament, the

On 20 April 1945, the Soviets, without asking their Western allies,[12] instructed Renner to form a provisional government. Seven days later Renner's cabinet took office, declared the independence of Austria from Nazi Germany and called for the creation of a democratic state along the lines of the First Austrian Republic.^[12] Soviet acceptance of Renner was not an isolated episode; their officers re-established district administrations and appointed local mayors, frequently following the advice of the locals, even before the battle was over.^[13]

Renner and his ministers were guarded and watched by

Historian Harold Green commented: "But for Renner's having gained Soviet support for creating a Social Democratic Austrian Republic - and his establishing it at record speed after the Nazi collapse - Austria might have shared Germany's post-war fate and spent several decades divided into a Communist East Austria and a Democratic West Austria, with Vienna as a divided city like Berlin."[16]

Post–World War II

Renner's government opted to restore the 1920 Constitution, as amended in 1929. However, following

Antisemitism

For most of his life, Renner alternated between the political commitment of a social democrat and the analytical distance of an academic scholar. Central to Renner's academic work is the problem of the relationship between private law and private property. With his Rechtsinstitute des Privatrechts und ihre soziale Funktion. Ein Beitrag zur Kritik des bürgerlichen Rechts [The Institutions of Private Law and their Social Functions] (1904), he became one of the founders of the discipline of the sociology of law. In this book, Renner developed a Marxist theory of the institution of private law. Renner argued that the separation of public and private law is a creation of capitalism, whereby the state enforces the interests of capital owners.^[21]

His and

The 1977–1978 academic year at the College of Europe was named in his honour.

Publications

• Synopticus (pen name), Staat und Nation (Vienna, 1899). Reprinted as "State and Nation" in Ephraim Nimni (ed.), National Cultural Autonomy and Its Contemporary Critics, London: Routledge, 2005 pp. 64 – 82
  ISBN 0-415-24964-3
• Rudolf Springer (pen name), Der Kampf der oesterreichischen Nationen um den Staat (1902)
• Joseph Karner (pen name), "Die Soziale Funktion der Rechtsinstitute" (1904) in Marx-Studien, vol. 1.
• Grundlagen und Entwicklungsziele der österreichischen-ungarischen Monarchie, die Krise des Dualismus, ("Foundations and development goals of the Austro-Hungarian monarchy: the crisis of dualism"; 1904)
• Österreichs Erneuerung ("Austria's renewal"; 3 vols., 1916/17)
• Marxismus, Krieg und Internationale (1918)
• Die Wirtschaft als Gesamtprozess und die Sozialisierung ("The economy as an integrated process and the path to socialism"; 1924)
• Staatswirtschaft, Weltwirtschaft und Sozialismus ("The national economy, the world economy and socialism"; 1929)
• Die Rechtsinstitute des Privatrechts und ihre soziale Funktion (1929); translated into English by Agnes Schwarzschild as The Institutions of Private Law and their Social Function, with an introduction by Otto Kahn-Freund, London: Routledge & Kegan Paul (1949); reprinted in International Library of Sociology (1976; 1996)
• Wege der Verwirklichung ("The way to realization", 1929)
• An der Wende zweier Zeiten. Lebenserinnerungen ("At the turning points in two eras: life recollections"), 2 vols. Vienna: Braumüller 1946

Literary remains (unpublished works; German: Nachgelassene Werke):

• ' Wandlungen der modernen Gesellschaft ("Transformations of modern society," 1947)
• Hundert Jahre Karl Marx: Erbe und Auftrag ("100 years of Karl Marx: Heritage and Agenda"; 1947)
• Arbeit und Kapital (1950) Vol. 3, Vienna: 1953, reprint European Sociology 1975
• Porträt einer Evolution in Nachgelassene Werke, vol. 2, edited by Adolf Schärf, Vienna: Verlag der Wiener Volksbuchhandlung, 1953.

See also

• Allied-administered Austria
• National personal autonomy

References

Further reading

• Günter Bischof, Allied Plans and Policies for the Occupation of Austria, 1938–1955, in:
  ISBN 1-4128-0854-5
  . pp. 162–189.
• Heinz Fischer, Hugo Pepper (ed.), Karl Renner. Porträt einer Evolution Lauchringen: Baulino 1984
  ISBN 978-3-203-50166-6
• William M. Johnston, Karl Renner: The Austro-Marxist as Conciliator. In: The Austrian Mind: An Intellectual and Social History, 1848–1938 Berkeley: University of California Press, 1983
  ISBN 0-520-04955-1 pp. 105–109
• Ephraim Nimni (ed.), National cultural autonomy and its contemporary critics. Routledge Innovations in Political Theory,(16 essays) London: Routledge, 2005
  ISBN 0-415-24964-3
• Stephane Pierre-Caps, "Karl Renner et l'Etat Multinationale: Contribution Juridique á la Solution d'Imbroglios Politiques Contemporains", Droit et Societé 27 (1994), 421–441.
• Ernst Panzenböck, Ein Deutscher Traum: die Anschlussidee und Anschlusspolitik bei Karl Renner und Otto Bauer. Materialien zur Arbeiterbewegung, PhD thesis, Vienna: Europaverlag, 1985
  ISBN 3-203-50897-4
• Pat Shannon: Review of The Institutions of Private Law and their Social Function In: Journal of Sociology Vol. 13, No. 3 (1977) p. 264 PDF
• ISBN 978-1-905791-89-7

Notes

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Karl Renner.

• Works by or about Karl Renner at Internet Archive
• Karl Renner at Find a Grave

Political offices
Preceded by Minister-President of Austria	Chancellor of Austria 1918 – 1920	Succeeded by Michael Mayr
Vacant Arthur Seyß-Inquart	Chancellor of Austria 1945	Succeeded by Leopold Figl
Vacant Annexation by Germany Title last held by Wilhelm Miklas	State President of Austria 1945 – 1950	Succeeded by Theodor Körner