Engelbert Dollfuss

Engelbert Dollfuss (1892-1934), Chancellor of Austria (1932-1934). Born in Kirnberg, Dollfuss became a leader of Austria's Christian Socialist party during the 1920s. Appointed chancellor in 1932, he allied himself with the Heimwehr (Home Guard), an armed Austrian Fascist group supported by Benito Mussolini. In March 1933, shortly after Adolf Hitler came to power in Germany, Dollfuss dissolved the parliament; abolished freedom of speech, the press, and assembly; and outlawed the Communist party and the Schutzbund (the armed defence body of the Social Democratic party). In June Dollfuss outlawed the Austrian Nazi party, which was pressing for union with Hitler's Germany. In February of the following year, in protest against Heimwehr raids on their centres and newspaper offices, the workers of Vienna, led by the Social Democrats, declared a general strike. Civil war broke out. Dollfuss, using the Heimwehr, crushed the strike after several days of fighting. He then dissolved all political parties except his own Vaterländische Front (“Fatherland Front”) and called a parliament that voted a constitution establishing a “Christian German Federal State on a corporative basis”. Dollfuss was assassinated in an unsuccessful Nazi uprising on July 25, 1934.