First Republic of Austria

The First Austrian Republic, officially the Republic of Austria, was created after the signing of the Treaty of Saint-Germain-en-Laye on 10 September 1919—the settlement after the end of World War I which ended the Habsburg rump state of Republic of German-Austria—and ended with the establishment of the Austrofascist Federal State of Austria based upon a dictatorship of Engelbert Dollfuss and the Fatherland's Front in 1934. The Republic's constitution was enacted on 1 October 1920 and amended on 7 December 1929. The republican period was increasingly marked by violent strife between those with left-wing and right-wing views, leading to the July Revolt of 1927 and the Austrian Civil War of 1934. Foundation In September 1919, the rump state of German-Austria– now effectively reduced to the Alpine and Danubian crownlands of the Austrian Empire – was given reduced borders by the Treaty of Saint Germain, which ceded German-populated regions in Sudetenland to Czechoslovakia, German-populated South Tyrol to Italy and a portion of the Alpine provinces to the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes (Kraljevina Srba, Hrvata i Slovenaca, or SHS, also known as Yugoslavia). Despite Austrian protests this treaty also forbade Anschluss, or union of Austria with Germany, without League of Nations consent. The Allies were not willing to allow a defeated Germany to expand its borders by absorbing what remained of Austria. With this route closed, German-Austria changed its official name to the Republic of Austria. The new state managed to block two land claims by its neighbours. The first was the south-eastern part of Carinthia, which was inhabited partly by Slovenians. It was prevented from being taken over by the new SHS-state through a Carinthian plebiscite on October 10, 1920, in which the majority of the population chose to remain with Austria. The second prevented land-claim was Hungary's claim to Burgenland, which, under the name "Western Hungary", had been part of the Hungarian kingdom since 907. It was inhabited mostly by a German-speaking population, but had also Croat- and Hungarian-speaking minorities. Through the Treaty of St. Germain it became part of the Austrian Republic in 1921. However, after a plebiscite which was disputed by Austria, the provincial capital city of Sopron (German Ödenburg) remained in Hungary.