Karl Renner

Karl Renner
File:Karl-renner.jpg
1st and 4th President of Austria
In office 20 December 1945 – 31 December 1950
Preceded by	Wilhelm Miklas (1938) Austria annexed by the Third Reich between 1938 and 1945 (Adolf Hitler as Chancellor and Head of State of Greater Germany).
Succeeded by	Theodor Körner
Chancellor of Austria
In office 30 October 1918 – 7 July 1920 27 April 1945– 20 December 1945
Preceded by	position established (1918) Arthur Seyss-Inquart (1938)
Succeeded by	Michael Mayr (1920) Leopold Figl (1945)
Personal details
Born	(1870-12-14)14 December 1870 Untertannowitz, Moravia
Died	31 December 1950(1950-12-31) (aged 80) Vienna
Nationality	Austrian
Political party	Social Democratic Party of Austria (SPÖ)
Spouse	Luise Renner

Monument to Karl Renner next to the Austrian Parliament, Ringstraße, Vienna, Austria

Karl Renner (14 December 1870 – 31 December 1950) was an Austrian politician. He was born in Untertannowitz (Dolní Dunajovice) (Moravia) and died in Vienna. He is called the Father of the Republics because he was the 1st President in 1919/20 and refounded the Republic in 1945 (2. Republik) that lasts till today.

Renner was born the 18th child of a poor farmer but because of his intelligence he was allowed to go to high school. One of his teachers was Wilhelm Jerusalem. And from 1890 to 1896 he studied law at the University of Vienna - in 1895 he was one of the founding members of the Naturfreunde (i.e. friends of nature) and created their logo.

As he became 1st President of Austria he intendended to change the countries official Name to "Norische Republik" Republic of Noricum in line of succession to the Ancient "regnum Noricum" a celtic kingdom (within nearly the same borders than Austria had post 1918) later ocuupied by Rome. The unfortunate name chosen therefore was "Republik Deutsch-Österreich" Republic of German-Austria.

Renner was always interested in politics and became librarian in parliament and member of the Austrian Social Democratic Party (SPÖ) in 1896 and he started to represent the party in the Reichsrat in 1907. The peace treaty of St. Germain was signed in 1919 by the victorious Allies of World War I and Austria, that treaty declaring Austria to be a republic. He was Chancellor of Austria and Minister of Foreign Affairs from 1918 until 1920 and he was President of the Representative Assembly from 1931 to 1933. He always pleaded for the annexation of Austria by Germany but distanced himself from politics during the war.

In April 1945, just before the collapse of the Third Reich, the defeat of Germany and the end of the war, the elderly Renner astutely set up a Provisional Government in Vienna with other politicians from the three parties SPÖ, ÖVP and KPÖ. On April 27th, by a declaration, this Provisional Government separated Austria from Germany and campaigned for the country to be acknowledged as an independent republic (His country consequently was to greatly benefit in the eyes of the Allies as a result of Renner's actions. For Austria was treated as though, having been invaded by Germany, it had been an unwilling party. And therefore, having being freed, it had been liberated). This Provisional Government was recognised by the Four Powers and he was to be the first post war Chancellor and, in late 1945, he became the first President of the Second Republic.

Karl Renner died in 1950 and was buried in the Zentralfriedhof in Vienna.

His beliefs

For most of his long 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 law and social transformations. With his Rechtsinstitute des Privatrechts und ihre soziale Funktion. Ein Beitrag zur Kritik des bürgerlichen Rechts (1904), he became one of the founders of the discipline of the sociology of law. His and Otto Bauer's ideas about the legal protection of cultural minorities were taken up by the Jewish Bund, but fiercely denounced by Lenin. Stalin devoted a whole chapter to criticising Cultural National Autonomy in Marxism and the National Question.

Literature

By Karl Renner:

• Staat und Nation (State and Nation), translated in National Autonomy (Routledge Innovations in Political Theory)by Ephraim Nimni, Routledge 2005
• The Institutions of Private Law and their Social Function, Transl. by A Schwarzschild, with an introduction by Otto Kahn-Freund, London 1949.
• 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.

See also

• Allied-administered Austria

External links

• Karl Renner at Find a Grave

References

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