Neue Freie Presse
- Peace Concluded!
- The English Coal Strike Nearing Its End.
- Albin Egger-Lienz.
The Neue Freie Presse of 6 November 1926 led with an editorial greeting the end of the civil servants' dispute as a "peace settlement" that at last let Dr. Seipel truly govern as chancellor, arguing that a government without an obedient administration was a knife without a blade. From Britain it reported talks between the TUC General Council, the miners' leaders and Prime Minister Baldwin, with union leaders already speaking of a provisional agreement that still needed the approval of the Cabinet and the coal owners. The page also carried an obituary of the Tyrolean painter Albin Egger-Lienz, recalling the sensation his huge "Ave Maria after the Battle of Bergisel" caused at the Vienna Künstlerhaus in 1897.
Translation
Peace Concluded!
What was expected has happened. Dr. Seipel can now say: I am Chancellor of Austria. For the obstacle of the civil-servants question first had to be cleared away, because otherwise Austria would not have been governable at all. For a government without an administration is a knife without a blade; a government that no longer has anything to command, that possesses no organs to follow its signals, is a misbegotten freak of politics, unworthy of serious attention.
The English Coal Strike Nearing Its End.
After a lengthy discussion between the General Council of the Trades Union Congress and the miners' leaders, a meeting took place between the General Council and Baldwin. In the afternoon there followed the first general exchange of views between Baldwin and the miners' leaders. In the opinion of the trade-union leaders, one can already speak of a provisional agreement between Baldwin and the miners, which still requires confirmation by the Cabinet and the mine owners.
Albin Egger-Lienz.
Obituary. In March 1897, at the annual exhibition in the Künstlerhaus, the colossal painting of a young painter living in Munich caused a sensation. It was called "Ave Maria after the Battle of Bergisel" and depicted a number of Tyrolean peasants — men, youths, weather-hardened old men — armed with scythes, flails and pitchforks, who after a hard-won victory have sunk piously to their knees at the ringing of the Angelus bell: a dramatically most effective moment, which, to be sure, presupposes knowledge of the historical situation in order to take full effect.
Context
How a pay dispute with civil servants toppled Ramek and brought Seipel back
The editorial's claim that Seipel could only now truly call himself chancellor rests on a crisis that had already cost his predecessor office. Seipel had led the government until 1924, when the Greater German People's Party (GDVP) narrowly decided to continue the coalition under the Christian Social chancellor Rudolf Ramek. In autumn 1926 the Christian Socials wavered over salary demands from the civil service, a group that made up a large part of the GDVP's electorate. Because the GDVP backed the officials' demands, Ramek was forced to resign on 15 October 1926, and his cabinet stayed on only as a caretaker until 20 October. The Neue Freie Presse therefore treats the end of the officials' dispute as the real starting point of the new Seipel government, and its image of a government without an administration as a knife without a blade shows how much the paper saw the state depending on the cooperation of its bureaucracy. The excerpt itself names no terms of the settlement; it asserts only that the obstacle has been removed.
Why civil servants were such a sensitive constituency in 1920s Austria
The officials' grievances went back to the financial stabilisation of 1922. To obtain an urgently needed international loan, the GDVP leadership accepted in October 1922 the ban on union with Germany that was a condition of the Geneva Protocols. Another condition of those protocols was the dismissal of about 100,000 civil servants, a cut that hit the Greater Germans' own clientele especially hard. In 1926 the officials pressed salary demands that later accounts describe as excessive, and since they formed a large part of the GDVP's voters, the junior coalition partner could not simply refuse them. This background explains why the editorial calls the officials' question an obstacle that had to be cleared away before Austria could be governed at all: the same group that had borne the cost of the 1922 austerity was now the decisive pressure point inside the governing coalition.
What the British coal dispute was about, and how it actually ended
The talks reported here came late in a lockout that had begun before the general strike of May 1926. From 4 to 12 May the TUC General Council called out its members in an unsuccessful attempt to prevent wage reductions and worsening conditions for 1.2 million locked-out coal miners. The Samuel Commission had recommended a 13.5% cut in miners' wages together with the withdrawal of the government subsidy, and the Miners' Federation of Great Britain refused both the wage reduction and regional negotiation. On 5 July the coalowners posted new terms of employment based on an eight-hour working day. The Neue Freie Presse passes on the union leaders' view that a provisional agreement with Baldwin already existed, subject to the Cabinet and the owners. The outcome was harsher than that report suggests: between 27 and 30 November 1926 the miners returned to work on lower pay and longer hours, an end that a University of Warwick archive timeline calls a total defeat.
Who Albin Egger-Lienz was, and where the 1897 picture stands in his career
Albin Egger-Lienz was born on 29 January 1868 at Striebath near Lienz and died on 4 November 1926 at St. Justina near Bozen, so this obituary appeared just two days after his death. From 1893 he worked in Munich as a freelance artist and, emulating his model Defregger, concentrated above all on genre and history painting; this is the young Munich painter the obituary describes, and the "Ave Maria after the Battle of Bergisel" of 1897 is recorded in the Ferdinandeum in Innsbruck. His biographer in the Neue Deutsche Biographie dates the full breakthrough of his own style to his Vienna years of 1899–1910, when he steadily simplified form and colour and concentrated on the essentials. During the First World War he served first as a Tyrolean militia rifleman and then as a war painter. The obituary thus opens with the Defregger-like history picture that first made his name in Vienna, while later scholarship places his decisive artistic development after it.
Original
Friedensschluß!
Das Erwartete ist geschehen. Dr. Seipel kann jetzt sagen: Ich bin Kanzler vou Oesterreich. Denn der Block der Beamtenfrage mußte erst weggeräumt werden, weil sonst Oesterreich überhaupt nicht regierbar gewesen wäre. Denn eine Regierung ohne Verwaltung ist ein Messer ohne Klinge, eine Regierung, die nichts mehr zu befehlen hat, die keine Organe besitzt, die ihren Winken Folge leisten, das ist eine Spottgeburt der Politik, nicht würdig ernster Beachtung.
Der englische Kohlenstreik vor dem Ende.
Nach einer längeren Besprechung des Generalrates des Gewerkschaftskongresses mit den Bergarbeiterführern fand eine Unterredung des Generalrates mit Baldwin statt. Am Nachmittag folgte dann die erste allgemeine Aussprache zwischen Baldwin und den Bergarbeiterführern. Nach Ansicht der Gewerkschaftsführer kaun bereits von einem provisorischen Abkommen Baldwins mit den Bergarbeitern gesprochen werden, das noch der Bestätigung durch das Kabinett und die Grubenbesitzer bedarf.
Albin Egger-Lienz.
Nachruf. Im März 1897 erregte auf der Jahresausstellung im Künstlerhause das Kolossalbild eines jungen, in München lebenden Malers Aufsehen. Es hieß: " Ave Maria nach der Schlacht am Berge Isel " und stellte eine Anzahl Tiroler Bauern dar, Männer, Jünglinge, wetterfeste Greise, mit Sensen, Dreschflegeln, Heugabeln bewaffnet, nach schwer errungenem Sieg beim Läuten des Aveglöckleins fromm in die Knie gesunken, ein dramatisch höchst wirksamer Moment, der freilich die Kenntnis der geschichtlichen Situation voraussetzt, um voll zu wirken.