03:55

Ruth Deutschman

Benjamin Epp

Innsbruck

2008-08-20

Sylvia Manning ? Baumgartner

Nicole D´Incecco

1918

What significance did the dissolution of the Habsburg monarchy have for your father? First he was an officer, he couldn’t practise his profession and he retired. As you can imagine for a long time one used to say: 'a state no one wanted'. They used to say that the French president apparently said "L'Autriche c'est ce qui reste." Austria is what is left over. What remained was small and many people back then said this was a state which was not fit for survival. The various political parties, especially the socialist party, thought they could merge the Austrian State without much difficulty onto Greater Germany. Then that led to fierce disputes and in the end to a ban: Because of the peace treaty Austria had to remain an independent republic. Various Austrian statesmen therefore tried to keep Austria somewhat viable. You have to consider that in Lower Austria, in the region of contemporary Austria, we had factories for machines of all kinds for a state of 58 million. That was far too big for a state this small. You could not sell these things at all. The Austrian politicians therefore had great difficulties, to keep this state alive. One of them who worked harder than most, was a Catholic clergyman, Seipel. Ignaz Seipel confronted various states and said: "It is your fault that the Habsburg monarchy fell apart and that this state became so small, so that everyone is saying that it’s not fit for survival. That’s why you’ve got to do something. Give me a loan - a few hundred million - and I’ll sort things out." One day he came from Geneva where the United Nations was at the time - I don’t know - it was called differently then - and introduced the Austrian currency.