Imperial Council (Austria) - Creation

Creation

In the course of the Revolutions of 1848, representatives from those crown lands of the Austrian Empire incorporated in the German Confederation met in a Reichstag assembly at Vienna. The convention was inaugurated by Archduke John on 22 July 1848 and after the Vienna Uprising of October moved to Moravian Kroměříž. It not only abolished the last remnants of serfdom in the Austrian lands, but also undertook to draw up a constitution that would reflect the Empire's character of a multinational state, especially in view of the Austroslavic movement led by the Czech politician František Palacký.

On 4 March 1849, however, Minister-President Felix zu Schwarzenberg took the initiative and imposed the March Constitution, which promised the equality of all Austrian people and also provided for a bicameral Reichstag legislature. It was nevertheless only a sidestep, as Schwarzenberg three days later forcefully disbanded the Kremsier Parliament and finally had the constitution annulled with the New Year's Eve Patent (Silvesterpatent) of 1851. Emperor Franz Joseph went on to rule with absolute power. In place of the Reichstag he installed a Reichsrat counseling committee, whose members he appointed on his own authority.

In the 1850s the chronic national deficit became acute and the emperor saw himself on the brink after the Second Italian War of Independence and the bloody Austrian defeat at the 1859 Battle of Solferino. To calm the domestic front and to gain the support of wealthy bourgeois, Franz Joseph in 1860 issued the October Diploma, which again had the main features of a constitution. The Reichstag, still a predominantly consulting institution, was enlarged to a convention of one hundred delegates, deputed by the Landtag assemblies of the Austrian crown lands. This regulation, however, satisfied neither the bourgeois liberals nor the Hungarian magnates, who strongly refused any overlordship by a Vienna parliament and reacted with a tax protest.

The next year Franz Joseph proclaimed the February Patent, charted by liberal Minister-President Anton von Schmerling, as a new constitution for the empire. The Basic Law on the Representation of the Realm, dated 26 February 1861, was annexed to the February Patent. It implemented the bicameral legislature of the Imperial Council and has therefore been considered the “birth certificate” of the Austrian parliament. It was however again rejected by Hungary and officially suspended in 1865. The constitutional basis changed dramatically after the lost Austro-Prussian War of 1866, the dissolution of the German Confederation and the succeeding Austro-Hungarian Compromise of 1867.

In December 1867 a constitution was adopted that re-enacted the February Patent, but applied it explicitly to Cisleithania, officially called "The Kingdoms and Lands represented in the Imperial Council" (German: Die im Reichsrat vertretenen Königreiche und Länder), to the exclusion of the Transleithanian lands of the Hungarian kingdom. The remaining Cisleithanian members of the Abgeordnetenhaus were at first deputed by the Austrian Landtage; after a 1873 electoral reform, they were directly elected for a six-year term of office, but originally only under the terms of a census suffrage by those male citizens who paid a certain amount of taxes. The Council had extensive legislative powers in all Austrian matters; however, the appointment and dismissal of the Cisleithanian Minister-President and his government remained a privilege of the emperor.