Karl Renner

Karl Renner (1870-1950), first chancellor of the Austrian republic. Renner was born in Moravia (now part of the Czech Republic) of peasant heritage. He studied law in Vienna, Austria, and later worked as a librarian for the Austrian government. Renner was already a socialist (though he never became an orthodox Marxist) when he wrote several works on the nationality problem in the Austrian republic. In these writings he defended the idea of the multinational state in general, and of multinational Austria in particular, suggesting a federal democratic commonwealth based on equal political and cultural rights for all minorities.

Renner entered the Reichsrat (Parliament) in 1907 and soon became leader of the Social Democratic Party. His position was challenged after 1917 by a more radical wing led by Austrian politician Otto Bauer, who repudiated Renner's doctrine of the multinational state. It was Renner, however, who in 1918 carried through the peaceful transition of German Austria into a republic. He was chancellor and head of the Council of State in the provisional government of November 1918, and then he was chancellor in the coalition governments of March 1919 to June 1920. After the Social Democrats were driven into opposition, he was overshadowed by his more forceful rival, Bauer, but remained leader of the party's right wing. Renner was senior president of the Nationalrat (National Council), or lower house, of the last elected Austrian Parliament before World War II (1939-1945). The parliament was elected in 1930 and was suspended by Chancellor Engelbert Dollfuss in 1933.

Renner was unmolested by the Nazis in 1938 because of his support of Anschluss (Austro-German union). He was living in retirement when the Russians entered Austria in 1945 and called on him to form a provisional Austrian administration. The first Nationalrat of the reconstituted republic elected him president of Austria in late 1945. He died in Vienna five years later.