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Austria – Death of Ignaz Seipel
1933 Silver 2 Shillings 29mm (11.97 grams) 0.640 Silver (0.2469 oz. ASW)
Reference: KM# 2849
Certification: NGC MS 63 2863618-003
Ignaz Seipel with glasses, facing right.
2 SCHILLING REPUBLIK OESTERREICH, Value within circle of shields.
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 Ignaz Seipel (19 July 1876 – 2 August 1932) was an Austrian prelate and politician of the Christian Social Party (CS), who served as Federal Chancellor twice during the 1920s.
Seipel studied theology at the University of Vienna and was ordained a Catholic priest in 1899. He gained his doctorate in theology in 1903, followed by his habilitation at the Vienna university, being one of the first scholars writing on business ethics in the context of Catholic social teaching. From 1909 until 1917 he taught moral theology at the University of Salzburg.
Seipel was a member of the clerical conservative Christian Social Party established by the Vienna mayor Karl Lueger in 1893, and served as cabinet secretary in the Austro-Hungarian government during World War I. At that time he also wrote and published a number of famous works, including Nation und Staat (Nation and State) (1916), which helped cement his later prominent role in the party. In these writings, unlike most contemporaries swept up by Wilsonian rhetoric, he saw the state as the primary vindication of sovereignty, rather than the nation. In October 1918 he was appointed Minister for Labour and Social Affairs in the last Cisleithanian cabinet under Minister president Heinrich Lammasch.
After World War I, Seipel, a member of the constituent assembly of German Austria, re-established the formerly monarchist Christian Social Party, now operating – the empire having been lost – in the First Austrian Republic. Party chairman from 1921 until 1930, he served as chancellor between 1922 and 1924, and again from 1926 until 1929, then also as Foreign Minister.
To restore the Austrian economy, Chancellor Seipel and his delegate Mensdorff-Pouilly-Dietrichstein on 4 October 1922 signed the Protocol for the reconstruction of Austria at the League of Nations: by officially renouncing accession to Germany, he obtained an international bond. In order to fight the hyperinflation of the Krone currency the government at the same time re-implemented the independent National Bank of Austria with the task of securing monetary stability. However, these policies let to growing discontent by socialist workers’ organizations, and in June 1924 an attempt was made on Seipel’s life by a frustrated worker.
Leading a right-wing coalition government supported by the Greater German People’s Party and the Landbund, his main policy was the encouragement of cooperation between wealthy industrialists and the paramilitary units of the nationalist Heimwehren. This alignment led to an increase in street violence and armed conflicts with the left-wing Republikanischer Schutzbund, culminating in the Vienna July Revolt of 1927 claiming numerous casualties. The Social Democratic opposition thereafter referred to Seipel as the “Bloody Prelate”. He finally resigned in 1929 and was succeeded by his party fellow Ernst Streeruwitz. In the following year he once again served in a short-time term as Foreign Minister in the cabinet of Chancellor Carl Vaugoin.
Seipel died during a stay at a sanatorium in the Vienna Woods. He is buried in an Ehrengrab at the Vienna Zentralfriedhof.
Seipel’s antisemitic manners were the pattern for the character of Chancellor Dr. Schwerdtfeger in Hugo Bettauer’s 1922 novel Die Stadt ohne Juden (The City Without Jews), picturized by Hans Karl Breslauer in 1924.
  Austria, officially the Republic of Austria (German: Republik Österreich), is a federal republic and a landlocked country of over 8.5 million people in Central Europe. It is bordered by the Czech Republic and Germany to the north, Hungary and Slovakia to the east, Slovenia and Italy to the south, and Switzerland and Liechtenstein to the west. The territory of Austria covers 83,879 square kilometres (32,386 sq mi). Austria’s terrain is highly mountainous, lying within the Alps; only 32% of the country is below 500 metres (1,640 ft), and its highest point is 3,798 metres (12,461 ft). The majority of the population speak local Bavarian dialects of German as their native language, and Austrian German in its standard form is the country’s official language. Other local official languages are Hungarian, Burgenland Croatian, and Slovene.
 The origins of modern-day Austria date back to the time of the Habsburg dynasty when the vast majority of the country was a part of the Holy Roman Empire. From the time of the Reformation, many Northern German princes, resenting the authority of the Emperor, used Protestantism as a flag of rebellion. The Thirty Years War, the influence of the Kingdom of Sweden and Kingdom of France, the rise of the Kingdom of Prussia, and the Napoleonic invasions all weakened the power of the Emperor in the North of Germany, but in the South, and in non-German areas of the Empire, the Emperor and Catholicism maintained control. During the 17th and 18th centuries, Austria was able to retain its position as one of the great powers of Europe and, in response to the coronation of Napoleon as the Emperor of the French, the Austrian Empire was officially proclaimed in 1804. Following Napoleon’s defeat, Prussia emerged as Austria’s chief competitor for rule of a larger Germany. Austria’s defeat by Prussia at the Battle of Königgrätz, during the Austro-Prussian War of 1866 cleared the way for Prussia to assert control over the rest of Germany. In 1867, the empire was reformed into Austria-Hungary. After the defeat of France in the 1870 Franco-Prussian War, Austria was left out of the formation of a new German Empire, although in the following decades its politics, and its foreign policy, increasingly converged with those of the Prussian-led Empire. During the 1914 July Crisis that followed the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria, Germany guided Austria in issuing the ultimatum to Serbia that led to the declaration of World War I.
After the collapse of the Habsburg (Austro-Hungarian) Empire in 1918 at the end of World War I, Austria adopted and used the name the Republic of German-Austria (Deutschösterreich, later Österreich) in an attempt for union with Germany, but was forbidden due to the Treaty of Saint-Germain-en-Laye (1919). The First Austrian Republic was established in 1919. In the 1938 Anschluss, Austria was occupied and annexed by Nazi Germany.[14] This lasted until the end of World War II in 1945, after which Germany was occupied by the Allies and Austria’s former democratic constitution was restored. In 1955, the Austrian State Treaty re-established Austria as a sovereign state, ending the occupation. In the same year, the Austrian Parliament created the Declaration of Neutrality which declared that the Second Austrian Republic would become permanently neutral.
Today, Austria is a parliamentary representative democracy comprising nine federal states. The capital and largest city, with a population exceeding 1.7 million, is Vienna. Austria is one of the richest countries in the world, with a nominal per capita GDP of $52,216 (2014 est.). The country has developed a high standard of living and in 2014 was ranked 21st in the world for its Human Development Index. Austria has been a member of the United Nations since 1955, joined the European Union in 1995, and is a founder of the OECD. Austria also signed the Schengen Agreement in 1995, and adopted the euro in 1999.
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