AUSTRIA.
Bronze medal (1923) by R. Placht.
dr Ignaz Seipel (1876-1932). To the
Federal Chancellor of the 1st Republic.
Obv: bust to the left.
Rev: Script.
Condition: XF
Weight: 78.33 g.
Diameter: 60 mm.
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.
Born in Vienna, 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
University of Vienna, 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.
Seipel preaching at Bingen, 1929
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-founded
Austria's central bank Oesterreichische Nationalbank 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. During this time there was 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 of
protracted tuberculosis and late effects of an earlier assassination attempt. He
is buried in an Ehrengrab at the Vienna Zentralfriedhof.
REF 19 788
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