Staatsrechtliche Konzepte der tschechischen und slowakischen Innenpolitik aus der Zeit vor der Entstehung der Tschechoslowakei. Beiträge zur Rechtsgeschichte Österreichs|Beiträge zur Rechtsgeschichte Österreichs Band 2 / 2022|

Résumé 0

From the very beginning, the settling of the Czech and Slovak questions was closely linked to the question of how the fate of the entire Habsburg Monarchy would unfold. Even though a number of political parties were active by 1914, almost all Czech politicians regarded the Habsburg union of states as a constant in the world order and had not set for themselves the goal of creating an independent state. One person who deviated from the defining line of Czech politics was the pro‐Russian politician Karel Kramář. After the outbreak of the First World War, Czech politicians initially remained wary. Later, activism prevailed among them, and the Czech Union (Český svaz) and the National Committee (Národní výbor) became their organisational platforms. At the beginning of 1917, activist politics culminated in the rejection of the demand for the ʺliberation of the Czecho‐Slovaks from foreign ruleʺ stipulated in the Ententeʹs proposal for peace negotiations. Also in the constitutional statements of most Czech deputies read out at the opening of the Imperial Council and in the projects of the late summer and autumn of 1917, which addressed the creation of a common Czech‐Slovak state within the framework of the Habsburg monarchy, the preservation of a reorganised Habsburg monarchy was taken for granted. In early 2018, however, the idea of an independent Czechoslovak state began to gain ground among Czech politicians at home. In the spirit of this idea, the so‐called Epiphany Declaration and the drafts of the political law and the economic law of early October 1918 were drawn up, whose content was subsequently incorporated into the first laws of the Czechoslovak state.