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Towards the Settlement of 1955: The Austrian State Treaty Negotiations and the Origins of Austrian Neutrality1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 February 2009

Gerald Stourzh
Gerald Stourzh
Affiliation:
University of Vienna
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Extract

In discussing the Austrian State Treaty it is necessary to start with an explanation of terminology. Why “State Treaty?” Generally speaking, any treaty concluded between independent states or nations is a “Staatsvertrag,” as the German term goes. Then why is the Austrian treaty of 1955 known as the “State Treaty?” The origins of the term are to be found in Austrian legal terminology after World War I. In 1919 the Austrian government championed the legal thesis, developed by the distinguished legal theorist Hans Kelsen, that the Austrian Republic had not been in a state of war with the Allied and Associated Powers since it had not been in existence while the war was being fought; consequently, the Austrian Republic refused to be the legal successor of the defunct Austro-Hungarian empire.

Type
The First and Second Republics
Information
Austrian History Yearbook , Volume 17 , January 1981 , pp. 174 - 187
Copyright
Copyright © Center for Austrian Studies, University of Minnesota 1981

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References

2 The Austro-American State Treaty had to be concluded because the United States Senate had refused to give its consent to the Treaty of Saint Germain. A brief, substantive description of the Austrian State Treaty can be found in Gerald Stourzh. “Austrian State Treaty (1955),” Encyclopedia of Public International Law, Vol. II (Amsterdam: North Holland Publishing Co.', 1982), pp. 41–44.Google Scholar

3 See Foreign Relations of the United Stales, 1946, Vol. V (Washington, D.C.: U. S. Government Printing Office, 1969), p. 285.Google Scholar For further details and references, see also Stourzh, Gerald, Geschichte des Staatsvertrages 1945–1955. Österreichs Weg zur Neutralitat (Graz: Styria, 1980), pp. 10–12.Google Scholar

4 The term “State Treaty” was used as early as August, 1945. in a document of the Austrian State Chancellery that has recently been published in Alfons Schilcher. Österreich und die Grofimcichte. Dokumeme zur dsterreichischen Auflenpolitik 1945–1955 (Vienna: Geyer Edition, 1980). p. 60.Google Scholar This document was not drawn up by the economic department, as stated by the editor, but originated in the legal department. A recent erroneous reference to an Austrian “peace treaty” of 1955 unfortunately occurs in De Porte, A. W., Europe between the Super Powers (New Haven. Conn.: Yale University Press. 1979). p. 164.Google Scholar

5 The English text of the Treaty may be found in The Austrian State Treaty. An Account of the Postwar Negotiations together with the Text of the Treaty and Related Documents. Department of State Publication No. 6437 (Washington, D. C.: U. S. Government Printing Office, 1957).Google Scholar

6 Stourzh, , Geschichte des Staatsvertrages, pp. 65–66.Google Scholar Additional evidence for this was found by the author in the records of the British Foreign Office for 1949. which material was released in 1980. On the origins of the “German Property” issue, see especially Klambauer, Otto, “Die Frage des Deutschen Eigentums in Osterreich,” Jahrbuch fiir Zeitgeschichle. Vol. 1 (1978), pp. 127–174.Google Scholar

7 Foreign Relations oflhe United Stales, 1949. Vol. 111 (1974), p. 1, 172Google Scholar: Stourzh, , Geschiehte des Staatsvertrages, p. 67.Google Scholar

8 Schilcher, . Osterreich und die Grofimachte, pp. 154 ff. and 163 ff.Google Scholar

9 European Recovery Program aid to Austria amounted to 956 million dollars, as indicated in Nemschak, Franz, Zehn Jahre Österreichische Wirtschaft (Vienna: Institut fur Wirtschaftsforschung, 1955). p. 23.Google Scholar

10 This paper is extensively quoted in Stourzh, , Ceschichte des Staatsvertrages, p. 87.Google Scholar

11 In accord with the zonal arrangements of 1945 Vienna had an international sector in the center of the city in addition to the sectors allocated to the four powers. The existence of this international sector gave the Austrian capital much more protection against Russian interference than Berlin had.

12 For the text of this statement, see Foreign Ministers Meeting. Berlin Discussions January 25-February 18, 1954. Department of State Publication No. 5399. (Washington, D. C.: U. S. Government Printing Office, 1954), p. 190.Google Scholar

The original draft of Dulles' Berlin statement is in the John Foster Dulles Collection at Princeton University Library. The quotations in this article have been made with the permission of Princeton University Library and of Prof. John W. F. Dulles. In the original manuscript the following sentence follows the phrase “Austria would be free to choose for itself to be a neutral state like Switzerland:” “Indications are not lacking that Austria would make this choice.” This sentence was struck out by pencil and was omitted from Dulles' actual statement.

13 These remarks, more often vaguely referred to than quoted, were made at a commencement address entitled “The Cost of Peace” at Iowa State College on July 9, 1956. Among other things, Dulles stated: “These treaties [mutual security treaties between the United States and other countries] abolish, as between parties, the principle of neutrality, which pretends that a nation can best gain safety for itself by being indifferent to the fate of others. This has increasingly become an obsolete conception and, except under very exceptional circumstances, it is an immoral and shortsighted conception” (this writer's italics). Dulles made these remarks about seven months after the United States had recognized Austria's neutrality. It can safely be assumed that when Dulles made the qualifying remark which is italicized here, he had (at least) Austria and Switzerland in mind. Dulles' speech is printed in Department of State Bulletin, Vol. XXXIV (1956), pp. 999–1004.Google Scholar

14 President Koerner's statement, dated December, 1951, was published on February 23, 1952, in the Journal de Genève, in a special issue which was devoted to Austria. For further references, see Stourzh, , Geschichte des Staatsvertrages, pp. 100–101 and 107.Google Scholar

15 Ibid., p. 90.

16 Figl had succeeded Gruber as foreign minister in November, 1953.

17 Very valuable material about this phase of the negotiations, based on personal experience, can be found in the book by the then Swedish Ambassador in Vienna, Sven Allard, entitled Russia and the Austrian State Treaty (University Park, Pa.: State University of Pennsylvania Press, 1970).Google Scholar

18 The documents concerning the recognition of Swiss neutrality and the guarantee of its territorial integrity (particularly the Act of November 20, 1918) were very carefully studied in the Austrian Foreign Office in the spring of 1955.

19 Schärf and Kreisky made notes of the negotiations and talks in Moscow in 1955, which were published by Karl R. Stadler in the Vienna periodical Die Zukunft, April, 1980, No. 4, pp. 23–30. An important source for the Moscow negotiations are the notes of Ambassador Josef Schöner, of which this author has made extensive use in his Geschichte des Staatsvertrages, pp. 142–159.Google Scholar Recently the recollections of Ambassador Ludwig Steiner, Raab's secretary during the Moscow negotiations of 1955, were published in the volume, Mock, A., Steiner, L., and Khol, A. (eds.), Neue Fakten zu Staalsvertrag und Neutralität (Vienna: Politische Akademie der Österreichischen Volkspartei, 1980), pp. 15–46.Google Scholar

20 Stourzh, , Geschichte des Staatsvertrages, pp. 146 and 149–150.Google Scholar For Schärf's views on “enclaves,” see Arbeiter-Zeitung, , May 19, 1955, p. 1.Google Scholar

21 See the paper by Slourzh contributed to the international symposium on the State Treaty held in Vienna on May 16 and 17, 1980, which was published in the volume 25 Jahre Staatsvertrag—Prolokolle des wissenschaftlichen Symposions 16. und 17. Mai 1980 (Vienna: Österreichischer Bundesverlag, 1980), p. 131.Google Scholar It should be kept in mind that the prohibition of “special weapons” is not limited to the Austrian State Treaty. It occurs in identical or analogous terms in the Peace Treaties of 1947 with Italy, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, and Finland.

22 See especially Allard, , Russia and the Austrian State Treaty, pp. 215–219.Google Scholar In an interesting recent article, Vojtech Mastny has suggested that Molotov was mainly responsible for the Austrian settlement, while Khrushchev was chiefly responsible for the “exceedingly ambitious ploy” in regard to Yugoslavia. Mastny, Vojtech, “Kremlin Politics and the Austrian Settlement,” Problems of Communism, Vol. XXXI (07–08 1982), p. 43.Google Scholar This thesis does not seem convincing. The chronology of events from March to June, 1955, suggests that there was a unified “new design” linking the new policies vis-à-vis Austria, Yugoslavia, and West Germany.

23 The English text can be found in The Austrian State Treaty, pp. 79–82.Google Scholar

24 Ibid., pp. 83–90.

25 Brusatti, Alois, 50 Jahre Erdöl in Österreich (Vienna: Österreichische Gesellschaft für Erdölwissenschaften, 1980).Google Scholar

26 This was vividly expressed by the French General Émile Béthouart in July, 1955, in a statement presented to the upper chamber of the French national assembly (Conseil de la République) for the debate on the ratification of the Austrian Treaty. See Gerald Stourzh and Silvia Streitenberger, “La position intemationale de 1'Autriche après la seconde guerre mondiale - quelques réflexions sur l'origine du Traité d'État et de la neutralié autrichienne avec égard particulier aux débats parlementaires français de 1955,” in Auslriaca, edited by the Centre d'Études et de Recherches Autrichiennes, Université de Haute-Normandie, Rouen, Vol. IV (special issue) (July, 1978), pp. 215–234. Marshal Tito, in a conversation with the Austrian ambassador in April, 1955, expressed the opinion that the Western generals would not like the new situation. See Stourzh, , Geschichle des Staatsverlrages, p. 140.Google Scholar

27 This is the case in De Porte's book on Europe between the Superpowers, p. 174. De Porte pays scant attention to Finland and Austria and none at all to the change in Soviet-Yugoslav relations.Google Scholar

28 Adenauer, Konrad, Erinnerungen, Vol. II (Stuttgart: Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, 1966), p. 441.Google Scholar

29 President Eisenhower called the Austrian State Treaty a test case of Soviet goodwill in his speech to the American newspaper editors on April 16, 1953. Keesing's Archiv der Gegenwart, 1953, p. 3, 953.Google Scholar

30 See Stourzh, , Geschichte des Staatsvenrages, pp. 127 and 137Google Scholar; and Allard, , Russia and the Austrian Stare Treaty, pp. 169–170 and 174–175.Google Scholar

31 Mastny, , “Kremlin Politics and the Austrian Settlement,” p. 51.Google Scholar Mastny calls the 1955 period the era of “the first detente,” of which “Austrian neutrality was the foremost, and possibly unique, product” (Ibid., p. 38). I believe that the Austrian settlement was closely connected with the various settlements made in 1955 that involved Yugoslavia (the Belgrade Declaration), the Federal Republic of Germany (Adenauer's Moscow negotiations), and Finland (the withdrawal from Porkala). All these settlements survived the breakdown of the “first ddtente” in the fall of 1956.