ABSTRACT
During the early thirties the Heimwehr group in Austria grew stronger and stronger. The Styrian branch actually staged an unsuccessful coup in 1931, but nothing was done to control the movement as a whole. The elections of April 1932 saw the first marked “democratic” success of the Austrian Nazi party. Parliamentary sessions, never very productive after 1920, were becoming a farce, as the two main power blocs simply “confronted” each other over the burning issues of the day. In May the new chancellor, Engelbert Dollfuß, began his first term of office, and set about trying to awaken a national consciousness, in place of the provincial, party, and religious loyalties which had hitherto dominated Austrian politics. But as bourgeois society began to disintegrate there was a pervading atmosphere of crisis.
