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5 unusual facts about Engelbert Dollfuss


Authoritarian leadership style

Engelbert Dollfuss, chancellor of Austria from 1932 to 1934, destroyed the Austrian Republic and established an authoritarian regime based on conservative Roman Catholic and Italian Fascist principles.

Cross potent

In 1934 it became the emblem of the Austrofascist Federal State of Austria, adopted from the ruling Fatherland's Front, an authoritarian traditionalist political organisation led by Chancellor Engelbert Dollfuss.

Engelbert Dollfuss

Then he announced to the world: "The independence of Austria, for which he has fallen, is a principle that has been defended and will be defended by Italy even more strenuously", and then replaced in the main square of Bolzano the statue of Walther von der Vogelweide, a Germanic troubadour, with that of Drusus, a Roman general who conquered part of Germany.

Maximilian Ronge

In 1934, Ronge was posted to the chancellery (Bundeskanzleramt) in the Dollfuss regime; his counter-espionage staff was however unable to prevent the assassination of Dollfuss by Nazi agents in the same year.

Sepp Straffner

He was one of the three national presidents who on 4 March 1933 resigned his office during a debate on a railway strike, precipitating a constitutional crisis, the dissolution of parliament and the seizure of power by the Chancellor, Engelbert Dollfuss as dictator.


The Royal Game

Following the occupation and annexation of Austria by Nazi Germany, the country's monarchists (i.e. supporters of Otto von Habsburg as the rightful Emperor-King and the rule of the House of Habsburg), conservatives as well as supporters of Engelbert Dollfuss' Austrofascist regime, were severely persecuted by the Nazis, as they were seen as opponents of the Nazi regime.


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