Word: ballhaus
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Dates: during 1930-1939
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Ever since Austrian Nazis seized Vienna's ' Ballhaus and killed Chancellor Engelbert Dullfuss last year, towering, small-mouthed Prince Ernst Rudiger von Starhemberg has blamed the murder of his little friend morally on hollow-eyed Major Emil ("Bloodhound") Fey, who was caught by the Nazis with Dullfuss but did nothing to save him. Last week these two potent men tugged two ways at Austria, under the distracted Chancellorship of disheartened Kurt Schuschnigg...
...Austria." Such an act was irregular in the extreme, since Nazis and their movement are outlawed in Austria. But von Papen had his orders from Berlin and Adolf Hitler is Austrian-born. Armed with this list, top-hatted, tail-coated Diplomat von Papen arrived at Austria's famed Ballhaus ("White House"), heavy with historic memories of Metternich and the Congress of Vienna. Very small in the big rooms looked Dr. Schuschnigg. With brutal directness the German Minister said that he "advised" the Schuschnigg Cabinet to resign and appoint as their successors the Nazi Cabinet slate approved by Herr Hitler...
...task of Chancellor Kurt Schuschnigg's new Government was not made any easier by his Minister of Interior, rough and imperious Major Emil Fey, long the stormy petrel of Austrian politics. Testifying at the trial of two of the 144 Nazis who seized Chancellor Dollfuss and himself in the Ballhaus fortnight ago, Major Fey changed his previous account of the dying Chancellor's last words...
Testifying further, Major Fey gave the lie to the new Government's claim that Dr. Schuschnigg did not know the Nazis had killed Dollfuss when he promised them safe conduct to Germany, a promise which the Government failed to keep "on the ground that it was conditional on the Ballhaus being evacuated without the death of anyone within." Three times under cross-examination Major Fey stubbornly repeated, "The promise was made without conditions of any kind after those who made it knew that the Chancellor was dead. I repeatedly insisted that this promise should be kept...
That night the Cabinet threw a barbed wire entanglement and a cordon of troops around the Ballhaus, retired within and hammered out a compromise which did all present much credit. Prince von Starhemberg agreed with President Miklas that Austria was not yet ready for a "Heimwehr Cabinet." Their pledge to carry on the Dollfuss tradition bound them, they felt, to pick a new Chancellor from his Catholic party and just after midnight they chose Dr. Schuschnigg, a seasoned lawyer-politician and, like Prince von Starhemberg a monarchist...