Word: ballhaus
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...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...
Just 15 hours after Socialist Gerl was hanged, Chancellor Dollfuss summoned a Cabinet council in Vienna's big white Ballhaus, the historic Chancellery of Prince Metternich in which Napoleon's Europe was carved up by the Congress of 1815. Routine matters were dealt with and Minister of Education Dr. Kurt Schuschnigg had slipped off with one or two other Ministers to an early lunch. Suddenly a breathless secretary rushed in with a slip of paper which he handed to the little Chancellor and strapping Major Emil Fey, Commissar for Emergency Measures for Defense of the State. "Action against...
...Rome. The stark, one-sentence radio announcement was seemingly intended to convey to Austria that a Nazi Putsch headed by "King Anton" had succeeded. When a radio actor found a revolver and started shooting, a cool Nazi hurled a hand grenade, blew him to blazes. Meanwhile back at the Ballhaus ten pistol-brandishing Nazis had burst down the last white door and caught Chancellor Dollfuss at bay on the threshold of the historic Yellow Room in which met the Congress of Vienna...
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...