caretaker chancellor of Austria for a single day
What position did Walter Breisky take in 1922?
Walter Breisky Walter Breisky ( 8 July 1871 in Bern – 25 September 1944 in Klosterneuburg ) was an Austrian jurist , civil servant , and politician . Nominated by the Christian Social Party , Breisky served as minister of education and the interior from July to November 1920 , as the vice chancellor and state secretary of education from November 1920 to May 1922 . Together with his Social Democratic deputy , Otto Glöckel , Breisky initiated sweeping reforms of Austrias education system . In January 1922 , Breisky became the caretaker chancellor of Austria for a single day . Early life . Walter Breisky was born on 8 July 1871 in Bern , Switzerland . He was the second son of August Breisky and Pauline Breisky , née von Less . Both parents were of Bohemian descent . The family was living in Switzerland at the time of Breiskys birth because his father , a noted physician , had accepted a professorship of gynecology at the University of Bern in 1867 . When August Breisky was invited to assume a chair at the University of Prague in 1874 , the family moved back home . In Prague , Breisky attended elementary school and received the first four years of his gymnasium education . In 1886 , his father was offered a position with the Second Gynecological Clinic of the University of Vienna . Breisky thus completed his secondary education in the imperial capital , graduating from the prestigious Gymnasium Wasagasse in 1890 . Shortly before Breisky could finish school , his father died , a loss that appears to have hit the young man hard . Since Breisky was not yet of age , his fathers older brother , Rudolf Baron Breisky , became his legal guardian , eventually also adopting him . Baron Breisky was a senior official in the Ministry of the Interior ; he had served as the chair of the ministrys executive committee ( ) for 25 years and was one of the closest collaborators of Eduard Taaffe . It is likely that Baron Breisky encouraged his ward to pursue a career in the imperial bureaucracy . Austrian diplomat Michael Breisky is his grandnephew . Breiskys grades appeared to suggest that his talents lay more in the humanities than in any technical fields . Breisky enrolled at the University of Vienna to study law and political science ( ) . He graduated , with distinction , in 1895 . Career . Civil servant . Within ten days of graduating from university , Breisky secured employment as an apprentice clerk ( ) in the governors office ( ) of the Archduchy of Lower Austria . It is unlikely that Breisky owed his swift admission into the civil service to his uncles patronage : Walter Breisky was chosen for the position by Erich Graf von Kielmannsegg , who intensely disliked Rudolf Baron Breisky for the latters personality ; in Kielmannseggs autobiography , Baron Breisky would be described as a supercilious fossil . In spite of the enmity between guardian and superior , Breisky rose through the ranks with apparent easy and remarkable speed . In 1895 , he was assigned to the Korneuburg district administration . Three years later , he was promoted from apprentice clerk to regular clerk ( ) and appointed to the executive committee of the provincial bureaucracy . His performance reviews were consistently glowing . On 1 January 1900 Breisky was moved to the Ministry of Education . Employment in the ministerial bureaucracy was significantly more prestigious than employment in a provincial administration , and Breisky was still only 28 years old , unusually young for advancement to the ministry . The step up in rank was all the more remarkable as Breisky was a Protestant , a serious handicap in the Habsburg bureaucracy in general and in the Ministry of Education in particular . In 1905 , the Ministry tried to get rid of the religious outsider by offering him to fill a vacancy on the Evangelical Church Council . The move would have advanced Breisky by an additional two steps in rank . Breisky declined . Breiskys refusal to accept the sinecure did no permanent damage to his career . In April 1907 , Breisky was appointed to the ministrys executive office . In February 1908 , he was promoted to ministerial secretary ( ) ; he subsequently became a noted collaborator of Minister-President Baron Max Wladimir von Beck , the Cisleithanian head of government . The two men grew very close , to the point of spending extended holidays together . In 1909 , Breisky received the job title of departmental advisor ( ) . In 1913 , he was made a ministerial advisor ( ) . The collapse of the Austro-Hungarian Empire at the end of World War I was a serious personal blow to Breisky , who was 47 years old now and had spent his entire working life as a loyal servant of the Habsburgs . In spite of his despondency , Breisky remained at his post . The emerging Republic of German-Austria knew to appreciate his experience . In May 1919 , Breisky was made a department director ( ) in the State Chancellery ( ) , personal bureau of Chancellor Karl Renner and heart of the rump states executive apparatus . Once again , Breisky became a close confidant and trusted lieutenant of the chief executive . Renner instructed his staff that document addressed to Renner should also be made available to Breisky , preferably Renner himself had seen it . Minister of education . Breisky was no ideologue and felt no instinctive allegiance to any of the republics three dominant political camps . A scion of the upper class and socially conservative by temperament , Breisky was certainly no Social Democrat , his harmonious working relationship with Renner nonwithstanding . The Christian Social camp shared his traditionalism but was also explicitly Catholic . His Evangelical faith would have pointed him to the German Nationalists , also socially conservative . A descendant of a family of Habsburg civil servants and a lifelong Habsburg civil servant himself , however , would not have felt drawn to a camp that defined itself as pan-German and as Antisemitic besides . Even so , Breisky eventually entered formal politics . In July 1920 , the Social Democratic Party , Christian Social Party , and Greater German Peoples Party agreed to form a national unity government to manage the transition from provisional to permanent constitution that was in progress at the time . The Christian Socials offered to make Breisky head of the Ministry of Education . Breisky accepted . On 7 July Breisky was sworn in as a state secretary – the term for minister in the provisional constitution – of education in the first Mayr government . The deputy state secretary of education under both Renner and Mayr was Otto Glöckel , a Social Democrat and committed progressive . Glöckel was driving an ambitious program of education reform that included both structural reorganization and a drastic changes to the systems pedagogical approach . Traditionally , children were sorted into different educational tracks after graduating from elementary school at age ten . In theory , the sorting criteria were scholastic aptitude and talent profile ; in practice , students were sorted by socioeconomic background . Glöckel meant to help break down class barriers through merging the different types of middle schools , thus delaying the sorting for another four years . In terms of style , education was to focus on inspiring self-reliance and independent thought as opposed to rote learning . Glöckels new superior , no revolutionary but open to new ideas , halted some of Glöckels reforms but happily embraced others , then added reform ideas of his own . He promoted access to education for girls , worked to improve teacher training , professionalized the textbook approbation process , overhauled the school physicians service , and modernized curricula . He also worked to improve access to education , and to the arts and humanities in particular , for children in rural regions . While Vienna was a vibrant metropolis and one of the world capitals of music and theater , large parts of the rest of Austria were a backwater . Breisky took the initiative in organizing concerts and theatrical performances for the sons and daughters of the hinterland . When the Social Democrats left the unity government on 22 October , the post of minister of the army – now actually called minister because the new constitution had entered into force – became vacant . Breisky was appointed acting minister . When the second Mayr government took office on 20 November , Breisky became vice chancellor . The Ministry of Education had been merged into the Ministry of the Interior , and the combined ministry was lead not by Breisky but by Egon Glanz . Breisky , however , was made the state secretary – the term now meant deputy minister – in charge of education affairs , retaining his previous portfolio and continuing his reform work . When Glanz resigned on 7 April 1921 Breisky was promoted to acting minister . On 21 June the first Schober government was inaugurated ; this cabinet too included Breisky as both vice chancellor and state secretary of education . Chancellor for a day . On 16 December 1921 Chancellor Schober and President Hainisch signed the Treaty of Lana , an agreement of mutual understanding and friendship between Austria and Czechoslovakia . In particular , Austria reconfirmed to its neighbor to the north that it would faithfully abide by the Treaty of Saint-Germain and would neither seek unification with Germany nor attempt to restore the Habsburgs to power . In return , Czechoslovakia promised a substantial loan to the struggling , cash-strapped rump state . The treaty would also generally improve Austrias international standing and make it easier for Austria to secure additional loans from other countries . The Christian Socials were in favor of the treaty , but their remaining coalition partner , the Greater German Peoples Party , was vehemently opposed . Ardently pan-German , the Peoples Party had been hoping that Austria would , sooner or later , defy the Treaty of Saint-Germain and would seek accession to the German Reich . The party had also been hoping that the unification of all Germans would extend to the Sudeten Germans , the German-speaking former Habsburg subjects living in what used to be Bohemia . Schober , whom the party had considered an ally , was renouncing both these goals . In the final days of December 1921 , the Peoples Party staged protest rallies against the treaty all over the country . On 16 January 1922 it also withdrew its representative from Schobers cabinet . As long as Schober himself remained office , however , the Peoples Party was still bound by the original coalition agreement . The agreement required the party to vote in support of government bills in the National Council , and one of the government bills on the table in January 1922 was the ratification of the Treaty of Lana . On 26 January , hoping to appease the Peoples Party by releasing it from its contractual obligation , Schober stepped down . Schobers resignation did not elevate Breisky to the chancellorship automatically , but Hainisch instantly appointed him the caretaker head of government . The Treaty of Lana was ratified with the votes of Christian Socials and Social Democrats , the Peoples Party voting against . Behind the scenes , Christian Social representatives , and possibly politicians of other parties as well , were lobbying Schober to return ; it was widely felt that there simply was no alternative . Schober let himself be persuaded . On 27 January he was elected chancellor a second time . The Peoples Party did not return its representative to Schobers cabinet but was ready to recommence support for Schober in the National Council . The Breisky government had been in office for just about twenty-four hours . Breisky resumed his roles as vice chancellor and state secretary of education . Chief statistician . In May 1922 , just four months later , Schober was forced to resign again . Ignaz Seipel , Schobers successor , had no use for Breisky in his cabinet . Breisky returned to his old position as the executive department director ( ) in the Chancellery , where he seems to have served Seipel as diligently as he used to serve Renner . Seipel showed himself grateful . On 21 February 1923 Breisky was made the president of the Austrian Statistics Office ( ) . Austrias economic situation was still troubled and , in fact , worsening . The administrators in charge of economic policy were hampered by lack of reliable information . It was unclear how many inhabitants the country had , how many of them were employed , how many businesses there were , and how much they produced . The agency Breisky took over was massively understaffed and poorly organized . Breisky , whose appointment was originally ridiculed for his complete lack of any relevant training or experience , proved himself capable and energetic . Breisky turned the Statistics Office around , then took the initiative in creating the Austrian Institute of Economic Research ( at the time ) , thus making sure that the agency would be kept on its toes by competition from a think tank of independent scholars . Later years . Throughout his life , Breisky had been suffering from poor eyesight . His far-sightedness and astigmatism had already been bad enough to get him declared permanently unfit for military service in 1894 , and they had been worsening since . On 18 February 1931 Breisky asked to be allowed to retire . His request was granted on 1 October . Breisky spent his final years in Klosterneuburg , where he lived with his wife ; he had married Rosa Kowarik , his long-time housekeeper , in 1927 . Breisky does not appear to have kept in touch with former colleagues or political collaborators , but he was active in the Pan-Europe Movement and held honorary positions in a number of charities and hobbyists clubs . He was the honorary president of the Viennese Animal Welfare Association ( ) and an honorary member of the local numismatic society . Breisky spent most of his time in his sprawling library , reading with a magnifying glass . He tried to prevent his eye problem from getting worse by self-medicating with immense amounts of carrots and lemon juice . There is evidence that Breisky felt disheartened by the political developments he witnessed during his sunset days . He expressed no support either for the Austrofascist takeover in 1934 or for the Nazi takeover in 1938 . He withdrew further from public life after the Nazi Party came to power in Austria , resigning even his nominal membership in the International Statistical Institute . After the death of his wife on 17 November 1943 Breisky hired a nurse to take care of him . In September 1944 , apparently reported to the authorities by his nurse , he was arrested by the Gestapo for listening to the BBC , a so-called . On 25 September , shortly after his release from Nazi custody , Breisky committed suicide .