1934. The Price and Value of Democracy

Press release

05.02.2024

"The victims of the Heimwehr putsch", Der Kuckuck,27.9.1931, title page

Image Credits

Duration

07.02. - 26.05.2024

Opening

06.02.2024 7pm

Press event

05.02.2024 11am - 12pm

Place of the press event

History Museum

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In February 1934, civil war dominates the streets of Austria. Armed clashes between the defence organisations of the political parties, the ‘Heimwehr’ (Home Guard) and the ‘Republikanischer Schutzbund’ (Republican Defence League), claim several hundred lives. The events of 1934 are a pivotal moment in the journey from the democratic republic to the end of Austria's existence as a state with the invasion of German troops in 1938. The exhibition traces the events of the time, the catastrophic situation with 600,000 unemployed at the height of the world economic recession in 1932/33, attempts at authoritarian crisis management, the elimination of the National Parliament and the authoritarian government of Federal Chancellor Engelbert Dollfuß, the crippling of the Constitutional Court, the prohibition on political parties, the persecution of the Social Democratic opposition and the rise of fascism in Europe.

In 2024, lectures, conferences and school projects will be organised throughout Styria on the death throes of democracy at this time. With an exhibition in the Hofgalerie, the Museum of History vitally helps raise awareness of this key moment in modern Styrian history. The exhibition is based in part on the museum’s own photographic holdings.

Exhibition views

The curators of the exhibition "1934. The Price and Value of Democracy" Heimo Halbrainer and Helmut Konrad (from left) with Bettina Habsburg-Lothringen, Director of the History Museum in Graz

Universalmuseum Joanneum/J.J. Kucek