Johann Schober

Johann Schober (born Nov. 14, 1874, Perg, Austria—died Aug. 19, 1932, Baden, near Vienna) was a police official who was twice prime minister of Austria (1921–22 and 1929–30). He established friendly relations with the Czechoslovak republic but was unable to negotiate a union between Austria and Germany.

Schober entered the imperial Austrian police service as a young man and became president of police in 1918, a few months before the fall of the Habsburg monarchy at the end of World War I. Upon the proclamation of the Austrian republic in November of that year, he ensured police loyalty to the new government, a decision that probably prevented considerable bloodshed. Schober’s administrative ability and honesty won the confidence of moderate public opinion in Austria as well as of the Allies’ representatives there. Thus he was selected to form in June 1921 a coalition government supported by the Christian Socialists and Pan-Germans. He took the initiative in reestablishing friendly relations with the successor states of the late Habsburg Empire by signing the Treaty of Lány with Czechoslovakia in December 1921. But the Pan-Germans, who viewed the treaty as a possible obstruction to Austria’s ultimate union with Germany, withdrew from the government, and in May 1922 Schober resigned, returning to the post of president of police. In July 1927 he was responsible for the bloody suppression of a protest organized by Social Democrats in Vienna. The event, in which nearly 100 people were killed, foreshadowed the breakdown of democratic rule in Austria in 1933–34.

He served as chancellor again from 1929 to 1930 and as vice-chancellor and foreign minister from December 1930 to January 1932. In March 1931 he concluded an agreement with Germany that would have led to an Austro-German customs union, but under French and Czechoslovak pressure the move was abandoned.