SEIPEL, IGNAZ. — Austrian politician, born in Vienna on 19 July 1876, died at Berndorf near Vienna on 2 August 1932. The son of humble and modest parents (his father was a cab driver), after completing his secondary-school studies he entered the ecclesiastical state and was ordained a priest on 23 July 1899.
Chaplain at Staaz in Lower Austria, he remained there until 1902, when he was transferred to Vienna. In the capital he obtained a degree in theology in 1903 and began a highly valuable scholarly career. Particular attention was attracted by one of his volumes on the ethical and economic doctrines of the Fathers of the Church (Die wirtschaftlichen Lehren der Kirchenväter, 1907), in which he refuted the assertions of T. Sommerlad (Das Wirtschaftsprogramm der Kirche des Mittelalters, 1903), who sought to present Augustinianism as a denial and degeneration of the economic and social doctrines of the Gospel and the Fathers of the Church. The work earned him the conferral of the venia legendi in moral theology at the University of Vienna and his appointment, in 1908, as full professor of the same subject at Salzburg. In the tranquil city on the Salzach, S. not only continued to devote himself passionately to his beloved theological studies, but also played a major role in the city’s Catholic life, founding a branch of the Leegesellschaft there and collaborating with the Salzburger Kirchenzeitung and the Salzburger Chronik. Thus his interest in social questions gradually led him decisively into political life. The particularly difficult internal conditions of the Habsburg monarchy during the First World War prompted him to address the national question in the work Nation und
infaillibilité (1872); Les trois roses des élus (1879). He also left several posthumous works: 150 beaux miracles de N.-D. de Lourdes; Journal d'un voyage en Italie (1882); Conseils pratiques sur la piété (1891); Ma mère: souvenirs de sa vie et de sa sainte mort (1893).
Staat (1916), with the aim of indicating suitable means of preventing the feared disintegration of the Empire. Called to the University of Vienna in September 1917, he immediately became a regular attendee at the meetings of the Christian Social Party and in February 1918 joined a commission charged with studying constitutional reform. An advocate of federalism on broad autonomist foundations in his Gedanken zur Reform der österreichischen Verfassung of 1917, S. served as minister of social welfare in the last imperial cabinet, presided over by the pacifist Lammasch. After the proclamation of the Austrian Republic, S. worked successfully to preserve the unity of the Christian Social Party, which was threatened with splitting into two groups, republican and monarchist. Elected a deputy to the Constituent Assembly in 1919, his prestige within the Party continued to grow, and in 1921 he became its president. From June 1922 to November 1924 he was federal chancellor and succeeded in bringing inflation to an end. Returning to the chancellorship in October 1926, he managed to form a coalition cabinet with only the Social Democrats in opposition. The polarization of political positions led to serious disturbances in Vienna in July 1927 (the burning of the Palace of Justice by the Socialists), which S. succeeded in suppressing by force of arms. He was nevertheless unable to prevent the emergence of right-wing extremism as a reaction to Social Democratic policy. Resigning in April 1929, after a brief interval as foreign minister in the Vaugoin cabinet, he withdrew from political life in 1930 because of his precarious state of health.