Seipel, Ignaz

SEIPEL, IGNAZ. - Austrian politician, b. in Vienna on 19 July 1876, d. at Berndorf near Vienna on 2 Aug. 1932. The son of humble and modest parents (his father was a cab driver), after completing his secondary school studies he embraced 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 his doctorate in theology in 1903 and began a highly valuable scholarly activity. Particular resonance was aroused by his volume on the ethical-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), which tended to present Augustinianism as a negation of and a degeneration from the economic and social doctrines of the Gospel and of the Fathers of the Church. The work earned him the conferral of the venia legendi in moral theology at the University of Vienna and, in 1908, his appointment as full professor of the same subject at Salzburg. In the quiet city on the Salzach, S. not only continued to devote himself with passion to his beloved theological studies, but also played a large part in the city's Catholic life, founding there a section of the Leegesellschaft 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 drove him to address the national problem in the work Nation und l'infaillibilité (1872); Les trois roses des élus (1879). He also left various 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 the appropriate means to avoid the feared disintegration of the Empire. Called in Sept. 1917 to the University of Vienna, he immediately became an assiduous attendee of the meetings of the Christian Social Party and in Feb. 1918 became a member of a commission charged with studying constitutional reform. An advocate of a 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 for the preservation of the unity of the Christian Social Party, which threatened to split into two groups, republican and monarchist. Elected deputy to the Constituent Assembly in 1919, his prestige within the Party grew ever greater and in 1921 he became its president. From June 1922 to Nov. 1924 he was federal chancellor and succeeded in putting an end to inflation. Returning to the chancellorship in Oct. 1926, he succeeded in forming a coalition cabinet with only the Social Democrats in opposition. The polarization of political positions led to serious disorders in Vienna in July 1927 (the burning of the Palace of Justice by the socialists), which S. managed to suppress by force of arms. He could not, however, prevent the rise of a right-wing extremism as a reaction to Social Democratic policy. Having resigned in Apr. 1929, after a brief interlude as Foreign Minister in the Vaugoin cabinet, in 1930 he withdrew from political life because of his precarious state of health.

Silvio Furlani