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New Cabinet. Next day swaggering Heimwehr troopers bragged: "Without us the Government would have fallen!" And a meeting of Heimwehr group leaders attended by Major Fey loudly demanded that their Supreme Leader, Acting Chancellor Prince von Starhemberg, be made Chancellor.
That night the Cabinet threw a barbed wire entanglement and a cordon of troops around the Ballhaus, retired within and hammered out a compromise which did all present much credit. Prince von Starhemberg agreed with President Miklas that Austria was not yet ready for a "Heimwehr Cabinet." Their pledge to carry on the Dollfuss tradition bound them, they felt, to pick a new Chancellor from his Catholic party and just after midnight they chose Dr. Schuschnigg, a seasoned lawyer-politician and, like Prince von Starhemberg a monarchist.
At 1:45 a. m. President Miklas announced the following new Cabinet, largely a revamping of Dollfuss':
Dr. Kurt Schuschnigg, Chancellor and Minister of Defense, Education and Justice.
Prince Ernst Rüdiger von Starhemberg, Vice Chancellor and Minister of Public Security.
Major Emil Fey, Minister of Interior.
Baron Egon Berger-Waldenegg, Foreign Minister.
Dr. Karl Buresch. Finance Minister.
Odo Neustaedter-Stuermer, Minister of Social Welfare.
Friedrich Stockinger, Minister of Commerce.
First business of the day was to get a court martial busy trying the Dollfuss assassins. One ex-Sergeant Otto Planetta confessed to shooting the Chancellor. Said he: "Someone jogged my arm and the gun discharged. I then noticed what seemed to be only a shadow fall to the floor.
"Later, I realized it was the Chancellor. I told him, 'Get up,' but he replied, 'I'm not able.' " Planetta and a 20-year-old electrician, Franz Holzweber, accused of leading the assassins into the Chancellery, were the first to be convicted. They were promptly hanged.
As the court martial proceeded Vienna was roused to fresh alarm as 40 Nazis suddenly appeared at the hospital in which lay "King Anton" Rintelen, burst in and tried to rescue him. Smart police work nabbed eleven, but Austria closed the week uneasily convinced that there was still plenty of fight left in her Nazis.
* Independent, non-Nazi.