Research Projects
The Research Projects of the FRQ include the Reichshofrat Research on the cataloging of historical Reichshofrat Records, the Kelsen Research on the Life and Work of Hans Kelsen, the Research and Commentary on the Treaty of Saint-Germain, the Edition of all Sources on the Development of the Federal Constitutional Law (B-VG) of 1920, and the Edition of the Cabinet Council Minutes from February 3, 1919, to June 25, 1920.
Johann August Corvinius: View of the Imperial Chancellery Wing of the Vienna Hofburg, copperplate engraving, 1733
The Imperial Court Council was an institution of the Holy Roman Empire. It existed from the 16th century until the end of the Empire in 1806 and primarily fulfilled three functions:
- As the highest court of the Empire, it had jurisdiction over lawsuits against imperial vassals and appeals against judgments of territorial courts, as well as over lawsuits concerning breaches of the peace, denial or delay of justice, and appeals for annulment.
- As an imperial authority, the Imperial Court Council primarily handled matters of fiefs and privileges. In addition, it dealt with a wide variety of petitions to the Imperial Head, such as those concerning the confirmation of wills and contracts, the appointment of guardians, or the legitimization of children born out of wedlock, as well as requests from individuals for protection and assistance.
- As an imperial council composed of jurists well-versed in imperial law and possessing extensive experience, the Head of the Empire consulted the Imperial Court Council or individual members thereof for expert opinions on legally relevant matters.
The territorial jurisdiction of the Imperial Court Council extended from northern Germany to Italy, and from Alsace to Bohemia. Its seat was always at the emperor’s court and thus, for the most part, at the Hofburg in Vienna. The House, Court, and State Archives on Vienna’s Minoritenplatz therefore also houses the majority of the files and other archival materials left behind by the Imperial Court Council. This is a vast collection comprising approximately 70,000–80,000 catalog entries, which, when placed end to end, occupy approximately 1,300 meters of shelf space. Since 2006, these files have been edited as part of a long-term project funded by the Union of German Academies; the FRQ has been participating in this project as a cooperation partner since 2010.
Hans Kelsen in Geneva, ca. 1935
Hans Kelsen (born in Prague on October 11, 1881, died in Orinda, California, on April 19, 1973) is considered one of the most important jurists of the 20th century. In Austria, he is best known as the “architect” of the Austrian Federal Constitution; worldwide, the legal theory model of “pure jurisprudence” he developed attracted considerable attention. While there are numerous publications on his academic work, his life had hardly been studied academically until the beginning of the 21st century.
In 2006 and 2011, the Austrian Science Fund FWF approved two projects (“Biographical Studies on Hans Kelsen in the Years 1881–1940,” P 19287; “Kelsen's Life in America and the Worldwide Dissemination of his Legal Doctrine,” P 23747). These projects resulted in numerous publications, in particular the 1027-page biography “Hans Kelsen. Biography of a Legal Scholar,” which was published by Mohr Siebeck in 2020 (2nd edition 2021).A Spanish translation of this book was published in 2025; an English translation is expected to be published in 2027.
Thomas Woodrow Wilson (fourth from the left) and Georges Clemenceau (fifth from the left) during the Paris peace treaty conference.
After the end of the First World War (1914–1918), a total of 21 international treaties and agreements were signed in Paris and its suburbs Versailles, St. Germain-en-Laye, Neuilly-sur-Seine, Trianon and Sèvres between June 1919 and August 1920, placing international law on a completely new footing. At the center of these were the peace treaties with the losing states of the First World War (Germany, Austria-Hungary, Bulgaria, Turkey); the treaty with Austria was signed in St. Germain-en-Laye on September 10, 1919.
The Treaty of St. Germain (VSG) consists of 381 articles as well as several annexes. It not only regulates matters that typically occur in a peace treaty (border demarcation, reparations, arms restrictions, etc.), but also takes into account the fact that the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy had disintegrated, which made it necessary, for example, to regulate the citizenship of former citizens of the imperial and royal monarchy. Monarchy were necessary. Finally, the treaty also contains matters that have no or only a loose connection with the war, such as the founding of the International Labor Organization (ILO), but above all the statutes of the League of Nations, an international organization that is considered the precursor of the UN. Individual parts of the treaty, such as in particular the provisions (essentially still in force today) concerning Austria's borders, have always been of interest to the public as well as to scholars. Other parts, on the other hand, have received insufficient attention so far, despite their partly high practical importance. Even a hundred years after the signing of the treaty, there was no comprehensive, legally stringent analysis of the entire treaty.
The project at hand aimed at correcting this deficit and at examining the entire VSG with legal/legal-historical methods. The subject of the project was therefore not the history of the treaty's origins, which has already been examined in many respects, but rather its legal significance, which is reflected, for example, in the jurisprudence of the Austrian courts, but also in the activities of special arbitration tribunals and other bodies that were established on the basis of or as a result of the VSG. Particular attention should be paid to those provisions that are still in force today and are of practical relevance (such as the constitutional provisions in favor of religious and ethnic minorities). The question of whether a provision is still in force at all had to be answered from both an international law perspective and a domestic perspective.
The project was carried out from 2017 to 2021 under the roof of the Austrian Commission for Legal History of the Austrian Academy of Sciences, in cooperation with the Universities of Graz (Anita Ziegerhofer), Linz (Herbert Kalb) and Vienna (Thomas Olechowski) and supported by the Austrian Science Fund FWF (project P 29774). The focus was on the first comprehensive commentary on the Treaty of Saint Germain, which was compiled by an 18-member team of lawyers, historians and a geodesist. In addition, a number of other publications were produced and presentations were given at conferences; in September 2018, an international conference on "The Treaty of Saint Germain in the International Context of the European Postwar Order" took place at the Austrian Academy of Sciences, the results of which were published in a BRGÖ thematic volume in 2019.
The Austrian Federal Constitutional Law (B-VG 1920) is the oldest republican constitution still in existence in Europe. It has been in force since 1920 (except for the years 1934 to 1945) and, although it has been changed numerous times, still shows the handwriting of Hans Kelsen in its structure and in many individual provisions.
The project "The Genesis of the Federal Constitution 1920" aims at tracing the genesis of the Federal Constitution on the basis of the most important sources and texts of the years 1919 and 1920, in particular the manifold preliminary drafts, consultation minutes, expert opinions and memoranda. These materials will be digitized, transcribed, and annotated both text-critically and from a legal-historical perspective.
The international and interdisciplinary project is a collaborative initiative of the FRQ, the Hans Kelsen Research Center at the University of Freiburg im Breisgau, and the Austrian Center for Digital Humanities and Cultural Heritage at the ÖAW. It is funded by the Austrian Science Fund (FWF) and the German Research Foundation (DFG).
Kick-off event on January 24, 2024 (PDF)
Report in the daily newspaper "Die Presse" from February 10, 2024
Report in the “Salzburger Nachrichten” from January 22, 2024
The Renner II Cabinet (March 15–October 17, 1919) shortly after its election by the KNV; Karl Renner is seated, fourth from the left; Otto Glöckel, Undersecretary of State for Education, is seated, third from the left. Source: “Das interessante Blatt,” March 27, 1919, page 3
1918, consisted of state secretaries who met for cabinet council meetings under the leadership of the state chancellor. It was not until the Federal Constitutional Law came into force in 1920 that federal ministers replaced the state secretaries, while the term “state secretary” has since corresponded to the term “undersecretary” from the period 1918-1920. The minutes of the cabinet council and ministerial council meetings are an outstanding source for political history, constitutional history, and many other disciplines. They set out the broad guidelines of policy and reveal the motivations of the actors involved, sometimes more clearly than others. Nevertheless, only about half of the minutes from the First Republic (the democratic period from 1918 to 1933 and the authoritarian period from 1933 to 1938) have been published in a scholarly edition to date.
In the summer of 2025, the Austrian Science Fund (FWF) approved financial support for the publication of the Cabinet Council minutes from February 3, 1919, to June 25, 1920 (FWF Project PAT1495024). This seemingly short period includes, among other things, the first elections of the republic (in which women were eligible to vote for the first time), the reform of the provisional constitution, the resolutions on the Habsburg and nobility abolition laws, a series of labor and social law reforms, the negotiations and conclusion of the Vertrags von St. Germain, and a large part of the deliberations on the Bundes-Verfassungsgesetz 1920. The project will start on January 1, 2026. sowie ein Großteil der Beratungen über das . Projektstart ist der 1. Jänner 2026.