Cabinet Council Minutes

The Minutes of the Austrian Cabinet Council 1919–1920

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.