Ernst Rüdiger Starhemberg

Heimwehr (Austria) Fascists and Nazis Counter-revolutionary forces Austria Austria 1899–1956 ○ Natural causes

Aristocratic Heimwehr leader who helped build Austria’s corporative Ständestaat and led the Fatherland Front

Born into the princely family at Eferding in Upper Austria, he fought on the Italian front and in 1921 served in the German Freikorps Oberland. An admirer of Mussolini, he turned away from the Nazis after witnessing the Beer Hall Putsch. National leader of the Heimwehr from 1930 and minister of the interior that year, he helped Dollfuss create the Fatherland Front and the authoritarian corporative state of the May Constitution of 1934, becoming vice-chancellor. After the Nazis murdered Dollfuss he briefly headed the government and the Front. Ousted by Schuschnigg in 1936, when the Heimwehr was dissolved, he fled after the Anschluss, lived in Argentina and died in Austria in 1956.

Also known as: Ernst Rüdiger Camillo von Starhemberg

Activities and affiliations