Edmund Glaise-Horstenau

Edmund Glaise-Horstenau
Glaise-Horstenau, 1944
Vice-Chancellor of Austria
In office 11 March 1938 – 13 March 1938
President	Wilhelm Miklas
Chancellor	Arthur Seyss-Inquart
Preceded by	Ludwig Hülgerth
Succeeded by	Anschluss (Adolf Schärf in 1945)
Federal Minister of the Interior
In office 6 November 1936 – 16 February 1938
President	Wilhelm Miklas
Chancellor	Kurt Schuschnigg
Preceded by	Kurt Schuschnigg (acting)
Succeeded by	Arthur Seyss-Inquart
Personal details
Born	Edmund Glaise von Horstenau (1882-02-27)27 February 1882 Braunau am Inn, Austria-Hungary
Died	20 July 1946(1946-07-20) (aged 64) Nuremberg, Allied-occupied Germany
Religion	Roman Catholic

Edmund Glaise-Horstenau (also known as Edmund Glaise von Horstenau; 27 February 1882 – 20 July 1946) was an Austrian officer in the Bundesheer, last Vice-Chancellor of Austria before the 1938 Anschluss, and general in the German Wehrmacht during the Second World War.

Born in Braunau am Inn, the son of an officer, Glaise-Horstenau attended the Theresian Military Academy and served in World War I on the General Staff of the Austro-Hungarian Army, where he from 1915 headed the press department of the Supreme Command of the Armed Forces. After the war he studied history at the University of Vienna, beside his employment at the Austrian War Archives (as director from 1925 to 1938). He also achieved the rank of a colonel at the Austrian Heeresnachrichtenamt in 1934.

Originally a monarchist, Glaise-Horstenau became the number-two man in the hierarchy of the banned Austrian Nazi Party in the middle and late 1930s behind its leader Arthur Seyss-Inquart. To improve relations with Nazi Germany, he was appointed a member of the Staatsrat of the Federal State of Austria from 1934 in the rank of a Minister Without Portfolio, and from 1936 to 1938 served as Federal Minister of the Interior in the cabinet of Chancellor Kurt Schuschnigg, after being appointed under pressure from Adolf Hitler. At the meeting at the Berghof in Berchtesgaden on 12 February 1938 between Hitler and Schuschnigg, Germany demanded among other things that Glaise-Horstenau be made Minister of War in a new, pro-Nazi government, and that he would thereafter establish close operational relations between the German and Austrian Armies, leading ultimately to the assimilation of the Austrian into the German system. After Schuschnigg had to resign on March 11, Glaise-Horstenau served as Vice-Chancellor of Austria under Seyß-Inquart for two days.