Causes & consequences The ban was intended to bring about the overthrow of Chancellor
Engelbert Dollfuss, who by then was already acting in a dictatorial manner. The pretended trigger was the expulsion of the Bavarian Minister of Justice
Hans Frank from Austria. Frank was one of the leading National Socialists in the German Reich and belonged to Hitler's Old Guard. His expulsion took place after he had threatened, in a speech in Graz on May 15, 1933, that the German government would actively interfere in Austrian domestic politics since Austria was a “part of Germany”. The financial hurdle proved effective. The percentage of German tourists in Austria for tourism in 1932 was around 40%. The total number of overnight stays fell from 19.9 million in 1932 to 16.5 million the following year. The lowest was reached in 1934 with 15.9 million overnight stays. In Tyrol alone, overnight stays fell from 4.4 million (in 1929/1933) to 500,000 (in 1933/38). The lockdown also had a massive impact on the university level and various Austrian establishments like the first cable car in Tyrol (
de:Tiroler Zugspitzbahn) which was developed by Dr.
Hermann Stern. In more recent
historiography, the effect of the ban is put into perspective. On one hand, the effects of the global economic crisis that began at the end of the 1920s reached their peak at the same time. On the other hand, the ban offered "a crystallization point at which the abstract problem of a fundamental economic crisis, which the average citizen cannot concretely understand, could be discussed." == References ==