Austria under National Socialism 400,000 Jews – Simple way out; vote National Socialist". The Christian Social Party had ruled from 1932 and Chancellor Engelbert Dollfuß had led them from 1932. The Social Democrats were no longer their only threat. The previous chancellor and priest Ignaz Seipel had worked towards an authoritarian state. Seipel based this on the Papal Encyclicals, Rerum novarum (1891) and Quadragesimo anno (1931). Abolition of the parliamentary system was necessary for this. A crisis in the Austrian parliament on the May 4, 1933 gave Dollfuß the opportunity he wanted. Later in May 1933 the Christian Social Union was converted to the
Christian Kern Christian Kern Christian Kern ( ; born 4 January 1966) was Chancellor of Austria from 17 May 2016 to 18 December 2017 and chairman of the Social Democratic Party from 25 June 2016 to 25 September 2018. A business journalist by profession, the member of Austria's Social Democratic Party served as spokesman of the SPÖ's parliamentary group leader in the mid-1990s, before he became a senior manager in Austria's leading electricity company Verbund AG. In 2010, Kern was appointed CEO of the state-owned Austrian Federal Railways (ÖBB), chairing the Community of European Railway and Infrastructure Companies (CER) from 2014 onwards.