Austrian Civil War many hundreds suffered injury. Surprisingly, the violence soon died down and the factions took their battle from the streets back into the political institutions. However, the travails of the First Republic only got worse in the following years. The Great Depression also showed its effects in Austria, resulting in high unemployment and massive inflation. In addition, from 1933 — the year Adolf Hitler became Chancellor of Germany — National Socialist sympathisers (who wanted a unification of Austria with Hitler's Germany) threatened the Austrian state from within. On 4 March 1933, Christian Social Chancellor Engelbert Dollfuß suspended the Austrian Parliament. In
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.