Richard Reisch, Ernst Plener † (1923)

Richard Reisch’s obituary commemorates Ernst Plener as a constitutional politician, financial reformer, and supporter of economic scholarship. Its governing distinction is between political success and public merit: the failure of Plener’s efforts to reconcile Austria’s nationalities does not, in Reisch’s account, invalidate his purposes or diminish his integrity. The tribute preserves an ideal of parliamentary government grounded in expertise, patient negotiation, and international breadth.

Plener’s education and diplomatic service establish the conditions of that outlook:

Plener begann seine Laufbahn nach gründlichen Studien auf den Universitäten in Wien und Berlin in diplomatischen Diensten, die ihn während der ereignisreichen Jahre 1865—1873 nach Paris und London führten.

English translation: After thorough studies at the universities of Vienna and Berlin, Plener began his career in the diplomatic service, which during the eventful years 1865-1873 took him to Paris and London.

Reisch treats this experience as more than an early stage in an official career. Contact with leading political figures enlarged Plener’s understanding of public life beyond Austrian circumstances. His studies of English factory legislation and building societies, together with his biography of Lassalle, connect political observation with economic and social inquiry. England supplied a particularly important institutional model:

Vor allem aber zogen die parlamentarischen Verhältnisse Englands Pleneres Aufmerksamkeit auf sich.

English translation: Above all, however, it was England's parliamentary conditions that drew Plener's attention.

The example of Disraeli and Gladstone helped shape Plener’s conception of parliamentary practice and constitutional responsibility. His Austrian career subsequently tested whether such principles could sustain cooperation within a multinational state.

As a leader of Austria’s Germans, Plener pursued national autonomy without abandoning the unity of the state. Reisch presents this position as an alternative to the antagonisms generated by language politics:

Der Kampf des Alltages nötigte allerdings auch ihn, sich in aufreibender Weise mit den vielen kleinlichen Fragen des böhmischen Sprachenstreites zu beschäftigen; allein er verfiel gleichwohl niemals dem öden nationalen Chauvinismus.

English translation: The struggle of everyday life did indeed compel him too to occupy himself, in a wearing manner, with the many petty questions of the Bohemian language dispute; yet he nevertheless never succumbed to dreary national chauvinism.

The proposed Bohemian settlement of 1890 becomes the principal example of this conciliatory ambition and its frustration. Reisch attributes its failure to Czech political reversal while also recording opposition within the German camp, where nationalist demands, liberal expectations, and antisemitic politics placed conflicting pressures on Plener. The obituary thus offers a sympathetic interpretation of political defeat, not merely a succession of offices. Its discussion of Plener’s three-volume memoirs extends that interpretation, treating them as evidence both for Austrian history and for the ethical responsibilities of leadership.

The account’s substantive centre is Plener’s finance ministry, from November 1893 to June 1895. Reisch emphasizes his contribution to currency reform through a gold loan, the accumulation of the bank’s gold reserve, the withdrawal of circulating state notes, and a new agreement with the Austro-Hungarian Bank. These measures exemplify public service in which technical competence and institutional negotiation were inseparable.

The same combination characterizes Plener’s work on direct personal taxation. He revised proposals for business taxation while mediating between state revenue needs, provincial interests, and parliamentary demands for reductions. Reisch writes here as a former young ministry official who had participated in the deliberations under Böhm-Bawerk and Robert Meyer. His recollections give the tribute an eyewitness dimension and make the sustained scrutiny of earlier tax legislation a standard against which to judge later legislative haste.

Although the personal-tax law was enacted under a successor in 1896, Reisch credits Plener’s preparatory work as essential to its achievement. He praises its systematic organization, income-tax provisions, and treatment of joint-stock companies without denying its defects. Subsequent alterations under political and wartime pressure do not, in this assessment, erase the original accomplishment.

Parliamentary obstruction and the collapse of the coalition expose the limits of Plener’s constitutional hopes. His later presidency of the common supreme audit office, international arbitration work, participation in economic associations, and continuing support for the journal nevertheless show the persistence of his public vocation. Completing his memoirs after the wartime death of his only son similarly appears as an act of endurance.

Reisch’s concluding evaluation separates the collapse of a political project from the worth of its sustaining principles. Plener embodies an Austrian tradition of informed deliberation and national accommodation whose loss gives the obituary its elegiac force. Economic expertise, parliamentary patience, and personal integrity remain its measures of achievement, even where institutions and political circumstances defeated their intended results.