Austria on Monday marked its 100th anniversary as a republic born from the embers of World War I and the Austro-Hungarian empire with a lavish ceremony at Vienna's prestigious State Opera House. The sprawling Austro-Hungarian empire was broken up in the wake of World War I and Emperor Charles I renounced the throne on November 11, 1918, with Austria officially declaring itself a republic the following day.
The event at the opera house was attended by the political, economic and cultural elite. Austrian President Alexander Van der Bellen - a member of the Greens party - as well as centre-right Chancellor Sebastian Kurz and his far-right deputy Heinz-Christian Strache made speeches calling for democratic consensus and for the respect of differing political opinions. "Only a liberal democracy fights for joint solutions that benefit all... democracy means civilised debate and confrontation," said the 74-year-old Van der Bellen.
Economically broken after World War I and in search of a new collective identity, the Austrian Republic witnessed violent clashes between right and left from the start which eventually gave rise to two dictatorships, Austrofascism and Nazism.
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