House of Deputies (Austria)

House of Deputies Abgeordnetenhaus
Lesser coat of arms of Cisleithania (1915–1918)
Type
Type	Lower house of the Imperial Council (Austria)
Leadership
President	Gustav Groß (last)
Seats	516 (from 1907)
Meeting place
Debating chamber of the House of Deputies Austrian Parliament Building Vienna

Plenary hall of the House of Deputies in the Austrian Parliament Building in Vienna

The House of Deputies (Template:Lang-de, Template:Lang-cs, Template:Lang-pl, Template:Lang-it) was, from 1861, the lower house of the bicameral Imperial Council parliament of the Austrian Empire and, from 1867 to 1918, of the Cisleithanian lands within Austria-Hungary. The upper chamber was the House of Lords.

History

The first provisional chamber of deputies established in Austria was held in 1861 in the Währinger Straße in Vienna, in the building referred to as the " Schmerling Theater " which was used until 1883 to accommodate parliamentary meetings. In 1867 the first allocations of seats were established among parliamentarians who were framed in the number of 203: 54 Bohemians, 38 Galicians, 22 Moravians and 18 Austrians. A subsequent electoral reform of 1873 brought the number of members from 203 to 353 also to open up this lower house more to the bourgeoisie and to favor the greater participation of non-aristocratic social classes in government operations.

The deputies were elected for a six-year term of office. The internal distribution of seats was also divided on the basis of professions, reaching to include 85 members belonging to the landlord class, 21 between traders and artisans, 128 representatives of the rural class and 118 citizen deputies (with the clause, however, of the payment of taxes continuously for 10 years). In total, the political class of the Chamber of Deputies gathered 6% of the adult population of the Empire. On June 14, 1896, the number of members was increased to 425 after the introduction of universal suffrage. Voters were again increased on January 21, 1907 to 516.

External links

Media related to House of Deputies (Austria) at Wikimedia Commons