RENNER, KARL ), Austrian politician, was born on Dec. 14, 1870, the son of a peasant, at Dolni-Dunajovice, Moravia. He studied law at the university of Vienna, and early attached himself to the Social Democratic party. He became a leader of Neo-Marxism. He was a deputy from 1907, and, as leader of the Social Democrat party, he repeatedly attacked the Government. He deeply influenced the movement which preceded the fall of the monarchy. After the collapse he became head of the Government, and after the elections had given the Social Democrats and Christian Socialists an overwhelming major ity, he formed a coalition ministry, as the leader of which he became the first chancellor of the Austrian republic.
Renner was largely responsible for the decrees of the national assembly which called for the dethronement of the dynasty of Habsburg-Lorraine and the banishment of all members of this house if they did not submit entirely to the laws of the republic, and he was in charge of the negotiations which led to the ex emperor Charles leaving Austria in March 1919. He was respon sible for thwarting the separatist endeavours of the different provinces and the demands which the Communists, supported by their partisans in foreign countries, made with the object of overthrowing the Government. On May 12, 1919, he went to Paris as head of the Austrian delegation to receive the conditions of peace. As the foreign minister, Otto Bauer (q.v.), resigned rather than take the responsibility for certain provisions of the treaty, Renner took over the conduct of foreign affairs and signed the Treaty of St. Germaine-en-Laye of Sept. Io, 1919. In Dec.
1919 he visited Paris again to depict Austria's miserable situa tion to her former enemies and to beg, not without success, for help.
Meanwhile, the first coalition ministry had been succeeded in Oct. 1919 by a second, in which Renner was again chancellor and secretary for foreign affairs. Relations between the Aus trian Government and Hungary, which since the regime of the revolution had been succeeded by a reaction, were very strained. Renner, who, as a Social Democrat, was inimical to the reaction ary Hungarian Government, refused to grant demands put forward to extradite the Hungarian revolutionaries who had fled to Vienna. This brought him into conflict with the Christian Socialists and their representatives in the Cabinet. The coalition broke up in June ; but Renner remained in charge of foreign affairs in the so-called "proportional cabinet," only resigning in Oct. 1920. He continued to take part in the parliamentary debates and the enter prises of the Social Democrat party; but his influence rapidly declined.
His principal works are Grundlagen and Entwicklungsziele der Oster reichisch-ungarischen Monarchie (1906) ; Oesterreichs Erneuerung (1919) ; Die Wirtschaft als Gesamtprozess and die Sozialisierung (A. F. P.)