November 12 in World History: Austria’s Assembly Voted Itself a Republic in 1918 and Wrote Union With Germany Into Article 2

Independent New Hampshire Journalism · Northfield, NH

Vienna’s Provisional National Assembly made German-Austria a democratic republic in 1918, the Tokyo tribunal read its sentences in 1948, and Indonesian troops fired on mourners in Dili in 1991.

A legislature can abolish a monarchy in an afternoon and still not get the country it voted for. Vienna’s Provisional National Assembly did the first on November 12, 1918, and a treaty saw to the second. Austria leads this edition because the paper trail is complete: the bill, the stenographic record of the vote, and the treaty article that barred one clause. The same date holds a border drawn at Kabul, sentences read in Tokyo, gunfire at a cemetery in Dili, and two spacecraft at the far ends of long routes.

November 12, 1918

Vienna’s assembly votes a republic into law and writes in union with Germany

The emperor stepped back first. On November 11, 1918, Emperor Charles renounced his participation in state affairs, according to the House of Austrian History. The next day the Provisional National Assembly for German-Austria held its third session, and the museum records that several hundred thousand people gathered in front of the parliament.

The bill before the deputies, Beilage No. 8 from the State Council, was short and blunt. Article 1 declared German-Austria a democratic republic and said all public authority is instituted by the people. Article 2 declared German-Austria a component of the German Republic, with special laws to govern its share in German legislation and administration. Article 3 handed the rights the old constitution gave the emperor to the German-Austrian State Council until a constituent national assembly set a final constitution. Article 4 dissolved the imperial and royal ministries.

The stenographic record of that session shows how the vote went. State Chancellor Karl Renner asked for one change to Article 4, adding that the new state offices took over the old ministries’ mandates “unter ausdrücklicher Ablehnung jeder Rechtsnachfolge,” with express rejection of any legal succession. Deputy Miklas, speaking for the Christian Socials, said his party would have preferred to leave the final decision on the form of government to a referendum of all adult men and women, since the assembly’s mandates dated from 1911. His party made no motion, he said, so as not to endanger unity.

President Dinghofer then put Articles 1 through 11 to a single vote. The deputies rose, and he declared the law adopted unanimously, to applause across the house and the gallery. On Renner’s motion the house went straight to a third reading, and the law passed unanimously again. The Austrian Parliament notes that the old imperial Reichsrat held its last session on November 12 as well.

Article 2 did not last. Britannica records that Article 88 of the Treaty of Saint-Germain in 1919 forbade union with Germany without the consent of the League of Nations and required the republic to stop calling itself German-Austria. It became the Republic of Austria. The republic in Article 1 stood; the union in Article 2 was barred by the victors.

Related coverage: Granite State Report’s September 15, 2026 explainer on how New Hampshire and the United States could lawfully write new constitutions covers the same question from the other side: what it takes to change a form of government on paper.

November 12, 1893

A frontier agreement is dated at Kabul

An agreement dated at Kabul on November 12, 1893, set the eastern and southern frontier of Afghanistan “from Wakhan to the Persian border” along a line drawn on an attached map. The signers were Amir Abdur Rahman Khan and Sir Henry Mortimer Durand, Foreign Secretary to the Government of India, according to the text printed in a British collection of treaties and digitized by the Qatar Digital Library. Each side promised not to interfere in territory beyond the line on the other side. The Amir kept Asmar and the valley above it as far as Chanak and agreed in return not to interfere in Swat, Bajaur or Chitral.

November 12, 1948

The Tokyo tribunal reads its sentences

The International Military Tribunal for the Far East read its sentences on November 12, 1948, at the end of a judgment read in open court from November 4. A U.S. diplomatic despatch printed in Foreign Relations of the United States lists them. Seven defendants were sentenced to death by hanging: Doihara, Hirota, Itagaki, Kimura, Matsui, Muto and Tojo. Sixteen received life imprisonment. Togo received twenty years and Shigemitsu seven. Two accused, Matsuoka and Nagano, had died during the trial, and Okawa had been declared unfit to stand trial. Indictments had been returned against twenty-eight suspects on April 29, 1946.

The despatch, from Acting Political Adviser W. J. Sebald, records how narrow the final case became. The tribunal rejected thirty-eight of the indictment’s fifty-five counts and returned verdicts on only ten. The sentences were not made part of the written judgment, and the separate opinions were not read in court. Those opinions split hard. Justice Pal of India wrote a 1,235-page dissent concluding that each accused should have been acquitted. Justice Röling of the Netherlands would have acquitted five, Hirota among them, and would have given three others death sentences. Justice Bernard of France, one of a minority of four judges, criticized how the majority of seven drafted the tribunal’s findings and called the failure to indict Emperor Hirohito an error.

November 12, 1980

Voyager 1 passes closest to Saturn

Voyager 1 made its closest approach to Saturn at 23:46 Universal Time on November 12, 1980, at a range of about 126,000 kilometers, or 78,000 miles, according to NASA. NASA credits the flyby with five new moons, a new ring and complicated ring structures. The agency also records the cost of the trip’s priorities: the requirements of a close pass at the moon Titan meant the spacecraft was not sent on to Uranus and Neptune. After Saturn it headed north out of the plane of the planets’ orbits.

November 12, 1991

Indonesian forces fire on mourners at Santa Cruz cemetery in Dili

Indonesian security forces opened fire on a crowd at Santa Cruz cemetery in Dili, East Timor, at about 8 a.m. on November 12, 1991. Amnesty International, writing two days later, said the victims had joined a procession to the grave of Sebastiao Gomes Rangel, killed on October 28 when Indonesian troops entered the parish church of Motael. Eyewitnesses cited by Amnesty said the procession was peaceful and that soldiers fired without warning. Amnesty put the dead at between 50 and 100 and said two foreign journalists were among those beaten.

The counts did not agree. The International Commission of Jurists reported in 1992 that most sources put the dead between 50 and more than 200, and that a New Zealander, Kamal Bamadhaj, was among them. Indonesia’s National Commission of Inquiry said the official toll had stood at 19 dead and 91 wounded and concluded the dead totaled about 50. The ICJ called the commission’s advance report not credible and said the commission failed to meet internationally recognized standards of impartiality. The figures in this entry are each source’s own.

November 12, 2014

Philae sets down on a comet

The signal confirming that the Philae lander had touched down on Comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko reached Earth at 16:03 GMT on November 12, 2014, after a seven-hour descent, the European Space Agency announced that day. ESA called the soft landing a first in history. Its Rosetta orbiter had launched on March 2, 2004, and traveled 6.4 billion kilometers to reach the comet on August 6, 2014. The landing site, named Agilkia, sat on the head of the double-lobed comet.

What the record keeps

Most of these entries survive because someone wrote down the vote, the count or the time. Vienna’s stenographers caught a Christian Social deputy saying his party would have preferred a referendum it chose not to force. Sebald’s despatch kept the dissents that were never read aloud. In Dili the record is a fight between counts, and the gap between 19 and 200 is the story. A unanimous vote, a treaty article and a commission report each claimed the last word. The paper shows which claims held. For an earlier tribunal record, see the October 18 edition on the Nuremberg charges.

Fact check

Editor’s note. This edition rests on the Austrian Parliament’s stenographic record and bill text, the House of Austrian History, the Foreign Relations of the United States series, the Qatar Digital Library, NASA, the European Space Agency, Amnesty International, the International Commission of Jurists, the Library of Congress and Britannica. Translations from German are by Granite State Report. Casualty figures for Dili differ by source and are attributed to each. No New Hampshire connection is claimed for these events.

Corrections: Granite State Report corrects verified errors promptly and appends a dated note identifying what changed and when. The corrections policy and the corrections register are public, and correction notes are never removed.