Michael Mayr

Michael Mayr (10 April 1864 – 22 May 1922) was an Austrian politician, who served as Chancellor of Austria in the First Austrian Republic from July 1920 to June 1921. He was a member of the Christian Social Party, and by profession a historian.

Life

Mayr was born in Adlwang in Upper Austria, the son of a farmer. He studied history and geography at the University of Vienna and earned a doctorate in 1890. From 1897 through 1920, he served as director of the Tyrol State Archives (Tiroler Landesarchiv). In 1900, he became a Professor of Modern History at the University of Innsbruck.

Mayr's political career began under the Austro-Hungarian Empire, when from 1907 to 1911 he was a member of the Imperial Council (Reichsrat) legislature and from 1908 to 1914 of the Tyrolean Landtag assembly. With the breakup of the Empire at the end of World War I, Mayr was in 1919–1920 a delegate for the Christian Social Party to the National Assembly drafting the new Constitution of Austria. State Chancellor (Staatskanzler) Karl Renner appointed him a state secretary in his grand coalition government on 17 October 1919.

After Renner's cabinet finally collapsed, Mayr, on 7 July 1920, succeeded him as acting "director of the state chancellery", as part of an interim government of his Christian Social Party and the Social Democratic Labor Party (SDAP). Renner himself remained State Secretary for Foreign Affairs until the Social Democrats left the Austrian government after their disappointing outcome in the of 17 October, to remain in opposition until the end of . From 10 November, with the Constitution's coming into force, the cabinet formed the , with Mayr as Federal Chancellor ().