The newly independent country formally declared its neutrality in October of that year.ĭespite the ten years of separation into different zones by the Occupying Forces, Austria’s fate turned out to be much better than Germany’s or the other countries of Central Europe, which were dragged into the Soviet sphere. It called for the withdrawal of the four occupying state’s forces, outlawed any future Anschluss with Germany, and banned Nazism. This treaty reinstated Austria’s sovereignty for the first time since the March 1938 Anschluss with Nazi Germany, which had annexed Austria and made it the province of Ostmark. Leopold Figl, the former Chancellor and then the Foreign Minister, famously appeared on the balcony of Vienna’s Belvedere Palace (now home to a dazzling Klimt collection), waved the signed paper and uttered the words Österreich ist frei! (“Austria is free!”),
May 15 th, 1955, was a momentous occasion for a war-battered Europe, and for the national history of Austria as the Foreign Ministers representing the Occupying Powers gathered to sign the Austrian Independence Treaty.
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