Christian Social Party (Austria)

The Christian Social Party was an Austrian Catholic conservative party founded in 1891 and led in its early years by Karl Lueger, mayor of Vienna. It was strongest among the peasantry, the clergy and the lower middle class, and after 1920 it dominated the governments of the First Austrian Republic under leaders such as Ignaz Seipel and Engelbert Dollfuss. In 1934 it was absorbed into the Fatherland Front; the Austrian People's Party succeeded it in 1945.