Cattaro mutiny

Austro Hungarian Navy mutiny, 1–3 February 1918
The Cattaro mutiny occurred during World War I. Sailors of the Austro Hungarian Navy in the Adriatic Bay of Cattaro (today: Kotor, Montenegro), which at that time belonged to Austria Hungary started it on 1 February 1918. The mutiny remained isolated and had to be abandoned after three days due to the arrival of loyal troops. Four sailors were subsequently executed according to naval law. The naval historian Halpern portrays this event as the last victory of the Austro Hungarian Monarchy over the social forces that would eventually overwhelm it.

At the beginning of 1918, dissatisfaction with the food situation, with the political conditions, as well as war fatigue had increased further. After the Russian October Revolution of 1917 and the peace offer of the Bolsheviks, wide circles, especially of the working class, feared that the German Supreme Army Command could jeopardise the hoped for peace on the Eastern Front by making excessive demands. In protest, the Jännerstreik occurred with over 700,000 participants throughout Austria Hungary. Workers' councils were formed, which also demanded better supplies, the abolition of censorship, the end of martial law and the introduction of the eight hour day. The strike wave also reached the naval arsenal in Pola. After the strikes in the Monarchy ended for the most part on 21 January, work was also resumed in Pola on 28 January. Presumably unaware of the end of the actions, the sailors of the warships anchored in Cattaro decided to hold a demonstration, which they hoped would give the movement further impetus. The base of Cattaro in the south of Austria Hungary became of special strategic importance when the Lovćen, located on Montenegrin territory and overlooking the bay, was conquered in 1916 during the occupation of Montenegro and Northern Albania. Cattaro now became an important base of operations against the Otranto barrier, a base for the submarine warfare in the Mediterranean, and for supplies to the Balkan front. For this purpose, besides destroyers, torpedo boats and submarines (also German ones), the whole Cruiser Flotilla under the flagship (Austrian: Flaggenschiff) "SMS Sankt Georg" as well as the V. Ship Division was deployed there. Destroyers, torpedo boats and submarines as well as the modern Rapidkreuzer (fast cruisers) carried the main load of the naval warfare, while the large ships were mostly idly at anchor, because as in the German Empire the risk of the fleet getting destroyed seemed too great (fleet in being). This was also an important reason for increasing tensions between officers and crews aboard these units. The crews felt unjustly and roughly treated by their superiors. They complained about senseless drill, about strict punishment for nullity, about insults, humiliations by often young officers, about the poor rations in contrast to the officers, about torn off uniforms, about the little home leave. Many crew members were trained metalworkers and had come into contact with the ideas of the social democratic workers movement. They demanded democratic reforms. The perceived privileged position of the officers also fed the suspicion that they were not interested in peace, but wanted to prolong the war, while the ordinary soldiers and their families had to suffer great privations.

In the morning at 7:30 a. m. the 3rd Division from Pola with Erzherzog Ferdinand Max, Erzherzog Friedrich, and Erzherzog Karl as well as torpedo boats and destroyers entered the outer bay of Cattaro. The ultimatum had finally been set at 10 o'clock. On the remaining ships with red flags more and more crew members wanted to give up. Rasch and Sesan tried in the morning to persuade the crew of the Gäa to persevere, but most of them they could no longer convince. Sesan went to the airfield. Rasch went back to the Sankt Georg. There the crew demanded to vote again and it became clear that only very few were still in favour of the continuation of the uprising. Rasch ordered to drop the red flag and reported to Rear Admiral Hansa as a prisoner. Thereafter the few remaining ships also dropped the red flag; the rebellion ended. Sesan managed to escape to Italy with an aircraft together with Gustav Stonawski, who had chaired the central committee, and another NCO.

On the same day, the disembarkation and detention of those crew members classified by the commanders as "irresponsible elements" began. There was no uniform policy, so that even committee members who had acted in the officers' interests, as well as crew members who had not joined the uprising but were generally considered unreliable, were among the 678 arrested. Peter Fitl has examined the procedures more closely in a publication published in 2018.

Guseck, the commander of the naval port, had been charged with the prosecution. He selected 40 persons for the drumhead court martial. He demanded a quick conviction. The trial began on 7 February and must not take longer than three days. The charge was insurrection. The accused were assigned four officers as defence lawyers. The civilian lawyer Dr. Mitrović arrived only at the end of the last day of the trial. After a protest by the defence that the Präklusivfrist (expiration period) had been exceeded, the court declared that it had no jurisdiction over 18 defendants. Fitl criticises that in the event of an actual expiration (which cannot be determined nowadays), this should have applied to all the defendants. The defence attempted to decline the responsibility of the defendants: compulsion of the circumstances, carried away by the others, fear of artillery fire from "St. Georg", "Gäa", "Monarch". An important question was who had used weapons. In the case of the chief officer of the "St. Georg", Zipperer, it could not be clarified beyond doubt neither in the drumhead court martial nor later on in the ordinary court martial whether Šižgorić or Ujdur or both had fired at him. The defence lawyers protested when on the last day of the trial several witnesses who had been summoned were not heard. They also wanted to hear further witnesses in favour of the defendants. The requests were rejected, probably also because the court was under time pressure. Finally, six men were found guilty of the crime of insurrection; out of these František Rasch, Anton Grabar, Jerko Sisgorić and Mate Berničevič received the capital punishment, Franz Bajzel and Ludwig Szekacs were sentenced to aggravated imprisonment (ten and five years respectively), and two men were acquitted. The remainder were handed over to the court martial. On the same day, the judges deliberated on a pardon petition to Guseck for those sentenced to death (a common procedure according to Fitl), and the majority voted in favor. Guseck rejected this application and confirmed the death sentences on 10 February. The civil lawyer Dr. Mitrović sent a plea for clemency to the emperor, which he justified among other things by the unfair conduct of the trial. The emperor did not reply. The summary execution took place early in the morning on 11 February 1918, below the cemetery walls of the nearby village Škaljari. They were buried in a common grave.

The ship commanders could now once again report potential defendants for the court martial. In some cases this resulted in an increase in some cases in a reduction of the number compared to the previous reports. A total of 45 persons were added to the 678 arrested. But Guseck decided that only 392 persons were to be questioned. The interrogations began in April. The requirement to submit a written copy of the arrest warrant and an order of preliminary investigation was not complied with. The arrested persons were also not made aware of the possibility of lodging a complaint. The investigations were conducted by ten military lawyers (Auditoren), who also looked intensively into possible exculpatory aspects. The suspicions expressed by naval officers that the Entente had had a hand in the matter or that there had been agitation by political or national agents turned out to be groundless. In June, the investigations were finalised and the reports (Referate und Anträge) were submitted. They requested that 234 of the accused be charged with mutiny or insurrection and that the remaining 351 be spared from prosecution. However, Guseck ordered charges against 392 persons, the remaining 193 were then released, or in some cases disciplined and in a few cases transferred to another court.

Guseck issued an indictment against 386 defendants at the end of August. Fitl suspects that the original indictment was flawed. The trial under auditor Major Wolf began on 16 September 1918 and took place in a sardine factory in Mulla near Cattaro. Guseck granted Wolf a public prosecutor he had requested. This was, Fitl concluded, not compatible with even contemporary ideas of a fair trial. The officials took measures that news of the uprising and the legal proceedings should not be leaked. However, Julius Braunthal who was deployed in the region as a lieutenant in an artillery emplacement had already succeeded in February in informing Victor Adler of the SPÖ. Adler spoke to the War Minister on February 11. The minister promised to prohibit further executions. In return, the SPÖ refrained from making the events public. It was not until 8 October that insurrection and military court trials were discussed in the Reichstag, because of a query of the South Slavic deputy Dr. Anton Korošec. Giving in to the growing public pressure, Emperor Karl decided to continue the trial only against 31 "ringleaders, principal offenders and non commissioned officers". Thereafter 348 persons were acquitted, but transferred to Pola. On 31 October, the 37th day of the hearing, the trial was adjourned to 5 November. However, it could not be resumed due to political developments. According to Fitl a grotesque situation, because the South Slavic nations had already separated from the Habsburg monarchy; Emperor Karl had handed over the fleet to the newly founded South Slavic state; the k. u. k. court martial had finally tried crew members of the navy of a foreign state on a foreign territory. The trial was not concluded.

The Commander in Chief of the Austro Hungarian Navy Admiral Maximilian Njegovan was forced to ask for his retirement after these events. He was replaced by Miklós Horthy who was promoted to Counter admiral. Rear Admiral Hansa was also replaced, the "St. Georg" was taken out of service and converted into a residential ship. While the army had been the decisive opponent in these events, also the incidents in this unit increased in 1918. See e. g. the Judenburg mutiny.

The events received little public attention. It was not until nine years later that the journalist and doctor of philosophy Bruno Frei published a comprehensive study of the events in the newspaper Der Abend. He had access to the copies of the minutes of the drumhead court martial. These are now considered to be lost. Although Frei's work was rather propagandistic in the sense of his socialist and later communist world view, it is therefore also of interest to historians. In addition, some contemporary witnesses now came forward.

In 1958 the Czech Jindřich Veselý published a small book about the events: "Povstání v Boce Kotorské (Czech: Uprising in the Bay of Kotor). He also published a series of photos in the appendix. According to Fitl, he overemphasized the contribution of the Czech sailors. Plaschka's 1963 dissertation "Cattaro Prag" is still considered the standard German language work. The most extensive and significant study next to it was written by the Croatian Bernard Stulli: "Ustanka mornara u Boki Kotorskoj (Croatian: Sailors' revolt in the bay of Cattaro)". Both worked through the files in the Austrian State Archives, which had then become accessible. An Italian book on the events (La rivolta di Cattaro) appeared in 1935. The author, Capitano Neri, misappropriated the protagonists as pioneers of the Italian nationalist ideology of irredentism. Important studies in English language were presented by Sondhaus and Halpern in 2001 and 2003 respectively.

After the First World War, the uprising in Austria and Hungary was predominantly perceived as subversive and harmful, while in the other successor states a rather positive perception was noticeable. After the Second World War, the Yugoslav and Czechoslovak Communist states, as well as Marxist Eastern European historiography, assessed the events as both Slavic and Bolshevik. Plaschka came to the conclusion that the actions in Cattaro had been designed as a revolutionary demonstration. The red flags turned the demonstration into a rebellion. The events revealed a clear crack in the structure of the armed power. The determining element was not so much the unresolved nationality question but rather the social and political question. According to the naval historian Halpern the event cannot be portrait as the beginning of the end of the monarchy, but as its last victory over the social forces that would eventually overwhelm it. Using selected historical sources, Kuhl compared the Cattaro uprising with the Kiel mutiny. He found clear parallels between the events. But the action in Cattaro had begun when the great wave of strikes in the country had just ended. Thus the action came too late and remained isolated in contrast to the events in Kiel. In Kiel, the sailors and stokers got into contact with a workforce and land based navy personnel that immediately supported them.

The German writer Friedrich Wolf (1888 1953) wrote the drama "Die Matrosen von Cattaro" in 1930, based on Bruno Frei's book. The journalist and historian Eva Priester deals with the uprising in the story "Begegnung im Morgengrauen (encounter at dawn)". The story is included in the volume: Vom Baume der Freiheit. Sechs historische Erzählungen. (From the tree of liberty. Six historical narratives.) Globus Verlag (Austrian communistic publication house), Vienna 1955. The working class writer Franz Xaver Fleischhacker, who witnessed the uprising aboard a torpedo boat, wrote the novel: Cattaro. Roman aus den letzten Tagen der k. u. k. Kriegsmarine. (Novel from the last days of the k. u. k. Kriegsmarine). Globus Verlag, Vienna 1957.

In front of the Škaljari cemetery about 15 minutes walking distance from Kotor (Cattaro), there is a memorial. At this place, below the cemetery wall, the four sailors were executed. There are plaques both on the courthouse and on the prison in Kotor which refer to the events and to the executed sailors.