The poor tax base and brutal trade imbalance prompted the Austrian government to print too much money.

Czechoslovakia also promised to put in a good word for Austria in London and Paris and, in fact, committed to a generous loan itself.

[3] The Republic of German-Austria had been proclaimed with the understanding that it would eventually join the German Reich, a vision shared by a clear majority of its population at the time.

Austria also reconfirmed its renunciation of all its claims to the Sudeten Germans, the German-speaking former Habsburg subjects living in what used to be Bohemia, another offense to the pan-German sensitivities of the People's Party.

In 1921, however, Seipel had declined to assume the chancellorship because of the difficult decisions and general hardship he knew still lay ahead; he had wanted someone else to do the dirty work.

[11][12] Schober, career civil servant and long-time Vienna Chief of Police, enjoyed wide name recognition and was respected across party divides for his competence and effectiveness.

The Ministry of the Interior and the Ministry of Education, historically independent but merged since the second Renner government, were not yet separated again, but in addition to the actual minister there was a state secretary (Staatssekretär) in charge of education affairs (betraut mit der Leitung der Angelegenheiten des Unterrichts und Kultus).

[20] The original Schober government of June 1921 had been a "cabinet of civil servants" ("Beamtenkabinett") and had included only three members with formal party affiliations: Walter Breisky and Carl Vaugoin as representatives of the Christian Socials, Leopold Waber as the sole representative of the Greater German People's Party.

[25][26] The Austrian economy would not recover unless and until the Allies could be persuaded to grant "exceptions" to the General Lien, pursuant to the right to do so that they had reserved for themselves in Article 197.

[27][28] Luckily for Schober, the Allies were in the process of convening the Genoa Conference, a congress of some thirty nations meant to devise and formalize a comprehensive plan for the economic reconstruction of Europe, to be opened on April 10, 1922.

[23] The Western powers demanded that the Soviet Union assume the heavy debts racked up by the Russian Empire it had replaced.

[8][30] Reluctant support in the National Council nonwithstanding, the Greater German People's Party had never fully forgiven Schober for the Treaty of Lana.