November 1918. Post-war (1918–1934) Foreign Minister and the question of union with Germany On 12 November 1918 the party proposed that Bauer succeed Viktor Adler as Foreign Minister of German-Austria. He was then appointed to the position by the State Council (). In the election for the Constituent National Assembly on 16 February 1919, the SDAP won the largest percent of the vote (40.76%) and entered into a coalition with the Christian Social Party, which had come in ahead of the SDAP in the previous (1907) election. After the end of the war, a union () between German-Austria, including German Bohemia, and Germany seemed a self-evident goal to many, especially urban Social Democrats who had seen their German political counterparts become the governing party in the Weimar Republic. Like other nationalities of the fallen monarchy, Austrian Germans claimed the right of national self-determination. In addition, the Austrian Social Democrats were expecting to see a socialist revolution take place in Germany. Otto Bauer was one of the most outspoken proponents of the belief in a future with Germany. At the SDAP party congress on 31 October and 1 November 1918, Bauer stated that from the national standpoint as (cultural) Germans and from the international standpoint as Social Democrats, they must demand union with Germany. In Parliament he said that opponents of Austrian unification with Germany were high traitors to the nation. The Provisional National Assembly voted in favor of the union on 12 November 1918, and on 25 December Bauer addressed a to the victorious powers saying that union with Germany was the only and correct way forward. He conducted confidential unification negotiations from 27 February to 2 March 1919 with German Foreign Minister Ulrich von Brockdorff-Rantzau, whose representatives in Austria warned internally against joining Germany with the small bankrupt state. In mid-April Bauer was advised by a British officer in Vienna to avoid the subject of unification as much as possible in the peace negotiations. Bauer did not inform his government colleagues of the warning until weeks later and initially nominated Franz Klein, who was known to be an ardent supporter of unification, as head of the delegation to the peace talks at St. Germain. As word of the British warning belatedly spread, the delegation leadership was transferred to Karl Renner before negotiations began. On 7 May 1919 the Allies of World War I handed the German delegation at Versailles