answerable to the National Council. The law also established Austria as a country that was a federation in name but more or less unitary in reality. The growing Austrofascist Heimwehr movement demanded a move to a presidential system with a strong leader, modelled on Benito Mussolini's Fascist Italy and Miklós Horthy's Regency Hungary. Resentful of the political and cultural dominance of the capital, the Heimwehr also demanded real effective federalism. Vienna was home to two million people, almost one out of three Austrians at the time. The sixth-largest city in the world and the capital of a global power for five centuries, Vienna was a bustling cosmopolitan metropolis, even in times of economic hardship. Much of Vienna's hinterland, on the other hand, was an agrarian poorly-industrialized backwater. Dislike for the capital's intellectuals, Jews, and status was intense in some corners of the political right. By early 1929, actors all over the political spectrum feared that the Heimwehr movement had become a threat to democracy. The ranks of those worried included parts of the Christian Social Party with which the Heimwehr movement was (then loosely) affiliated. The Social Democratic Party was willing to negotiate a constitutional reform that would meet the Heimwehr halfway. Ignaz Seipel, the chancellor who led the Christian Social Party, decided that he was the wrong person to preside over these negotiations. Seipel, nicknamed the "prelate without mercy" ("") by friends and foes alike, was a hardline clericalist whose very personality would be an obstacle. Itn addition, his health was failing. Seipel resigned the chancellorship on 3 April 1929. Finding a successor for Seipel proved difficult. Obvious candidates like Leopold Kunschak and Otto Ender declined to step up. Rintelen threw his hat into the ring but was too popular with the Heimwehr and too controversial everywhere else. Streeruwitz emerged as the new leader mainly by default; having drafted his list of ministers, he was formally appointed on 4 May. In theory, Streeruwitz had been dealt a strong hand. The coalition government that he led included the Christian Social Party, the German Nationalists and the Landbund, an alliance so broad that Streeruwitz could govern without Heimwehr support or toleration. In practice, the cabinet that Streeruwitz had managed to assemble was tantamount to a capitulation to Heimwehr demands. Even though Streeruwitz was for retaining the existing model of strong central government and limited devolution, his ministers were not representatives of