were completed and put to use. On 4 December 1883 the House of Representatives held its first session under its president, Franz Smolka. On 16 December 1884 the House of Lords under its president, Count Trauttmansdorff, held its first session. Both chambers would continue to meet in the building until the end of the Austro-Hungarian Empire in 1918. The official name of the building was Reichsratsgebäude (Imperial Council Building), and the street behind the building, the Reichsratsstraße, still recalls this former name. The word "Parliament" however was in use since the beginning as well. Building history The building saw tumultuous years during the late years of the declining multi-ethnic Austrian monarchy stretching from Dalmatia to Bukovina, as the House of Representatives was extremely fractious with tensions among liberals and conservatives, German nationalists and Young Czech deputies, as well as between the government and parliament. It became notorious for filibusters, parliamentary brawls and undisciplined deputies throwing inkwells at each other as a common feature. The joke on the Viennese streets was that Athena was so disgusted by the political infighting that she deliberately turned her back to the building. Nevertheless, the building housed the first form of a parliamentary system for many of the people of Central Europe. Some of the former deputies continued their political careers after the dissolution of the Empire and became important politicians in their home countries. The Reichsratsgebäude continued to function until 1918, when the building was occupied by demonstrators during the disintegration of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. From 21 October 1918 the remaining German-speaking deputies convened in a "Provisional National Assembly", first at the Palais Niederösterreich, from 12 November onwards in the Parliament Building. On this day the presidents of the assembly officially proclaimed the Republic of German-Austria from the ramp in front of the building. Upon the Austrian Constitutional Assembly election in 1919 and the establishment of the First Austrian Republic, the building itself was renamed the Parlament, with the new republican National Council (Nationalrat) and Federal Council (Bundesrat) replacing the old Imperial House of Deputies (Abgeordnetenhaus) and the House of Lords (Herrenhaus). The parliament was incapacitated, when on 4 March 1933 Chancellor Engelbert Dollfuß took the occasion of a parliamentary law quarrel to cease its function, the first step to the introduction of his Austrofascist dictatorship. By the imposed "May Constitution" of 1934 the Parliament Building became the seat of the Bundestag, the formal