Otto Ender

Otto Ender (born Dec. 24, 1875, Altach, Austria—died June 25, 1960, Bregenz) was a statesman and government official who served as chancellor of Austria during the early months of the Great Depression.

Ender served (1918–30, 1931–34) as governor of the Austrian state of Vorarlberg, on the Swiss border, and after World War I he negotiated unsuccessfully for the incorporation of Vorarlberg in the Swiss confederation. Despite his leadership of the Vorarlberg Heimwehr (rightist paramilitary defense force), his allegiances were considered to be democratic and anti-Fascist. Ender was appointed chancellor of Austria in December 1930 and held office through six months of economic depression, marked notably by the collapse of the Creditanstalt, the most important Austrian banking house. Later, as minister without portfolio in the government of Engelbert Dollfuss, he supervised the drafting of a new federal authoritarian constitution (1933–34). He headed (1934–38) the Austrian supreme board of accountancy. Imprisoned by the Nazis after the Anschluss (Austria’s incorporation into Germany in 1938), he was later interned at the concentration camp at Dachau, Ger., and finally released during the Allied liberation (1945).