Beiträge zur Rechtsgeschichte Österreichs 13. Jahrgang Heft 1/2023, pp. 101-118, 2023/05/17
In the First Republic, the question of whether the censorship would continue to exist for theater and cinema was not clear: the Constitutional Court (VfGH) first confirmed, then suspended it. In Vorarlberg, however, the regional government kept on exercising censorship, and the Constitutional Court had to stop this practice. In addition to the censorship, the question of competences was also an important issue at this time for the regulation on cinema. The Constitutional Court (VfGH) ruled in favor of the regional government of Vienna (by confirming the Viennese State Law on Cinema of 1926), which denied the competences of the federal police. The abolition of the censorship by the VfGH was a liberal progress in the First Republic, but the competences of the states made conservative measures possible outside of Vienna.
Keywords: censorship – cinema – competencies – Constitutional Court – Federal Constitution (B‐VG) – First Republic – Hans Kelsen – police –theater – Vienna – Viennese State Law of Cinema – Vorarlberg
