The Austrian statesman and president Karl Renner (1870-1950) provided his nation with vigorous and able leadership after both world wars.

Karl Renner was born on Dec. 14, 1870, the eighteenth and last child of impoverished peasants in the Moravian village of Unter-Tannowitz near the Austrian border. Forced to leave home at age 14, he eventually studied law at Vienna, where he first became active in the Social Democratic party. Upon receiving a doctor of laws degree in the spring of 1896, he secured a position in the library of the Austrian Parliament, where he remained until his election to Parliament as a Social Democrat in 1907. He established his political reputation primarily in the theoretical realm with the publication of numerous significant treatises on the crucial issues of nationalities and constitution plaguing the Austro-Hungarian Empire at that time. Combining Socialist thought with national sentiment, he envisioned a democratic Austria as the nucleus and...