This thesis examines the officer corps of the Austrian Bundesheer during the First Austrian Republic (1918-1934), analysing how former Habsburg officers adapted to a new republican political order while retaining significant elements of their imperial professional culture. Although the political crises and eventual collapse of the First Republic have attracted extensive scholarly attention, the officer corps has largely remained peripheral to existing historiography, which has tended to focus on political parties, paramilitary organisations, and ideological conflict. This study addresses that gap by placing the military institution itself at the centre of analysis. Drawing on archival material from the Osterreichisches Staatsarchiv, contemporary military publications, parliamentary debates, newspapers, memoirs, and personal papers, the thesis combines approaches from civil-military relations theory, institutional history, and studies of institutional memory. It argues that the Bundesheer emerged as a hybrid institution: formally committed to the republican state but culturally shaped by inherited Habsburg traditions of hierarchy, legality, professional service, and administrative continuity. The thesis traces the transformation of the military from the creation of the Volkswehr in 1918 through the consolidation of the Bundesheer in the 1920s and its role during the political crises of 1927-1934. It demonstrates that military neutrality was not a fixed principle but an evolving concept. Initially conceived as political distance, neutrality increasingly became identified with obedience to executive authority. As parliamentary institutions weakened, the officer corps remained committed to procedural legality and state order yet became progressively detached from democratic legitimacy. By bridging the historiographical divide between empire and republic, this study shows that the collapse of the Habsburg Monarchy did not sever institutional continuities. Instead, imperial administrative cultures and professional assumptions persisted within the armed forces and shaped their relationship with the republican state. The Austrian officer corps thus provides a case study of how institutional memory can simultaneously sustain state stability and constrain democratic development in a postimperial society.