In comparison with most of his predecessors and successors as imperial Austrian minister president, Ernest von Koerber (1850–1919) has attracted a special sort of scholarly interest. In the rare instances when scholars have investigated Austrian governments during the era of the Dual Monarchy (1867–1918), these governments have been approached in the direct context of this system and era. Koerber's five-year-long government (1900–1904) has instead been studied in the considerably wider frame of reference of the modernization of Europe in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries. There are, in fact, qualities in Koerber's political program, often referred to as the “Koerber Plan,” that seem to merit such attention. When compared to most Austrian governments of the late Habsburg Empire, Koerber's minister presidency was extraordinarily active. In the eyes of both contemporaries and later observers, the large-scale investment program (mainly in railroads and canal construction) represented the essence of Koerber's modernization project. But he also carried out a widely noted liberalization of state control in society, elements of which included ending the policing of political meetings and practically canceling censorship of newspapers. His background as a civil servant also shaped his policies, especially his very active modernization and effectivization program for the state bureaucracy.