One of the foundational problems of the First Republic was that those who had supported the concept of a democratic republic from the German Austria period onward, such as the Social Democrats, did not consider themselves "Austrian", but instead were German nationalists.[30] Those who supported an Austrian national identity, an Austria without the word "German" attached, were conservative and largely undemocratic in persuasion: former Imperial bureaucrats, army officers, priests, aristocrats, and affiliated with the Christian Social Party.