Jörg Haider Biography

Summary

"Jörg Haider" (January 26, 1950 - October 11, 2008) was an Austrian politician. He was Governor of Carinthia and Chairman of the 'Alliance for the Future of Austria' (Bündnis Zukunft Österreich, BZÖ).

Haider was a long-time leader of the Austrian Freedom Party (FPÖ). Although he stepped down as the FPÖ's chairman in 2000, he remained its major figure until he founded the BZÖ in April 2005. He was subsequently expelled from the FPÖ by its interim leader Hilmar Kabas.

He was controversial within Austria and abroad for his 'provocative praise of the Nazi era,' and the United States State Department criticized Haider for comments that 'could be interpreted as xenophobic or anti-Semitic.'

He was killed in a car accident on October 11, 2008, shortly after leading the BZÖ in the Austrian Parliamentary elections.

Personal life

Parents

Haider's parents had been Nazis and early NSDAP (National Socialist German Workers' Party) members. They were from different backgrounds; Haider's father, Robert Haider, was a shoemaker, while his mother, Dorothea Rupp, was the daughter of a well-to-do physician and head of the gynaecology ward at the general hospital of Linz.

Robert Haider joined the NSDAP in 1929 as a fifteen year-old boy, four years before Adolf Hitler came to power in Germany. He remained a member even after the Austrian Nazi Party was banned in Austria and after Engelbert Dollfuss had dissolved the Austrian parliament and established a "Ständestaat", a fascist dictatorship. In 1933, Haider senior moved to Bavaria but returned to Austria the following year after the failed Nazi attempt to overthrow the Austrian government. He was arrested and chose to move back to Germany where he joined the Austrian Legion, a division of the "Sturmabteilung".

Haider senior completed a two-year military service in Germany and returned to Austria in 1938 after it was annexed by Nazi Germany (the "Anschluss"). From 1940, he fought as a junior officer on the Western and Eastern Fronts in Europe during the Second World War. Having been wounded several times, he was discharged from the "Wehrmacht" with the rank of lieutenant. In 1945, he married Dorothea Rupp, at that time as a leader in the "Bund Deutscher Mädel" ("BDM").

Following the end of the war, legal proceedings against both Haider's parents were conducted to determine what measures should be taken against them because of their NSDAP membership (proceedings against all former Nazis NSDAP members and collaborators were undertaken as a matter of law in both Austria and Germany after the war ended). They were labelled as "Minderbelastet" (meaning only low-ranking in the NSDAP structure), and Robert Haider was thus forced to find a job in a shoe factory. Dorothea Haider, who had been a teacher, was prohibited from teaching for a couple of years following the end of the war. Robert was forced to dig graves, which their son recalled as a 'brutal injustice.'

Youth

Jörg Haider was born in the Upper Austrian town of Bad Goisern in 1950, a time when his parents' finances were rather moderate, and his elder sister, later Ursula Haubner, five years old. He was a good student in primary school and attended high school in Bad Ischl despite his parents' financial situation. Haider was reportedly always top of his class in high school. During his time in Bad Ischl he had first contacts with nationalist organizations, such as the "Burschenschaft Albia", a right-wing student group.

After he graduated with highest distinction in 1968, he moved to Vienna to study law. During his studies he was affiliated again with a Burschenschaft such as "Silvania". After graduating from the University of Vienna with the title of Dr. iur. in 1973 he was drafted into the Austrian Army where he voluntarily spent more than the mandatory nine months (called 'the voluntary one year'). In 1974 he started to work at the University of Vienna law faculty in the department of constitutional law.

Marriage

On May 1, 1976, Haider married Claudia. The couple had two daughters, one named Ulrike, the other Cornelia.

Bärental estate

Throughout his career Haider had concentrated his politics on Carinthia. In addition, Haider's personal life was heavily connected with this part of Austria: Haider became wealthy when he inherited the estate of his uncle Wilhelm Webhofer in 1983, who had owned a large parcel of land in Carinthia commonly known as 'Bärental' (bear valley). This estate has a history that came up in the 1990s in the Austrian media. The land had been owned by an Italian Jew until 1941. At that point in time the Nazis still hesitated to take possession of 'Jewish property' owned by non-German nationals without any compensation; inside Italy Jewish property was not yet open for confiscation and the Mussolini government was not inclined to allow this happen to Jewish nationals abroad either. Thus when the estate was 'sold' in 1941, Haider's great-uncle Josef Webhofer (a former resident of Bolzano-Bozen, Italy, and an Optant) paid 300,000 Reichsmark (about 1.5 million dollars today) to obtain title to the land. After the war Mathilde Ruifer, the widow of the former Jewish owner of Bärental demanded compensation and was paid an additional 850,000 Schilling (around 400,000 US dollars today). In 1955 Josef Webhofer's son Wilhelm Webhofer inherited the estate and later bequeathed it to Jörg Haider. Today the land is estimated to be worth about fifteen million dollars.

Death

Haider was killed in a car crash at Lambichl in Köttmannsdorf near Klagenfurt, in the state of Carinthia, in the early hours of October 11, 2008. Police reported that the Volkswagen Phaeton that Haider had been driving came off the road, rolled down an embankment and overturned, causing him 'severe head and chest injuries'. Haider, who was on his way from a gay night club called 'Stadtkrämer' and going to celebrate his mother's 90th birthday, was alone in the government car and no other vehicles were involved. At the time of the crash, Haider's car was travelling at 142 km/h (88 mph) or even faster, and at least more than twice the legal speed limit of 70 km/h (43 mph) for that part of the Loiblpass-road . An initial investigation uncovered no signs of foul play, and conspiracy theories about the death have been strongly rejected by the Austrian police. Haider's blood alcohol level at the time of the crash was 0.18%, more than three times the legal limit of 0.05%. This fact was noted by both Haider's spokesman and the director general of the Carinthian provincial administration.

Austrian President Heinz Fischer said of Haider's death that it was a 'human tragedy'. Reactions in the press were mixed. Wolfgang Fellner, publisher of 'Österreich', wrote: 'I have fought bitterly' with Jörg Haider, but 'finally, Haider became a gentle, considerate, almost wise politician ... Alas, he was once again too fast.' Haider 'died as he lived: always full-throttle, always over the limit', Fellner concluded. But Ernst Trost pointed out in the Kronen Zeitung that while Haider had enjoyed a 'comet-like rise' in politics, he also had 'ever again embarked on self-destructive actions and provoked opposition.' The Chief Editor of 'Kurier', Christoph Kotanko, wrote that 'however much his brown tones, xenophobia and aggressive populism were to be rejected ... Haiders criticism of the dominant conditions of the 1980s and 90s was partly also justified,' and he had 'named, fought and in part also changed' those conditions.

Political career

Rise to power in the FPÖ

The Austrian Freedom Party (FPÖ) was founded in 1955, and initially was a mixture of various political currents opposed both to the political catholicism of the Austrian People's Party and the socialist views of the Social Democratic Party of Austria. With its roots in the Pan-German movement, it included both German-nationalist and liberal political views. In 1970 Haider became the leader of the FPÖ youth movement and headed it until 1974. Haider rose rapidly through the party ranks. In 1972, at the age of 22, he was already a well-established leader and was made party affairs manager of the Carinthian FPÖ in 1976. In 1979 he was the youngest delegate among the 183 members of parliament, at age 29. From 1983 his policies became more aggressive, when he rose to party head of the Carinthian FPÖ and started to criticise the leaders of the FPÖ, which at that time was still a minor political movement in Austria, usually winning only about 5-6% of the vote.

The decisive point of his career came in 1986 when he defeated Austrian Vice Chancellor Norbert Steger in the vote for party leadership at the party convention in September in Innsbruck; many delegates feared that Steger's liberal political views and his coalition with the Social Democrats threatened the party's existence.

Political struggle in Carinthia

Until 1989, the socialist/Social-Democratic party SPÖ held an absolute majority in the Austrian province of Carinthia; when it received less than 50% of seats in 1989, ÖVP and FPÖ formed a coalition and elected Haider as "Landeshauptmann" (or governor) of Carinthia.

In 1991, in a debate in the regional parliament, a speaker attacked Haider's plan of reducing unemployment payments for people seen as 'freeloaders', calling it forced work placement reminiscent of Nazi policies. Haider replied, 'It would not be like the Third Reich, because the Third Reich developed a proper employment policy, which your government in Vienna has not once produced.' The remark caused an uproar, Haider had to resign his governor post, and the FPÖ-ÖVP coalition was replaced by an SPÖ-ÖVP coalition.

In 1999, Haider again was elected governor of Carinthia by the Carinthian parliament, where the FPÖ now held a plurality of more than 42%. Even after the FPÖ fell to only 10% from 27% in the national elections in 2002, Haider's support in Carinthia did not diminish and he succeeded in the 2004 elections receiving a slightly higher percentage (42.5%) than in 1999.

FPÖ chairman

Haider as opposition leader

Under Haider's leadership, the FPÖ moved to the right, reflecting Haider's nationalist, anti-immigration, and anti-EU views. Haider relied primarily on populism (see below) to advance his interests. From 1986 when Haider became the FPÖ's chairman the party's share in elections rose from 5% in the 1986 elections to almost 27% in 1999.

With Haider practically leading the FPÖ single-handedly, he was able to unite the scattered, divided extreme-right in Austria and establish a party that was not so much founded on leading personalities or an ideology but on just one leader - Haider himself, who used to change his opinions frequently. His style of governing the party became authoritative in the following years, however his followers did not challenge his ultimate authority in the party, especially because Haider was able to gain one victory after another in elections.

An exception was the split off by the Liberal Forum in the mid-1990s headed by Heide Schmidt, a long-time political supporter of Haider and the FPÖ's candidate for presidency in 1992. The liberals initially gained the support of about 6% of the voters nationwide, but Schmidt was not able to uphold this support and the Liberal Forum subsequently dropped out of parliament in 1999.

The party's mixture of populism, anti-establishment and nationalist themes steadily gained support over the years. In addition to far-right voters, the FPÖ was able to attract voters from both the Social Democrats and the Conservatives in both the national and regional elections of the 1990s. Along with those who were fed up with decades of government by the 'Great Coalition' (see also: Proporz), Haider always had the unconditional backing of the core far-right voters due to the lack of any more outspoken far-right parties (which are forbidden under anti-Nazi laws).

Coalition government with [[Wolfgang Schüssel]]'s [[ÖVP|People's party]]

In 2000, Haider's Freedom Party and the People's Party joined to form a coalition government. This caused widespread outrage both in Austria and the rest of Europe. The heads of government of the other fourteen EU members decided to cease cooperation with the Austrian government, as it was felt in many countries that the cordon sanitaire against coalitions with parties considered as right-wing extremists, which had mostly held in Western Europe since 1945, had been breached. For several months, other national leaders refused to shake hands and socialize with members of the Schüssel government. This was described as 'sanctions' by representatives of the ÖVP and FPÖ, and supporters of the government often blamed social democrats and President Thomas Klestil for them, and questioned their loyalty to the country.

The EU leaders soon saw that their measures were counterproductive and returned to normality during the summer of 2000, even though the coalition remained unchanged. (See Austria legislative election, 1999.) Nevertheless it is not easy to measure effects of these 'sanctions'.

At the end of 2000, Jörg Haider stepped down from the leadership of the Freedom Party. This was widely regarded as a cynical move to appease foreign criticism, as he appeared to continue to control the party from behind the scenes, with Susanne Riess-Passer who was the following party chairwoman being only pro-forma in charge. Haider proclaimed that his move was just the fulfillment of his promise to Carinthian FPÖ voters he gave prior to the election that had been held in the same year.

Collapse of the (first) coalition and decline of the Freedom Party

In September 2002, after a special party convention ('Sonderparteitag') in Knittelfeld (Styria), the so-called Knittelfeld Putsch, Riess-Passer lost the support of many party members. This meeting is also sometimes considered as a rebellion against the members which are currently involved in the government, which was thought to be started or at least supported by Haider. Thus Riess-Passer resigned as Vice Federal Chancellor and Party Chairwoman and with her went Karl-Heinz Grasser, the finance minister, and Peter Westenthaler, the head of the Freedom Party's Parliament Club. This resulted in new general elections in November.

They resulted in a landslide victory (42.27% of the vote) of the conservative People's Party led by Federal Chancellor Wolfgang Schüssel. Haider's Freedom Party, which in 1999 was slightly stronger than Schüssel's party, was reduced to 10.16% of the vote.

In response, Haider stated that he had demanded that the leader of the FPÖ must step down to allow him to be leader, and on being refused, stated that he would leave federal politics permanently.

In October 2003, a cabinet reshuffle instigated by Haider took place. Haupt had to step down as Vice Chancellor to be replaced by Hubert Gorbach.

On March 7, 2004, the FPÖ won a plurality (42.5%) of the vote in the elections for the Carinthian parliament. On March 31, 2004, Haider was re-elected Governor of Carinthia by the FPÖ and SPÖ members of the state parliament.

However, outside Carinthia, Haider's charisma seemed to have largely lost its appeal among voters. The FPÖ incurred devastating losses in several regional elections, the European Elections of 2004 and in elections for the Austrian Chamber of Commerce. In each of those elections, it lost between one half to two thirds of their previous voters.

Creation of a new party

As a consequence, the FPÖ, whose chair was Haider's sister, Ursula Haubner, was riven with internal strife. On April 4, 2005, Haider, Haubner, Vice Chancellor Hubert Gorbach and other leading figures of the FPÖ announced the creation of a new party called Alliance for the Future of Austria (Bündnis Zukunft Österreich, BZÖ) with Haider as leader. In effect, this split the FPÖ into two parties.

In the following months, the BZÖ tried to establish itself within the Austrian political landscape, but met little success. Haider and his new party remained in the coalition with the People's party, leading to fierce fights between the FPÖ and BZÖ following the split-up. Subsequent polls showed that both parties were losing voter approval and in danger of failing to reach the critical 4% of the national vote barrier required for representation in parliament.

In the 2006 general elections, the BZÖ received 4.1% of votes, thus narrowly securing its representation of 7 seats in parliament. The FPÖ, now led by Heinz-Christian Strache surpassed initial expectations, receiving 11.0% of the vote, 532 votes behind the Greens.

From June 2006 to August 2008, the BZÖ was lead by Peter Westenthaler. On August 30, 2008, shortly before the legislative election, Haider re-assumed the party chairmanship. Subsequently, the BZÖ received 10.7% of votes, and the FPÖ 17.5% of votes.

Political views

Since beginning his political career in the 1970s, Haider had been critical of mainstream Austrian politics. He used simple slogans to raise his popularity by using issues he saw that the general public perceived as unjust or the self-interest of big party politics (specifically the Austrian Social Democrats and the Austrian People's party).

Haider opposed immigration, although he fairly consistently supported Turkey's bid to enter the European Union.

Language policy

One of Haider's main political struggles was the one against bilingualism in southern Carinthia, where an autochthonous Slovene ethnic-linguistic community, known as the Carinthian Slovenes, lives. Already in the 1980s, Haider pursued a policy of segregation in schools, insisting on physically dividing the Slovene and German-speaking pupils in elementary schools in southern Carinthia. In December 2001, the Austrian Constitutional Court ruled that topographic road signs in all settlements in Carinthia which have had more than 10% of Slovene-speaking inhabitants over a longer period of time, should be written both in German and Slovene. Haider refused to carry out this decision, which has been reiterated by the Court several times thereafter, and publicly threatened to sue the president of the Constitutional Court. Instead of erecting hundreds of new bilingual signs, as ruled by the court, Haider ordered the removal of several existing ones, which triggered a wave of protest among the local Slovene minority, including acts of civil disobediance.

In May 2006, Haider personally moved the road sign of the town of Bleiburg () in south-eastern Carinthia for several meters as the response to the decision of the Constitutional Court which ruled the sign was unconstitutional because it was written only in German. He compared himself to Jesus Christ who moved the stone over his tomb, provoking indignation by the local Roman Catholic clergy. After the Court condemned his action as illegal, Haider threatened to call a regional referendum on the issue, for which he was publicly admonished by the Federal President Heinz Fischer. The referendum was blocked by the decision of the Federal institutions which found it unconstitutional. In December 2006, Haider tried to bypass the ruling of the Constitutional Court by attaching small, barely visible, tables with Slovene placenames to German road signs, which was again found unconstitutional by the Constitutional Court. Haider nevertheless disregarded the Court's decision and pursued his action.

In his last speech, delivered on the celebration of the 88th anniversary of the Carinthian Plebiscite only a few hours before his death, Haider reiterated his opposition to any kind of visual bilingualism in the region and warned the Slovenian politicians 'not to play with fire'.

Accusations of Nazi sympathy

Haider made statements that seemed to imply support for some ideas of National Socialism. His first stint as governor in 1989 ended abruptly when he praised the employment policies of Nazi Germany and was forced to resign. A few years later, he described World War II concentration camps as 'punishment camps' and said the SS were 'a part of the German army which should be honoured'. He also compared the deportation of Jews by the Nazis to the expulsion of Sudeten Germans from Czechoslovakia after World War II. He associated publicly with Waffen-SS veterans, including attending at least one major remembrance ceremony.

Antisemitism

Haider was 'widely condemned' for making remarks that were considered anti-semitic. He was frequently criticized for statements that were favorable to the Nazi party, and critical of Jews. His detractors also pointed to a punning reference to the leader of the Jewish community of Vienna, Ariel Muzicant; Haider indicated that he did not understand how someone named Ariel (also the name of a popular laundry detergent) could have gathered so much filth, implying the real estate agent's business methods were crooked. Haider's critics claimed the remark was anti-Semitic. Haider also maintained that Muzicant faked antisemitic hate letters to himself. He later withdrew this and other accusations, and apologized for his 'derogatory remarks.'

; FPÖ secretary general Peter Sichrovsky gathered inside information on Haider's controversial contacts with prominent Arab dictators.

Trivia

In a September 27, 2008 talkshow on ORF television, Haider described the boards of directors of numerous world banks as "Mafia".

External links

(Landeshauptmann Dr. Jörg Haider (Kärnten))

(Dr. Jörg Haider) at the Austrian Parliament website

Credit

This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article about Jörg Haider.

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