Anton Pirchegger

Anton Pirchegger (born June 12, 1885 in Leopersdorf near Allerheiligen in the Mürz Valley ; † March 1, 1949 there ) was an Austrian politician of the CS and ÖVP and the first elected governor of Styria after the Second World War .

Between the wars and the Second World War

Anton Pirchegger came from a political farming family in Allerheiligen in Mürz Valley in Upper Styria. He returned from the First World War in 1915 and followed in the political footsteps of his father Simon, in whom he was committed to the concerns of the farmers in his home community. As a farmer's alliance , he was instrumental in building up the agricultural organizations, especially in the cooperative system. After the general election on October 17, 1920 Pirchegger moved as by then the youngest members of the Christian Social party in the National Councilone, where he worked with a short break in October / November 1930 until his resignation in 1931 because of annoyance about personal intrigues. In 1926 he was offered the Ministry of Agriculture in the Ramek cabinet , which he turned down for private reasons. In November 1934, Governor Karl Maria Stepan appointed Pirchegger President of the Styrian Parliament . With the German invasion and the annexation of Austria in 1938, Pirchegger withdrew from politics and managed the local farm until the end of the war in 1945.

post war period

On May 17, 1945, he was appointed to the first provisional provincial government of Styria under Governor Reinhard Machold as Provincial Councilor for Nutrition . He was involved in the founding of the ÖVP (May 18, 1945). After the ÖVP became the strongest force in Styria in the elections in November 1945 and this in turn was dominated by farmers' groups, the state parliament elected him on December 28, 1945 as governor of Styria. In the first economically difficult but politically decisive post-war years, the most important task was to feed the population. As chairman of the farmers' union, Pirchegger found himself in an extremely difficult situation: In the interests of supplying the population as a whole, he had to put the peasantry under constant pressure and take tough action against those farmers who did not fulfill their delivery obligations or only inadequately. On October 17, 1947, Pirchegger suffered a heart attack that tied him to the sickbed for a long time, but he took up his official duties again in early 1948. Pirchegger officially resigned from his high office on July 6, 1948, when Pirchegger's preferred candidate Josef Krainer senior took over the top position in the country as his successor . He remained chairman of the Styrian farmers' union until his death. Pirchegger died on March 1, 1949 and was buried in his home community on March 3, with great sympathy from the population and in the presence of political celebrities from all over Austria.

literature

• Alfred Ableitinger, Herwig Hösele , Wolfgang Mantl : The governors of Styria. Styria, Graz et al. 2000, ISBN 3-222-12771-9 .
• Marina Brandtner: The "forgotten" Governor Anton Pirchegger (1885–1949). His political work in Styria from 1945 to 1948. Graz 2006, (Graz, University, diploma thesis, 2006).
• Helmut Eberhart: In God's name. The year 1945 in Anton Pirchegger's (1885–1949) diary entries. In: Siegfried Beer (ed.): The "British" Styria. 1945–1955 (= research on the historical regional studies of Styria. Vol. 38). Self-published by the Historical Commission for Styria, Graz 1995, ISBN 3-901251-09-X , p. 388 ff.
• AL Schuller:  Pirchegger Anton. In: Austrian Biographical Lexicon 1815–1950 (ÖBL). Volume 8, Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, Vienna 1983, ISBN 3-7001-0187-2 , p. 90.

Web links

• Anton Pirchegger on the website of the Austrian Parliament
• Entry on Anton Pirchegger in the Austria Forum  (in the AEIOU Austria Lexicon )
• Short biography with photo on the Styrian Governor's homepage