Claudia Schmied

Claudia Schmied in her office in Palais Starhemberg (2007)

Claudia Schmied (born May 10, 1959 in Vienna ) is an Austrian politician of the SPÖ . She was Minister for Education, Arts and Culture from 2007 to 2013 in the Federal Government Gusenbauer and the first faymann government .

Life

Her father, a committed social democrat, was head of finance at OMV , her mother a tailor. Claudia Schmied is single.

After studying economics at the Vienna University of Economics , she in 1983 with promotion to the doctor graduated, in 1983 she was an account manager at Investkredit Bank AG. In 1989 she became deputy head of the economic policy department, and in 1995 head of the corporate finance department. In 1997 she was appointed to the Ministry of Finance as an economic policy advisor under Minister Rudolf Edlinger . In 1999 she became Head of Corporate Finance at Investkredit.

Since July 2004 she has been a board member of Kommunalkredit Austria AG, which had to be nationalized on November 3, 2008. Schmied was responsible for financing, environmental support, information technology and TrendMind. According to a report by the auditing and consulting firm Deloitte , a large part of the allegations against the bank "relates to the time when ... Schmied was on the board of Kommunalkredit who signed resolutions." Schmied was also on the supervisory board of the Cypriot subsidiary KIB, through which part of the loss-making securities business was processed for tax reasons. The Corruption Prosecutor's Office has started investigations into breach of trust and abuse of office against Schmied and 18 other former managers of Kommunalkredit . In April 2013, the public prosecutor announced that the investigation had been completed and only Schmied had been hired. Ironically, this happened shortly before a central report by the public prosecutor was completed in June 2013, which placed a heavy burden on those responsible at the time.

The art lover was a representative of the Ministry of Finance on the Board of Trustees of the Salzburg Festival in 1998/99 and had a seat on the supervisory board of the theater service company " ART for ART " from 1999 to 2004 . From January 2005 to June 2006 she was a board member of the Wiener Symphoniker .

Politically, she also appeared as the chairwoman of the “Society for Social and Economic Sciences” (VGW), which is a specialist group in the “ Association of Social Democratic Academics, Intellectuals, and Artists ” (BSA). In this function, she developed a lively event activity in which the connection between business and culture (e.g. in the area of cultural sponsorship) played a central role.

On January 11, 2007, she was appointed Minister for Education, Art and Culture for the first time in the Gusenbauer Federal Government . Their nomination had only been decided the day before. Since December 2, 2008, she has been a member of the Faymann I federal government in the same capacity . Schmied quickly became the center of intense conflict. It failed in an attempt to increase teaching obligations due to stiff resistance from the teachers' unions. As a dedicated supporter of the comprehensive school , she provided frequent arguments with the AHS teachers' union. As a compromise, a comprehensive conversion of the Hauptschule to the New Middle School (NMS) was decided. While Schmied only viewed this as an intermediate step to the comprehensive school , the project is criticized by its opponents as a mere exchange of door plates, which scientific evaluations meanwhile confirm. For the first time, Schmied was surveyed across the board as to the level of knowledge among ten and 14 year olds in Austria (educational standards). Critics saw the fact that the New Middle School was not shown separately as evidence that this type of school had failed. One of the biggest criticisms of her was the accusation that she would spend large sums of money on advertisements in tabloid and free media such as “Today”, “Austria” or “Kronenzeitung”.

Claudia Schmied with Arik Brauer and Helene Maimann (2013)

After losses for the SPÖ in the 2013 National Council election , she announced her retirement from politics on September 30, 2013. The reason she gave was that she wanted to get out with "great grandeur" and that she had received professional offers that needed to be examined, and that she wanted to pay more attention to her family and friends. The government to which Schmied belonged was replaced on December 16, 2013 by the federal government Faymann II . The resigned minister was subjected to devastating criticism by the Court of Auditors, both during an intensive review of the federal theater holding company and with regard to the implementation of the new middle school. Since leaving politics, Schmied has held occasional lectures on educational management at Austrian universities.