The auditorium (magazine)

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The auditorium

description right-wing extremist monthly magazine
language German
publishing company Aula Verlag, Graz ( Austria )
First edition 1951
attitude 2018
Frequency of publication per month
Editor-in-chief Martin Pfeiffer
ZDB 975050-2

Die Aula (subtitle: Das freiheitliche Magazin ) was a right-wing extremist Austrian monthly magazine founded in 1951 , which was discontinued in 2018. The magazine saw itself as the mouthpiece of the “national-liberal” student associations in Austria. The media owner was the working group of Freedom Academic Associations of Austria (FAV) , which is related to the FPÖ . The owner, editor and publisher was Aula-Verlag in Graz .

History (auditorium 1951-2018)

The magazine was founded in 1951 as the "liberal academic newsletter of the Austrian Academic Association". The first editor-in-chief of the paper was the former Styrian regional councilor , Südmark editor-in-chief and Nazi cultural politician Josef Papesch until 1963 .

From 1983 to 1990 the FPÖ politician Andreas Mölzer was a member of the editorial team. In this function Mölzer advertised "the auditorium's 'guts' to publish various viewpoints [...]". However, this argument also served to provide a platform for right-wing extremist positions by authors such as Norbert Burger , Horst Ludwig (then Chairman of the AFP ) or Walter Sucher .

After the bomb attack in Oberwart ( Burgenland ) in February 1995, in which four members of the Roma ethnic group were killed, the police investigated the area around the auditorium . In March 1995, in the course of the terrorist search after the bomb attack, the Eisenstadt regional court ordered the auditorium to search the house and confiscated the subscriber file. The search was unsuccessful, and Franz Fuchs was charged and convicted as the sole perpetrator .

Immediately after the quadruple murder, the then FPÖ chairman Jörg Haider distanced himself from the auditorium because of the media pressure it caused . At that time, the old man of the Brixia fraternity and former NDP activist Herwig Nachtmann was editor-in-chief of the auditorium . In August 1995, Nachtmann was convicted of violating the Nazi Prohibition Act because of his article "Natural laws apply to Nazis and anti-fascists", published in mid-1994, in which he praised the Holocaust denier Walter Lüftl . As a result, the FPÖ and the state of Styria stopped all funding for the auditorium .

Otto Scrinzi succeeded Nachtmann as editor-in-chief. From the beginning of 2004 Martin Pfeiffer was editor-in-chief of the auditorium .

Auditorium author was among others the right-wing extremist publicist and conspiracy theorist Gerhoch Reisegger . In 1997, he managed to obtain permission from Cardinal Ratzinger to print his essay "Freedom and Truth", which was first published in Communio in 1995, in the monthly Aula of Austria's liberal academic associations, which was then published in the volume "1848 - Heritage and Order" (1998 ) of the Aula publishing house.

Causa concentration camp survivors

Against in July 2015 in a hall erected -Article claim that liberated from the Mauthausen concentration camp had moved "robbing and plundering, murdering and schändend" by the country, the amount reimbursed Green -Abgeordnete Harald Walser to the prosecutor Graz , the process of the however discontinued.

Thereupon survivors and descendants of survivors of the Holocaust , including Rudolf Gelbard and the daughter Leon Zelmans , sued the magazine under civil law for libel and credit damage and for omission. They were supported by the Greens. On August 5, 2016, the Graz Regional Court for Civil Law Matters issued an injunction : Until the final decision in the main proceedings, the auditorium was forbidden to “make and / or disseminate the literal and / or equivalent assertion, the former prisoners / liberated from Mauthausen concentration camp , its sub / satellite camps or other concentration camps were mass murderers and / or a plague for the population and / or plagued the country by robbing and plundering, murdering and defiling and committed the most serious crimes ”. An appeal by the magazine at the Graz Higher Regional Court was rejected in October 2016, and the Supreme Court also confirmed the preliminary injunction in January 2017.

In February 2017, the Graz Regional Court for Civil Law Matters was issued: All of the plaintiffs' claims were recognized. The newspaper had to revoke the insults of concentration camp survivors and pay the costs of the proceedings.

In another media law case brought by Harald Walser because of a follow-up article in which the incriminating passages were quoted, the court ruled against the interests of the surviving concentration camp inmates. Therefore, in February 2018, the Greens supported a complaint by Holocaust survivor Aba Lewit to the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR). In the Lewit proceedings against Austria , the ECHR convicted the Republic of Austria in October 2019 for violating Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights , as the Austrian court inadmissibly failed to protect Lewit from defamatory statements in the Aula article from February 2016. Austria is now obliged to make another decision on the case and to take the objected point into account when correcting the case law.

"Odds black" scandal and discontinuation of the magazine

In May 2018, an article caused outrage in the media in which Cesár Sampson was denigrated as a “quota black” in the context of his participation in the Eurovision Song Contest . Thereupon a debate broke out in the FPÖ about the future of the paper. The Freedom Academic Association of Vienna, Lower Austria and Burgenland (with a 21.6% stake in Aula-Verlag), as well as FAV Carinthia (9%), announced the withdrawal from Aula-Verlag in May 2018. The largest co-owner with 36.8%, FAV Steiermark, stuck to the assembly hall. The owner representatives announced a fundamental renovation of the auditorium for June 2018, and a new name was also under discussion.

"I assume that the name 'Aula' will disappear from the market", FPÖ General Secretary Harald Vilimsky was quoted on May 25, 2018. "The brand is so damaged that it has no future."

On June 9, 2018, Heinrich Sickl , the chairman of the FAV Steiermark, announced that the June issue was the last, a new magazine should appear after the summer.

Self-positioning

The auditorium saw itself as an "unadapted monthly magazine for the unadapted reader" and stood up for "the German people and cultural community", the right to self-determination of the peoples , the freedom of science , the truth in research and teaching in the sense of the occidental cultural tradition as well the right to private property . The auditorium also saw itself as a “free-spirited discussion organ”, through which “numerous different voices have their say”. As a result, she felt the diversity of opinion , which is supposedly a historical and ideological tradition of the “ third camp ” in Austria, next to the national conscious element most closely connected.

Outside perception

Austrian social and political scientists classified the auditorium as right-wing extremist. The documentation archive of Austrian resistance and the former information service against right-wing extremism also rated the magazine as right-wing extremist , anti-Semitic , anti-Zionist and racist . According to journalist Hans-Henning Scharsach , the auditorium functioned as a journalistic contact exchange between supporters of the FPÖ and established right-wing extremism. These contacts were also established through advertisements from right-wing extremist organizations such as the National Democratic University Association , Grabert Verlag , the Austrian Landsmannschaft and the magazine Independent News .

The Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution and the Fight against Terrorism (BVT) mentioned the “Medienwerk AULA Edition 9/2000” in the Constitutional Protection Report 2000 because it discussed and advertised the book “German building blocks - Basis of national politics”. A complaint was made under the Prohibition Act on suspicion of "advocating, approving and spreading National Socialist ideology".

The auditorium was mentioned in 2001 in the “right-wing extremism report” of the Ministry of the Interior, which was published annually until 2002 and which “paid particular attention” to “subliminally outgoing right-wing extremist ideology in the sense of the Security Police Act” .

Relationships with other print media

The auditorium was also used as an advertising platform for right-wing extremist parties. In the 2/1999 issue, for example, the NPD placed an advertisement for its German voice magazine . It was characterized by this in 1998 as follows: "Freedom, honor, fatherland", this slogan of the German fraternity from 1815, which has lost none of its topicality even in modern times, can be used as the motto of this monthly magazine from German-Austria. The professionally presented magazine is close to the FPÖ and the corporate student body, but without sacrificing intellectual freedom.

In 1999 the auditorium promoted the revisionist and anti-Semitic quarterly publication for free historical research and the Castle Hill Publishers of the Holocaust denier Germar Rudolf .

New auditorium 2019

At the beginning of October 2019 a booklet of the New Aula was published which showed continuity with the Aula from 1951–2018. The former head of the assembly hall , the former FPÖ politician Martin Pfeiffer from Graz was now the editor. The media owner and owner was the Upper Austrian FPÖ politician Albert Engelmann. One of the authors of the Neue Aula was Fred Duswald, who described concentration camp survivors as “mass murderers” and “land plagues”. SOS fellow spokesman Alexander Pollak complained that the new auditorium presenting in an old garment, would the right-wing extremist identitary defended the German invasion of Poland pulled in 1939 as a trigger of World War II in doubt, and more. Pollak asked FPÖ leader Norbert Hofer to stand by his announcement that FPÖ members who write for the auditorium would be excluded from the party. Engelmann then left the party and the FPÖ declared that Pfeiffer has not been a party member since September 2019. On October 23, 2019, according to the media owner , the Neue Aula was closed after only one edition for financial reasons.

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Max Preglau: Right-wing extremist or postmodern? - About rhetoric, programs, forms of interaction and one year of government policy of the (Haider) FPÖS. (PDF; 179 kB) In: SWS-Rundschau. Issue 2/2001, pp. 193-213.
  2. ↑ a b Reinhold Gärtner: The ordinary rights. The 'auditorium', the libertarians and right-wing extremism. Pictus Verlag, Vienna 1996.
  3. ↑ a b c assembly hall. In: Documentation archive of the Austrian resistance.
  4. ↑ "Aula" is discontinued - and replaced by a new magazine. In: Courier . June 9, 2018.
  5. ↑ "Quota Mohr" -Eklat - Right-wing extremist "Aula" no longer exist. In: Kronen Zeitung . June 9, 2018.
  6. ↑ Ralf Leonhard: “Aula” magazine is discontinued - off for the right mouthpiece. In: TAZ . June 11, 2018.
  7. ↑ a b Werner Reisinger: Concentration camp survivors complain about right-wing extremist “auditorium”. In: Wiener Zeitung . July 7, 2016, accessed February 27, 2019 .
  8. ↑ Handbook of Austrian Right-Wing Extremism. 2nd Edition. Vienna 1996, pp. 279-280.
  9. ↑ Printed matter of the German Bundestag 13/2019. July 18, 1995.
  10. ↑ News from the far right. Auditorium publication “1848 - Legacy and New Beginning”. DÖW . November 1998.
  11. ↑ Herwig NACHTMANN against Austria - decision on admissibility. ( Memento of May 25, 2005 in the Internet Archive ) Motion No. 36773/97 of the European Commission on Human Rights, meeting of September 9, 1998.
  12. ↑ Dirty hands. (PDF; 87 kB) In: Spiegel Online. March 16, 2009, accessed June 11, 2015 .
  13. ↑ Ralf Leonhard: Debate about FPÖ magazine “Aula” - prisoners legitimately vilified. In: TAZ . February 11, 2016.
  14. ↑ Greens: preliminary injunction against "Aula" articles. In: orf.at . August 12, 2016, accessed February 27, 2019.
  15. ↑ Werner Reisinger: Success for lawsuit against right-wing "Aula". In: Wiener Zeitung . November 10, 2016, accessed February 27, 2019 .
  16. ↑ Article about concentration camp prisoners: Supreme Court decides against “Aula”. In: The press . January 7, 2017, accessed February 27, 2019 .
  17. ^ "Aula" affair: magazine must revoke insults. In: The press . February 15, 2017, accessed February 27, 2019 .
  18. ↑ Colette M. Schmidt: Concentration camp prisoners called “land plague”: ECHR deals with “auditorium”. In: The Standard . February 11, 2018, accessed February 27, 2019 .
  19. ↑ ECHR condemns Austria in "land plagues" case. In: derstandard.at . October 10, 2019, accessed October 10, 2019.
  20. ^ Victims of Nazi Germany successful with lawsuit against republic In: orf.at . October 10, 2019, accessed October 10, 2019.
  21. ^ "Aula", close to the FPÖ, is the name of the ESC star "quotemohr ". In: Today . May 24, 2018. Retrieved May 25, 2018 .
  22. ^ "Aula" owners want to reposition the magazine. In: Courier . May 24, 2018. Retrieved May 25, 2018 .
  23. ↑ Realignment: Vilimsky: “The name Aula will disappear”. In: derstandard.at . May 25, 2018. Retrieved May 26, 2018.
  24. ↑ Vilimsky: The name of the magazine “Aula” will disappear. In: orf.at . May 26, 2018. Retrieved May 26, 2018.
  25. ↑ “Aula” is discontinued - new magazine in autumn . In: orf.at . June 9, 2018, accessed June 9, 2018.
  26. ↑ The auditorium. (No longer available online.) DÖW , archived from the original on January 20, 2016 ; accessed on February 27, 2019 .
  27. ↑ Bernhard Weidlinger: Traditional symbiosis with conflict potential. Ethnic student associations and the FPÖ. In: Stephan Grigat (Ed.): AfD & FPÖ. Anti-Semitism, ethnic nationalism and gender images. (= Interdisciplinary Research on Antisemitism Series, Vol. 7). Facultas, Baden-Baden 2017, p. 125.
  28. ^ Hans-Henning Scharsach: Haider's clan. How violence arises. Orac, Vienna / Munich / Zurich 1995, ISBN 978-3-7015-0349-0 , p. 171 f.
  29. ↑ Handbook of Austrian Right-Wing Extremism. 2nd edition, Vienna 1996, p. 281.
  30. ^ Constitutional Protection Report 2000, July 2001, p. 26; Available online ( Memento from May 23, 2003 in the Internet Archive ) (PDF; 734 kB).
  31. ↑ The Standard of May 12, 2001.
  32. ^ Völkischeverbindungen - Contributions to the German national corporations in Austria ( Memento from January 28, 2014 in the Internet Archive ). P. 83 (PDF; 1.43 MB).
  33. ↑ "Aula" new foundation causes criticism. In: orf.at . October 17, 2019, accessed October 17, 2019.
  34. ↑ Those responsible for the “New Aula” are no longer members of the FPÖ. In: derstandard.at . October 22, 2019, accessed October 24, 2019.
  35. ^ "New auditorium" discontinued after an issue. In: orf.at . October 23, 2019, accessed October 24, 2019.
  36. ↑ Anton Maegerle : A quick end for the “New Aula” , bnr.de , October 24, 2019