Dieter Egger

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Dieter Egger (2017)

Dieter Egger (born January 13, 1969 in Hohenems ) is a Vorarlberg politician of the FPÖ and former state governor of Vorarlberg. Egger is currently a member of the Vorarlberg state parliament and mayor of Hohenems.

education and profession

After attending elementary school in Hohenems, Egger graduated from the BRG and BORG Dornbirn-Schoren . Then he began a study course for business in Schloss Hofen in Lochau. From 1991 to 1995 he worked in the marketing and sales department of a textile company, from 1995 to 1997 he took over the sales management in a company in the consumer goods industry. In 1997 he finally founded his own textile company, which he managed until he joined the Vorarlberg state government in 2003.

Political career

Dieter Egger began his political career at the municipal level in 1995 as a city representative and parliamentary group chairman for the Freedom Party in Hohenems. From 1995 to 1997 he was chairman of the culture committee, then until 1999 chairman of the economic committee. In 1999 Egger was elected as a member of the Vorarlberg state parliament, where he became the FPÖ's area spokesman for economics and spatial planning. In 2000 he was also chairman of the FPÖ state parliament club. In 2003 he was finally appointed to the Vorarlberg regional government as governor. In October 2004, however, after his party's strong loss of votes in the state elections in September, he had to surrender the state governor's competences to Hans-Peter Bischof from the ÖVP and thus became a state councilor.

State election 2009 and the termination of the coalition

In the course of the election campaign for the 2009 state elections , the party used posters with the slogan: “FPÖ: Parental allowance for local families. Dieter Egger ”. She wanted to increase the domestic birthrate, “no longer watch us die out and other majorities grow up” and prevent the scenario specified in an unspecified study, according to which half of Vorarlberg's children will be Muslim in 2050.

This poster prompted Hanno Loewy , the director of the Jewish Museum Hohenems , to write an open letter on August 12, asking what is meant by local and non-local. The following evening, Egger explained in a live discussion as part of the Vorarlberg show today that the same rules as for the state family allowance should apply, i.e. citizens of the European Economic Area living in Vorarlberg as well as all EU citizens of Switzerland are due to be justified. During the 2009 election campaign, the FPÖ also advertised with the slogans “No more false tolerance”, “German is compulsory” and “No Turkish interpreters”. The criticism of the election slogans was also shared by cultural workers from the international Bregenz Festival , including the Briton David Pountney as festival director and the Austrian Günter Rhomberg as festival president.

At the event for the official election campaign kick-off on August 21, 2009, staged by Christoph Blocher's advertising agency , Egger described Loewy, who was born in Germany, who studies and works there and has lived in Hohenems for five years, as a “Jewish exile from America in his highly subsidized Museum". He said he was no more concerned with domestic politics than was Pountney. Loewy bothered the statement primarily because it was wrong. Besides, swing by pointing to the allegedly high subsidies , the anti-Semitic East Coast - stereotype with.

The governing governor and coalition partner Herbert Sausgruber ( ÖVP ) asked Egger to withdraw his statement. When Egger refused, Sausgruber announced that he did not want the FPÖ to participate in government for the first time in 35 years. Despite even higher gains than forecast (+ 12.18%), Governor Sausgruber, who was able to defend the absolute majority of votes and mandates, remained after the election with his promise not to accept the FPÖ into the government. Egger therefore took over the function of the free club chairman in the 29th Vorarlberg state parliament.

State politics after 2009

In the run-up to the state elections in Vorarlberg in 2014 , Governor Markus Wallner made it clear that for the Vorarlberg People's Party, the “Jewish exile saga” from the 2009 election campaign was still in the room and stood in the way of a coalition with the FPÖ. In the state elections, the Vorarlberg Freedom Party could not post any further increase in votes and, with a loss of 1.7 percent of the votes, did even worse than in 2009. Nevertheless, they remained unchanged with 9 seats, the second strongest party in the Vorarlberg state parliament. In the coalition negotiations that followed the election, the People's Party under Governor Wallner agreed on a black-green coalition instead of bringing the FPÖ back into the state government. In the 30th State Parliament of Vorarlberg Egger was therefore again as club chairman of the Freedom Party faction sworn in .

In October 2014 Egger posted a letter to the editor from the Kronen Zeitung on his Facebook page, accusing Turks, among other things, of despising Austria, and commenting on it with the words “How true!”. The Innsbruck political scientist Reinhold Gärtner then spoke of a “ racist direction” in the letter and recognized a change in strategy by the FPÖ Vorarlberg, which is increasingly turning to the right-wing electorate. Egger himself rejected these allegations.

In December 2015, Egger handed over the role of club chairman in the state parliament to Daniel Allgäuer , but remained a member of the state parliament in addition to his office as mayor. As part of the state party conference on July 1, 2016, he finally handed over the office of state party chairman of the Vorarlberg Freedom Party to the National Council member Reinhard Eugen Bösch . In the 2019 state elections , Egger was able to achieve a direct mandate with 4,971 preferential votes, despite national losses for the FPÖ in the Dornbirn constituency , and thus moved back into the state parliament.

Mayoral election in Hohenems 2015

In the municipal council and mayoral elections in 2015 , Dieter Egger ran as the top candidate of the FPÖ and as mayor candidate in Hohenems . For the first time, the FPÖ was able to clearly overtake the ruling ÖVP with 42.31 percent of the votes and 16 of 36 mandates in the city ​​council . In addition, Egger forced the mayor Richard Amann into a runoff election after receiving 45 percent of the vote in the first ballot and Amann only 35 percent. In the runoff election, however, Richard Amann narrowly won against Egger, who was left behind with 49.17 percent. In the run-up to the runoff election, there was a non-partisan campaign against the election of Dieter Egger under the title “Platform against anti-Semitism and right-wing extremism Vorarlberg”, which was supported by numerous celebrities.

At the constituent city council meeting of the newly elected Hohenems city council on April 11, 2015, Dieter Egger was subsequently elected to the city council for the Freedom Party. He was given the responsibility for building construction, municipal energy and building management and school maintenance. In addition, he initially acted as parliamentary group leader of the FPÖ in the Hohenems city council, where the FPÖ was the strongest parliamentary group after the election.

In the wake of the municipal council elections in 2015, on April 18, 2015, Egger finally made the long-demanded official apology to Hanno Loewy for the “Jewish exile teller” from the 2009 state election campaign. Dieter Egger emphasized in his open letter to Loewy that his statement was “misleading and inappropriate ”and he hurt Loewy and many other people with it. In conclusion, he apologized profusely. Hanno Loewy said that he would accept the apology and give Dieter Egger credit for asking forgiveness for his anti-Semitic statement. Both of them drew a media line under the debate about Egger's election campaign that had been simmering since 2009.

In the repetition of the mayoral election on December 20, 2015, ordered by the Constitutional Court , Dieter Egger was finally able to collect 55.75 percent of the votes. The previous incumbent Richard Amann (ÖVP) achieved 44.25 percent and announced his withdrawal from politics. Dieter Egger was therefore sworn in as Mayor of Hohenems on December 23, 2015, after he had previously resigned from the position of club chairman in the state parliament as provided for by the Vorarlberger Landtag's rules of procedure.

Private

Egger is married and lives in Hohenems with his wife and two children.

Web links

Commons : Dieter Egger  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c APA: Vorarlberg election - cultural workers express displeasure with FPÖ posters , DerStandard.at, August 21, 2009
  2. ^ Jutta Berger: Election campaign in Vorarlberg - FPÖ does not want to "watch how we die out" , DerStandard.at, August 19, 2009; The standard August 20, 2009
  3. ↑ a b c Discussion about the Vorarlberg FPÖ election poster , vorarlberg.orf.at, August 13, 2009
  4. ^ Jutta Berger: Vorarlberger FPÖ - Vortex about anti-Semitic failures , DerStandard.at, 23 August 2009; Der Standard, August 24, 2009
  5. ^ Rainer Nowak: Museum Director Loewy: "This is a displacement fantasy" , DiePresse.com, August 24, 2008; The press, August 25, 2008
  6. ↑
     Wikinews: Wrong statements by FPÖ Regional Councilor Egger about Loewy  - message
  7. ↑ Vorarlberg election: After 35 years, the ÖVP-FPÖ government is likely to burst , nachrichten.at (Oberösterreichische Nachrichten), August 24, 2009
  8. ^ Sausgruber: No more coalition with FPÖ , vorarlberg.orf.at, August 24, 2009
  9. ^ State of Vorarlberg: final result of the state election 2009 ; Website of the state election authority, accessed on September 21, 2009.
  10. ^ ORF Vorarlberg: FPÖ boss Egger should become club chairman . Report of September 22, 2009.
  11. ↑ Wallner: "Exiled Jew-Sager stands in the room". ORF Vorarlberg, August 7, 2014, accessed on November 2, 2014 .
  12. ^ Vorarlberg: FPÖ boss disturbed with Facebook posting . DiePresse.com , October 22, 2014
  13. ↑ Bösch elected the new FPÖ chairman with 97.5 percent. ORF Vorarlberg, July 1, 2016, accessed on July 1, 2016 .
  14. ↑ Michael Prock: After the election there will be calculations and negotiations. In: Vorarlberger Nachrichten (VN.at). October 15, 2019, accessed November 18, 2019 .
  15. ↑ Amann just remains mayor of Hohenems. ORF Vorarlberg, March 29, 2015, accessed on March 30, 2015 .
  16. ^ Protest group wants to prevent Egger. ORF Vorarlberg, March 18, 2015, accessed on March 30, 2015 .
  17. ↑ Loewy accepts Egger's apology. ORF Vorarlberg, April 18, 2015, accessed on April 19, 2015 .
  18. ^ Blue smoke in Hohenems: Egger triumphs. ORF Vorarlberg, December 20, 2015, accessed on December 20, 2015 .
personal data
SURNAME Egger, Dieter
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Austrian politician (FPÖ), member of the state parliament, Vorarlberg regional councilor
DATE OF BIRTH January 13, 1969
PLACE OF BIRTH Hohenems