Dr. Karl Renner Institute
| Dr. Karl Renner Institute | |
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| purpose | Political education work for the Austrian social democracy |
| Chair: | President: Doris Bures (since December 2018) Director: Maria Maltschnig |
| Establishment date: | September 13, 1972 |
| Number of members: | 24 (as of 2007) |
| Seat : | 1100 Vienna , Karl-Popper-Strasse 8 |
| Website: | www.renner-institut.at |
The Dr. Karl Renner Institute (short: Renner Institute ) is the political academy of the Social Democratic Party of Austria , which was named after Karl Renner and is organized as an association (ZVR number 466259279). The association was founded on September 13, 1972 and was housed in Altmannsdorf Castle in Vienna from 1978 to 2018 , which the SPÖ then had to sell. The institute has existed at Karl-Popper-Strasse 8 in the Belvedere district of Vienna's 10th district since the end of 2018 .
tasks
- Transmission between science and the SPÖ with the aim of involving experts more closely in policy formulation and implementation,
- Forum for political discussion in order to bring social democratic positions into the public discussion,
- Further education and personnel development for the SPÖ with the aim of qualifying its employees for their tasks,
- Organizational development for the SPÖ with the aim of making the party structures more open and modern.
Goal setting
In order to be able to fulfill the tasks mentioned, the Renner Institute and its nine regional offices target the politically interested public with various publications, discussion events, inquiries and lectures. Experts and multipliers are to be addressed through specialist conferences and seminars. International educational work plays an important role here. In addition, the Renner Institute workshops and individual consultations for organizing officials , mandate holders and employees of the Social Democratic Party. This involves support for local political work, discussions on political issues and background information on current political issues.
history
In September 1972 the association Dr.-Karl-Renner-Institut was founded and nominated by the SPÖ to carry out political education work. The basis for this was the "Federal Act on the Promotion of Civic Education in the Field of Political Parties and Journalism". The association's statutes were drafted in such a way that the association's board of trustees with the expanded party presidium and the general assembly with the party executive committee of the SPÖ are largely identical. Financing is regulated in the Journalism Promotion Act. It comes from the federal budget and consists of a basic amount that is the same for all political academies and an additional amount that is calculated from the number of mandates of the respective party in the National Council. This form of financing results in the regular examination of the use of funds by the Court of Auditors.
Karl R. Stadler , the labor movement historian who had been expelled by the National Socialists and returned to Austria from emigration at the end of the 1960s , was appointed first director. At the same time the institute moved into office space in the house of the Arbeiter-Zeitung in the Rechten Wienzeile 97 ( forward building ) in Vienna. The first President of the Board of Trustees, Bruno Kreisky , together with Director Stadler specifically defined the general terms of reference in the law and the association's statutes. Kreisky saw the primary task of the Renner Institute in enabling learners to recognize the diversity of relationships between people and society. This included the principles of political economy as well as the socio-political role of culture or the function of the mass media. It is important to educate critical citizens, but at the same time to exhaust the available talent pool and, above all, to awaken the joy and desire to work politically in young people. These objectives are to be achieved through training, seminars, inquiries , correspondence courses, grants and research contracts , publications , independent scientific work in the field of social science , international scholarship holders and lecturers exchange and international cooperation with similar institutions . In addition, the work of the institute was to be expanded to include all of Austria through the establishment of regional offices in all federal states (which finally took place in 1973/74) .
This can certainly be seen as a follow-up to the SPÖ organizational reform of the late 1960s, which statutorily gave the federal states outside Vienna more weight, while the previously dominant influence of the Viennese party organization, the central secretariat and the ÖGB was reduced accordingly.
When Karl Blecha was appointed Central Secretary (1975) and Federal Education Officer (1976), the cooperation between the educational organization of the SPÖ and the Renner Institute began. In 1976, as part of the organizational reform of the SPÖ, the Federal Education Committee took over a large part of the tasks of the former Socialist Education Center and has since carried out these tasks together with the Renner Institute and the SPÖ federal management.
In the first few years, the Renner Institute concentrated on developing concepts for social democratic educational work and on testing seminars and other forms of conveying political knowledge and action in practice. At the same time, the institute made a name for itself in public right from the start through events with prominent personalities from politics, business and culture from Germany and abroad.
Since the accommodation in the rooms of the forward building could only be a temporary arrangement, it was necessary to find a place where both the offices and the training facilities could be accommodated in order to enable continuous study operations. After a long search, a corresponding property was bought and renovated on Khleslplatz in Vienna's 12th district , and in 1978 the move took place. In 1979 the later Gartenhotel Altmannsdorf , built by its own operating company, went into operation, so that seminar participants could now also be accommodated and fed.
In mid-1977, Karl Stadler left the Renner Institute because of his professional obligations at the University of Linz . The renovation and furnishing of the Renner Institute therefore took place under the direction of Franz Slawik . In this phase, the regional offices were more involved in the implementation of seminars than before: On the one hand, this created a dense network of local and regional educational events across Austria; Publications as well as the new development and testing of seminar models is invested.
When Franz Slawik returned to his original job as school director in Schwechat in 1980 and took on new tasks in Lower Austrian regional politics, the management of the institute was transferred to the political scientist Erich Fröschl, who came from Salzburg . Under his leadership, the scope of the institute's work within the SPÖ and among the general public was systematically expanded. In 1992, Karl Duffek (1962–2016) was appointed as deputy director in order to cope with the institute's increased tasks.
On January 1, 1999, Karl Duffek took over the management of the institute. Erich Fröschl became head of the newly founded Academy for International Politics at the Renner Institute, a position in which he was engaged until his retirement at the end of October 2009. In September 2006, Barbara Rosenberg was appointed deputy director of the Renner Institute at the suggestion of director Duffek.
In October 2016, Maria Maltschnig was appointed director of the Karl Renner Institute as the successor to Karl Duffek, who died in August 2016. In November 2017 it was announced that Christian Kern would be the successor to Alfred Gusenbauer as President of the institute.
In June 2017, the SPÖ's Federal Party Presidium and Federal Party Executive Board decided to sell the Altmannsdorf Garden Hotel. In May 2018 it was announced that the Renner Institute had acquired around 1,000 m² of office space in Quartier Belvedere Central (QBC) building 6 for 5.6 million euros , and the institute had relocated there by the end of 2018. In December 2018, Doris Bures succeeded Christian Kern as President of the institute. The official opening of the institute's new premises was scheduled for mid-January 2019.
Prices
The association has awarded the Bruno Kreisky Prize for political books in several categories every year since 1993 and, together with the SPÖ Parliamentary Club , the Kurt Rothschild Prize for business journalism since 2016 . The award is named after Kurt Rothschild . The main award winners in 2016 were Peter Bofinger , 2017 Marcel Fratzscher , 2018 Heinz D. Kurz and 2019 Kate Raworth .
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ Federal Ministry of the Interior, Section IV / 2 IT-MS: Extract from the register of associations as of September 20, 2010 .
- ↑ Federal Law Gazette No. 272/1972 : Promotion of civic education work in the field of political parties and journalism
- ↑ Entire legal regulation for the Publizistikförderungsgesetz 1984 , Publizistikförderungsgesetz 1984 - PubFG
- ↑ orf.at - Renner Institute Director Karl Duffek has died . Article dated August 8, 2016, accessed August 8, 2016.
- ^ Courier: Renner Institute: Maria Maltschnig confirmed . Article dated October 14, 2016, accessed June 16, 2017.
- ↑ orf.at: Kern according to Gusenbauer at the head of the Renner Institute . Article dated November 12, 2017, accessed November 12, 2017.
- ↑ diepresse.com: SPÖ parted ways with Gartenhotel Altmannsdorf . Article dated June 14, 2017, accessed June 16, 2017.
- ↑ derStandard.at: Renner Institute of the SPÖ moves to Vienna Central Station . Article dated May 28, 2018, accessed May 28, 2018.
- ↑ Kurier: Bures replaces Kern at the head of the Renner Institute . Article dated December 19, 2018, accessed December 20, 2018.
- ^ Renner Institute: Kurt Rothschild Prize ; Retrieved Oct. 4, 2016
- ↑ SPÖ Parliamentary Club and Renner Institute award the Kurt Rothschild Prize for Business Journalism. November 5, 2019, accessed November 6, 2019 .