Franz Jonas

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Franz Jonas (1965)

Franz Josef Jonas (born October 4, 1899 in Floridsdorf ; † April 24, 1974 in Vienna ) was an Austrian statesman and politician ( SPÖ ), from 1951 to 1965 mayor and governor of Vienna, then from 1965 to 1974 Austrian President . He was the fourth president of the Second Republic, which had existed since 1945 .

Life

Franz Jonas on a state visit to Romania in 1969

Franz Jonas, whose Moravian family was of Czech origin, learned the profession of typesetter after completing compulsory school . His birth certificate shows that his birthday was October 4, 1899; according to his mother's notes, Jonas was born on September 29, 1899. Due to an error, October 4, 1899 was entered as the date of birth in the birth certificate. Jonas celebrated his birthday on October 4th throughout his life, even though he knew himself that he was actually born on September 29th. He experienced the end of World War I and the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian monarchy as a 19-year-old soldier on the Italian front , after which he volunteered in the Carinthian defensive battle . From 1919 to 1932 he worked as a proofreader . During the world economic crisis of the 1930s, he acted as secretary of the Social Democratic Workers 'Party (SDAP) in Floridsdorf , a socialist-dominated Viennese workers' district north of the Danube.

After the elimination of parliament in 1933, the suppression of the February workers' uprising in 1934 and the prohibition of social democracy by the authoritarian Chancellor Engelbert Dollfuss , Franz Jonas became unemployed. At times he found employment as a newspaper setter and commercial clerk at the Floridsdorfer locomotive factory . After the escape of the party leader and chief theoretician of the Austro-Marxism , Otto Bauer , and the chief of the defunct Republican Defense Corps , Julius German , Czechoslovakia belonged Jonas - with Roman Felleis , Karl Holoubek , Ludwig Kostroun and Manfred Ackermann - the so-called five-committee on which the Underground coordinated the resistance against the Austro-Fascist corporate state regime.

In the years of illegality, Jonas and his wife Grete were activists of the Revolutionary Socialists . They were involved in the atheist freethinkers as well as in the workers' college and the anti-alcoholic movement. Like many like-minded people - among them the future Chancellor Bruno Kreisky  - Jonas was arrested in early 1935 for his participation in the Brno National Conference of Socialists (December 1934). After 14 months in prison he was acquitted of high treason in the so-called socialist trial in 1936. In the era of National Socialism after the "Anschluss" of Austria to Hitler's Germany in 1938, he remained largely unmolested and worked as a clearing officer in the Floridsdorf locomotive factory during the Second World War . Because his work was "vital to the war effort", he did not have to become a soldier.

Immediately after the end of the war, he was appointed to the provisional municipal administration in his home district of Floridsdorf, which was part of the Soviet sector of Vienna , where he made services to the needy population as district chairman . In April 1945 he took part in the union of the Social Democrats and Revolutionary Socialists and the founding of the SPÖ in the Vienna City Hall. From 1948 to 1949 he was city councilor for food, then until 1951 city councilor for construction. After the election of Mayor Theodor Körner (SPÖ) as Federal President, Franz Jonas became Mayor - and thus also Governor  - of Vienna in 1951 . He held the highest positions at the head of the federal capital and the most populous federal state until 1965. At the same time he was President of the Austrian Association of Cities .

As state party chairman of the SPÖ Vienna, he headed by far the strongest state organization of the party. At the same time, Jonas was deputy SPÖ federal party chairman (under Adolf Schärf and Bruno Pittermann ). In the highest party committees, together with the exponents of the left wing, he opposed the claims to power of the popular union leader and interior minister Franz Olah , who wanted a small SPÖ-FPÖ coalition and was ultimately expelled from the party after a severe internal crisis.

Franz Jonas was a member of the Federal Council from 1952 to 1953 and then a member of the National Council until 1965 . After the death of Adolf Schärf (who had succeeded Theodor Körner at the head of the state in 1957) Jonas was elected Federal President as the first skilled worker and self-taught . With 50.7 percent of the vote - the closest result of a presidential election to date - he was able to prevail against the candidate of the ÖVP, former Federal Chancellor Alfons Gorbach . While the communists supported Jonas, the FPÖ made no election recommendations.

Old 1971 election campaign poster near Hermagor, Carinthia 2007

Just a few months after taking office, Jonas had to experience how the grand coalition of ÖVP and SPÖ, of which he was a declared supporter, broke up. In 1966, after the clear ÖVP victory in the National Council elections, he appointed the first sole government under Federal Chancellor Josef Klaus , while the SPÖ went into the opposition and in 1967 made Bruno Kreisky its chairman. The SPÖ owed its catastrophic electoral defeat in particular to the fact that Olah and his new “ Democratic Progressive Party ” (DFP) received almost 150,000 votes (but missed a basic mandate), from which the ÖVP was able to benefit.

In 1970 Jonas allowed, despite sharp criticism from the bourgeoisie (he was accused of not having "exhausted all possibilities"), the formation of an SPÖ minority government by Bruno Kreisky, who succeeded in gaining an absolute majority in early elections in 1971 1983 to defend continuously. In spring 1971 Jonas complied with the SPÖ's request to make himself available for a second six-year mandate in the Hofburg . The ÖVP nominated the career diplomat and ex-foreign minister Kurt Waldheim as an opposing candidate. Waldheim, almost two decades younger than the incumbent, promised a “new style” presidency, but the majority of Austrians impressively confirmed Franz Jonas in office.

One of the highlights of his tenure was the state visit to Pope Paul VI. in the Vatican, politically significant state visits to Marshal Tito in Yugoslavia, as well as in Italy and France, in the Soviet Union, in Thailand, at the world exhibition in Canada and with Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi in Iran, as well as the state visit of the British Queen Elizabeth II and the Duke of Edinburgh in Austria. The University of Bangkok and other foreign universities awarded Jonas an honorary doctorate.

While his predecessors demonstratively resigned their membership in the SPÖ before they were sworn in, Jonas was the first to let it rest only for the duration of his term of office. Franz Jonas was an Esperantist , avid hobby photographer and talented graphic artist who designed several postage stamps (special stamp for the 50th anniversary of the republic 1918–1968). He lived with his wife in a service villa on the Hohe Warte in Vienna-Döbling , which was acquired by the state after his election and was also available to his successors Rudolf Kirchschläger , Kurt Waldheim and Thomas Klestil as an official residence.

Shortly before the end of the first half of his second term of office, Jonas died as the longest serving Federal President of the Second Republic on April 24, 1974 in a Viennese hospital as a result of a cancer diagnosed in 1973. After the determination of the incapacity for office in March, the three Presidents of the National Council Anton Benya , Alfred Maleta and Otto Probst exercised the functions of Federal President on an interim basis in accordance with the constitution. Eight foreign heads of state came to Vienna for his state funeral. Jonas was buried at the side of his predecessors Karl Renner , Theodor Körner and Adolf Schärf in the presidential crypt in the central cemetery. In 1975 the main square in Floridsdorf was named Franz-Jonas-Platz in his honor .

As his successor, the candidate of the SPÖ was elected by Kreisky, the non-party Foreign Minister Rudolf Kirchschläger, who - after two full terms of office - was replaced in 1986 by Jonas' former challenger, Kurt Waldheim (meanwhile UN Secretary General 1972-1982), in the Hofburg.

Franz Jonas was the brother of Rudolf Jonas , who became known as a doctor, mountaineer and co-founder of the Austrian Himalayan Society.

Awards (excerpt)

literature

Web links

Commons : Franz Jonas  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ world history: Builder of the Republic 4 - Franz Jonas. April 21, 2016. Retrieved April 26, 2016 .
  2. ↑ Christine Klusacek, Kurt Stimmer: The Viennese and their town hall: A foray through history . Gerold's Sohn, Vienna 2003, ISBN 978-3-900812-09-6 , p. 79 .
  3. ↑ Maddalena Guiotto: Italy and Austria: a network of relationships between two dissimilar neighbors . In: Maddalena Guiotto, Wolfgang Wohnout (ed.): Italy and Austria in Central Europe in the interwar period / Italia e Austria nella Mitteleuropa tra le due guerre mondiali . Böhlau, Vienna 2018, ISBN 978-3-205-20269-1 , p. 15 .
  4. ^ Margarete Biringer: Franz Jonas - a working-class child from Floridsdorf . 2006. Franz Jonas European School ( Memento from October 8, 2007 in the Internet Archive )
predecessor Office successor
Theodor Körner Mayor of Vienna
1951–1965 		Bruno Marek
personal data
SURNAME Jonas, Franz
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Jonas, Franz Josef (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Austrian politician (SPÖ), Mayor of Vienna, Austrian Federal President, member of the Federal Council
DATE OF BIRTH uncertain: October 4, 1899
PLACE OF BIRTH Floridsdorf
DATE OF DEATH April 24, 1974
Place of death Vienna