Friedrich Peter (politician)

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Friedrich Peter (born July 13, 1921 in Attnang-Puchheim , Upper Austria ; † September 25, 2005 in Vienna ) was an Austrian politician and party chairman of the FPÖ from 1958 to 1978 .

Life

The son of a social democratic train driver and a bourgeois master baker's daughter joined the NSDAP in November 1938 and volunteered for the Waffen SS at the age of almost 17 . During the Second World War he was deployed on the western and eastern fronts, most recently as SS-Obersturmführer in Infantry Regiment 10 of the 1st SS Infantry Brigade. Parts of this unit were assigned to Einsatzgruppe C in the summer of 1941 . The Einsatzgruppen systematically shot hundreds of thousands of Jews behind the front. Although his unit was almost exclusively involved in such actions, Peter denied after the war that he was involved in these processes or that he knew about them. After the war, he was imprisoned for a year in an American detention camp in Glasenbach (now an Alpine settlement ).

After his imprisonment he became a primary and special school teacher, and later also a state school inspector . From 1955 to 1966 he was a member of the Upper Austrian state parliament , first as a representative of the VdU , then of the FPÖ, of which he was federal party chairman from 1958. In 1966 he was in the National Assembly elected in 1970 and was club chairman of the Freedom Party parliamentary group .

As early as 1962/1963 the FPÖ came closer to the SPÖ , which offended parts of the right-wing extremist national wing of the party and led to large parts of this spectrum splitting off. While Peter was the party chairman, the FPÖ gradually tried to become capable of forming a coalition and tried to appear more liberal to the outside world . At the party congress in 1964, Peter declared for the first time that “nationalists and liberals have a common place in the FPÖ”. The “liberalization” of the party in this phase led to resistance within the party, to which Peter responded by expelling the party. Although the FPÖ had asserted “No red chancellor” in the 1970 election campaign, it tolerated the minority government of Bruno Kreisky , who for his part returned the favor by reforming the electoral law , which meant a strong appreciation for the FPÖ.

Simon Wiesenthal , at that time head of the Jewish Documentation Center in Vienna, published a report on the Nazi past of the then FPÖ boss Friedrich Peter after the National Council election in 1975. From this report it emerged that Peter had served as Obersturmführer in an SS unit associated with mass murders . Federal Chancellor Kreisky, himself persecuted by the Nazi regime, defended Friedrich Peter and accused Simon Wiesenthal of working with " Mafia methods " and accordingly assumed that he was collaborating with the Gestapo . This public debate is now subsumed under the term Kreisky-Peter-Wiesenthal affair .

In 1978, Peter no longer ran for federal party chairman. His successor was the mayor of Graz , Alexander Götz . In the background, however, Peter was still pulling the strings in the party. After the SPÖ lost its absolute majority in 1983, he negotiated with Bruno Kreisky the small coalition under Federal Chancellor Fred Sinowatz and Vice Chancellor Norbert Steger . After violent public protests, he had to refuse the offer to be elected third President of the National Council in recognition of his services, in order not to endanger the small coalition.

To Joerg Haider , he always had a strained relationship. The final break came in 1992, according to Haider's statement about the “proper employment policy in the Third Reich”. Peter spoke of a "shameful derailment of Haider" and said that this statement forced him to "break his self-imposed silence and to remind the governing bodies of the Freedom Party of Austria of their state-political and statutory duties in public".

Friedrich Peter died on September 25, 2005 in Vienna's Hanusch Hospital , where he had been treated for several weeks for a kidney disease.

Political career

  • 1955–1971 FPÖ regional party leader of Upper Austria
  • 1958–1978 federal party leader of the Freedom Party of Austria
  • 1955–1966 member of the Upper Austrian state parliament
  • 1966–1986 member of the National Council
  • 1970–1986 club chairman of the FPÖ
  • 1992 Resignation from the party because of the new FPÖ course (Anti-EG)00000

literature

  • Friedrich Peter , in: Internationales Biographisches Archiv 48/2005 of December 3, 2005, in the Munzinger archive ( beginning of article freely accessible)
  • Brigitte Bailer-Galanda , Wolfgang Neugebauer : Handbook of Austrian right-wing extremism. Updated and expanded new edition, 2nd edition. Deuticke, Vienna 1996, ISBN 3-216-30099-4 .
  • Wolfgang Neugebauer: The FPÖ: From right-wing extremism to liberalism? In: Documentation archive of Austrian resistance (ed.): Right-wing extremism in Austria after 1945. 5th, revised and expanded edition. Österreichischer Bundesverlag, Vienna 1981, ISBN 3-215-45796-0 .
  • Kurt Piringer: The story of the freedom. Contribution of the Third Force to Austrian politics. Orac et al., Vienna et al. 1982, ISBN 3-85369-913-2 .

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Peter, Friedrich
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Austrian politician (FPÖ), member of the state parliament, member of the National Council
DATE OF BIRTH July 13, 1921
PLACE OF BIRTH Attnang-Puchheim
DATE OF DEATH September 25, 2005
Place of death Vienna