Herbert Alois Kraus

Herbert Alois Kraus (born November 18, 1911 in Zagreb ; † September 3, 2008 in Vienna ) was an Austrian journalist, politician, manager and non-fiction author.

Live and act

Herbert Alois Kraus grew up in Tyrol, attended elementary school in Hall in Tyrol , then for three years the grammar school in Brixen and graduated in 1930 from the Stella Matutina in Feldkirch . He received his doctorate in economics in 1934 at the University of World Trade in Vienna. He then worked as a court master and private tutor in Czechoslovakia and Poland . In 1936 he founded a small chemical company in Vienna and worked as a business journalist in 1938. Until 1939 he was editor of the Neue Wiener Journal , then until 1941 the correspondent of the Südost-Echos . He did his military service from 1941 to 1945 first with the High Command of the Wehrmacht , evaluating the economic news coming from the Soviet Union , then in the Economic Inspectorate South in Ukraine . Because of critical reports, a court martial was initiated against him, which ended in October 1944 with an acquittal. In the spring of 1945 he fled westward from the Caucasus region and saw the end of the war in Mondsee . He then found quarters with his brother-in-law in the city ​​of Salzburg and tried in vain to found a newspaper with the US military command in Salzburg . He then worked for the Austrian Courier , which appeared in the Salzburger Nachrichten in June 1945 . At the beginning of 1946 he founded the Austrian Research Institute for Economics and Politics and acted as editor of the journal Reports and Information , which dealt primarily with political and economic issues and from 1947 took a very critical position on the Austrian National Socialist Act ( Prohibition Act 1947 ).

In 1949 he founded the Association of Independents (VdU) together with Viktor Reimann , of which he was Federal Chairman until 1952. In the second free national council elections in 1949 , the VdU ran for the first time and gained 11.7% of the vote. Kraus moved into parliament with 15 other VdU members and became club chairman. When the Freedom Party of Austria was founded in 1955 as the successor organization to the VdU, Kraus did not join the new party and left parliament after the National Council election in 1956 . After that he did not appear politically for a long time until he became president in 1978 (until 1993) of the “Liberal Club” in Vienna.

After retiring from politics, Kraus went into the private sector and founded Donau-Finanz GesmbH & Co. KG in 1957 together with Hans Priebsch and Hans von Behr, of which he became managing partner in 1959.

In his 1990 book "Großeuropa". A confederation from the Atlantic to Vladivostok , Kraus represents the vision of a Greater Europe including Russia, a “confederation of European states from the Atlantic to Vladivostok.” He argues that the integration of Russia would free Western Europe from the fear of war with Russia, and that the connection this large Russian market would bring with it a boom for decades.

In his 2003 book Europe united with Russia. With a vision for the 21st century , Kraus believes that in the 21st century the era of nation states will be replaced by an era of continental unification. He advocates the creation of a Greater European Confederation consisting of the 27 EU members, all successor states of Yugoslavia and the Soviet Union as well as Norway , Switzerland and Turkey . The purpose of this federation of states should be to make Western Europe an equal partner of the USA and thus to “bring the world to an orderly variety of positions of power and thus the generally desired multipolarity.” The association should guarantee peace between the member states and a constitutional and military one Be a Union that is shaped according to the principle of subsidiarity . The national armed forces are to be replaced by a large European continental army.

Works

• Russia 1941. People, culture and economy . Südost-Echo, Vienna 1942
• Austria between 1945 and 1955 . Series of publications by the Freiheitliche Bildungswerk, Vienna 1979
• "Intolerable objectivity". Political Memories 1917 to 1987 . Amalthea, Vienna, Munich 1988
• "Greater Europe". A confederation from the Atlantic to Vladivostok . Langen Müller, Munich 1990
• Together with Gergana Schulak: Europe united with Russia. A vision for the 21st century . Molden, Vienna 2003, ISBN 3-85485-091-3

Web links

• Entry on Herbert Alois Kraus in the Austria Forum  (in the AEIOU Austria Lexicon )
• Literature by and about Herbert Alois Kraus in the catalog of the German National Library
• Herbert Alois Kraus on the website of the Austrian Parliament
• "Herbert A. Kraus died" , OTS, September 4, 2008

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Erich Marx: Herbert Kraus, in: The politicians. Careers and work of important representatives of the Second Republic, Verlag Manz Wien 1995, pp. 344–352.
2. ^ Austrian National Council : Parliamentary Correspondence / BL / 31. October 1996 / No. 626 ( Memento of the original from September 28, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. . 
3. ^ History of Danube Finance
4. ↑ Erich Reiter: Sense and purpose of a security and defense policy doctrine. Internal information from the Military Science Office for the departments of the Federal Ministry for National Defense , September 2000, p. 27 (PDF; 302 kB)
5. ↑ Hartmut Wagner: "Europe united with Russia - A vision for the 21st century" by Herbert Kraus and Gergana Schulak ( Memento of the original from September 27, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. . Review in Eurasian Magazine , May 21, 2003