Leopold Gratz

Leopold Gratz (1971)

Leopold Gratz (* 4. November 1929 in Vienna - Ottakring , † 2. March 2006 in Vienna- Highway ) was politician of the Social Democratic Party of Austria . He served as Federal , Member of Parliament , executive club chairman of the Social Democratic parliamentary group , Minister of Education , Mayor of Vienna , Foreign Minister and National Council President .

Political career

Federal politics

Leopold Gratz was born the son of a bank employee. Already in his youth he worked actively in various organizations of the SPÖ and belonged, among other things, to the founding generation of the VSStÖ after 1945. He studied law at the University of Vienna (abs.jur., Later mag.jur.), And began his professional career in 1952 in the Ministry of Social Affairs . 1953-1963 he worked as a secretary in the club of socialist deputies and federal councilors.

In 1963 Leopold Gratz became one of the two central secretaries of the SPÖ and a member of the Federal Council . In 1966 he was first elected as a member of the National Council. Together with Hannes Androsch , Heinz Fischer and Karl Blecha , Gratz was one of the “crown princes” around party chairman Bruno Kreisky from 1967 onwards . In 1970 and 1971, Gratz, who resigned the function of SPÖ Central Secretary when he was appointed to the Federal Government Kreisky I , was Federal Minister for Education and Art, after which he switched back to the National Council and was executive club chairman of the SPÖ from 1971 to 1973. Parliamentary clubs .

Mayor of Vienna

After an unsolicited referendum on the observatory park and its planned partial construction and the subsequent resignation of Mayor Felix Slavik , the Viennese SPÖ found itself in a crisis. At the age of 44, Leopold Gratz, who was very young for a politician at the time, was supposed to lead the party out of this crisis (see state government and city senate Gratz I ). In the municipal council elections of October 1973, Gratz achieved the SPÖ's best result since 1945 , missing a two-thirds majority in the town hall by just one mandate (see Gratz II ). In the municipal elections in 1978 (see Gratz III ) and 1983 (see Gratz IV ) he was able to secure an absolute majority in the SPÖ. Measured by Gratz's election successes and his term of office, he is still considered the most successful mayor of the federal capital today.

The projects New Danube with Danube Island (completed in 1988) and UNO City (opened in 1979; Gratz was the Austrian chief negotiator for the UN location Vienna in New York) were continued; the first sections of the new Vienna subway, which had been under construction since 1969, began operating in 1978. In the inner city , Gratz was responsible for the definitive design of the pedestrian zones that had been provisional up until then, in particular in 1974 the Kärntner Strasse and the Graben . Gratz and Hans Mayr , whom he appointed as City Councilor for Finance in 1973, established Wien Holding in 1974 . The Kurpark Oberlaa became a public park after the Vienna International Garden Show in 1974. In 1980 the main sewage treatment plant in Vienna went into operation. The Jewish Welcome Service Vienna was founded in 1980 to care for Jewish Viennese refugees and their descendants who had fled during the Nazi era. In 1982 the duo Gratz Mayr of Vienna Business Agency, today Vienna Business Agency called created.

1973 Gratz the first president of the later controversial clubs 45 , by the two Kreisky - Crown Prince Hannes Androsch was called and Leopold Gratz to life. The meeting place was the confectionery Demel , run by Udo Proksch , a former kuk Hofzuckerbäcker at the Kohlmarkt .

Gratz's term of office was overshadowed by scandals in the sphere of the SPÖ: the building ring scandal and the AKH scandal , the largest Austrian building scandal to date. The collapse of the Reichsbrücke in 1976 and the misery around the Rinter garbage tent also fall under Gratz's tenure. The caricaturist for the conservative Vienna daily Die Presse , Gustav Peichl , occasionally drew a glass of champagne next to Gratz. Erhard Busek , in the city senates Gratz II to IV ÖVP city ​​councilor or vice-mayor, remembered in 2014 that Gratz already drank gin at 8 a.m. ( somewhere that must be hereditary with the Viennese mayor ... ).

In 1975 Gratz was the most popular Austrian politician and was ranked by TIME magazine among the 150 people who enjoyed the greatest popularity worldwide . In 1979 Gratz brought the former television director Helmut Zilk to the city senate as city councilor for culture. In 1983 he secured the still largely unknown Michael Häupl an eligible SPÖ list for the 1983 municipal council election . In doing so, he built his own successors.

Return to federal politics

In 1984, after eleven years, he handed over his post as Mayor of Vienna to Helmut Zilk . He switched back to federal politics as a member of the National Council and was Foreign Minister in the Sinowatz federal government until 1986 . Since he had exposed himself strongly to the ÖVP candidate Kurt Waldheim in the spring of 1986 during the election campaign for the office of Federal President because of his National Socialist past and warned of the threat of isolation by Western states ( see: Waldheim Affair ), he resigned immediately after his election Office as Foreign Minister back.

After the National Council elections in autumn 1986, Leopold Gratz was elected President of the National Council, formally the second highest office in the state.

In 1989 Gratz was again named as a participant in two scandals. At the beginning of the National Council meeting on January 25th, he announced his withdrawal from Austrian politics and declared that his decision is a personal one and it is politically justified .

With his party friend, Interior Minister Karl Blecha , he was involved in the Lucona case. His friendship with Udo Proksch, once the darling of Viennese society and host of Club 45, which Gratz co-founded, became a political and legal stumbling block for him. The criminal trial against Proksch ended in 1992 with a guilty verdict for sixfold murder (see Lucona affair ); Gratz was sentenced to a fine in 1993 for false testimony. In the mid-1980s, Gratz, foreign minister at the time, appeared as a witness for Proksch and instructed the Austrian embassy in Bucharest to obtain papers to exonerate his friend, which, however, turned out to be forgeries.

In the Noricum affair Gratz was also indicted as a former foreign minister, but in the Noricum trial in 1993, like the former Federal Chancellor Fred Sinowatz, he was acquitted of suspicion of abuse of office and of contributing to the threat to neutrality.

International UN activity

Even after leaving Austrian politics, Gratz initially remained in his UN role as President of the International Conference on Cambodia ( ICK International Conference on Kampuchea ), with which he represented the interests of landmine victims for many years.

Retirement and death

Vienna Central Cemetery - honor grave of Leopold Gratz

Gratz remained a member of the presidium of the SPÖ Vienna until his death . As honorary chairman of the SPÖ, he only took part in party conferences as a guest of honor.

In 2005 Gratz resigned from the Association of Social Democratic Academics ( BSA ), of which he had been president from 1973 to 1990, after it had dealt with the "brown spots" of this organization in a historians' report. In his youth Gratz had been a student in a National Socialist elite school ( NAPOLA ), but was not incriminated in the report himself. Nevertheless, he gave the reason for leaving that the report was one-sided .

Leopold Gratz died on March 2, 2006 in the Rudolfstiftung Hospital in Vienna as a result of a heart attack. He was buried on March 16, 2006 as part of a state funeral right next to the Federal President's crypt in an honorary grave in the Vienna Central Cemetery (group 14C, grave no. 54B).

Honors

Orders and decorations (selection)

• 1976: Large gold medal on ribbon for services to the Republic of Austria
• 1979: Large gold medal with star for services to the State of Vienna
• 1979: Highest New Year's Eve Order (Grand Cross) from Pope John Paul II.

Other honors (selection)

• 1986: Honorary Senator of the Vienna University of Technology
• 1995: Honorary Citizen of the City of Vienna
• 2010: Leopold-Gratz-Platz : The new traffic island at the confluence of Reichsratsstrasse with Vienna's Schmerlingplatz (1st district, nestled between Parliament and the Palace of Justice ) was named after him. As a result, Gratz is remembered in the immediate vicinity of his places of work, the town hall, parliament and Ballhausplatz.
• 2011: Leopold Gratz Hymn to Vienna : New arrangement was premiered by the Vienna Prison Music and opera singer Franz Fahrleitner in the ballroom of the Vienna Prison .

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b c d} Parliamentary Correspondence No. 798 of November 8, 2004
2. ↑ ^{a b c d} Leopold Gratz. In: dasrotewien.at - Web dictionary of the Viennese social democracy. SPÖ Vienna (Ed.)
3. ↑ https://www.parlament.gv.at/PAKT/VHG/XIII/WD/WD_00001/imfname_221018.pdf
4. ↑ ^{a b c d e} City of Vienna: Leopold-Gratz-Platz officially opened by Mayor Häupl
5. ↑ History of Wien Holding ( Memento of the original dated November 2, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. 
6. ↑ Ironimus : Land der Berge, Land der Zwerge , new, expanded edition, Ueberreuter, Vienna 1986 and 1987, pp. 18, 19
7. ↑ Erhard Busek: Lebensbilder , Kremayr & Scheriau, Vienna 2014, ISBN 978-3-218-00931-7 , p. 140
8. ↑ Mittagsjournal from January 25, 1989 (the declaration of resignation as original sound and a political curriculum vitae with numerous audio documents)
9. ↑ ^{a b} Austrian Association of Municipalities: Former Mayor Gratz of Vienna has passed away ( Memento of the original from November 1, 2013 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. 
10. ↑ ^{a b c} ORF: Obituary Leopold Gratz, March 2, 2006
11. ↑ ORF: Convictions in Lucona- and Noricum affair, August 2, 2011
12. ↑ Gerald Freihofner: Farewell to a companion , in: Wiener Zeitung newspaper , March 20, 2006
13. ↑ Die Presse: Noricum's cannon brought death Die Presse
14. ^ Association of Social Democratic Academics, Intellectuals, Artists: Presidents
15. ↑ List of all decorations awarded by the Federal President for services to the Republic of Austria from 1952 (PDF file; 6.6 MB)
16. ↑ Justizwachmusik Wien, concert on November 10, 2011 ( memento of the original from December 25, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. 

Web links

Commons : Leopold Gratz  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

• Leopold Gratz on the website of the Austrian Parliament
• Entry on Leopold Gratz in the Austria Forum  (in the AEIOU Austria Lexicon )
• Leopold Gratz. In: dasrotewien.at - Web dictionary of the Viennese social democracy. SPÖ Vienna (Ed.)
• Literature by and about Leopold Gratz in the catalog of the German National Library
• Archive recordings with and about Leopold Gratz in the online archive of the Austrian Media Library (speeches, parliamentary debates, radio broadcasts)

predecessor	Office	successor
Felix Slavik	Mayor of Vienna 1973 - 1984	Helmut Zilk