Norbert Steger

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Norbert Steger (born March 6, 1944 in Vienna ) is an Austrian lawyer and former politician ( FPÖ ). Steger was Federal Party Chairman of the FPÖ from 1980 to 1986 and Austrian Vice Chancellor and Minister of Commerce from 1983 to 1987 . He has represented the FPÖ on the ORF Board of Trustees since 2010, and has been Chairman of the Board of Trustees since May 2018.

Political career

Norbert Steger began his political career in 1965, at that time active in the university choir Barden zu Wien ( DS ), as deputy chairman of the Ring of Freedom Students (RFS). Five years later he was a founding member of the “ Atterseekreis ” within the FPÖ. The aim of this association was to give the liberal wing within the Freedom Party more weight than the German national wing .

In 1977 Steger became chairman of the FPÖ Vienna, in 1980 federal party chairman and vice-president of the Liberal International . As the successor to the mayor of Graz , Alexander Götz, at the top of the party, Steger tried to get the FPÖ out of the right-hand corner and make it politically acceptable. He succeeded in 1983: after Chancellor Bruno Kreisky ( SPÖ ) resigned due to the loss of the absolute majority, the SPÖ started coalition negotiations with the FPÖ, which with 4.98 percent - its weakest result ever - just remained in the National Council .

Government member

This led to the formation of Austria's first red-blue coalition and the FPÖ's first participation in government in the history of the Second Republic . Steger became Vice Chancellor under the new Chancellor Fred Sinowatz ; his party provided three ministers in the Sinowatz government .

Under Norbert Steger - who belonged to the economically liberal wing - the FPÖ tried to get rid of the “basement Nazis” (quote from Steger), to get a more liberal image and thus to become attractive to new groups of voters.

On September 13, 1986, Jörg Haider , Steger's internal party competitor and at that time the FPÖ regional party chairman of Carinthia , took over the federal chairmanship in a voting at the party congress in Innsbruck . Chancellor Franz Vranitzky then terminated the coalition. New elections were held on November 23, 1986 , in which the Freedom Party improved by 4.7 percent to 9.7 percent. The socialists, who lost 4.5 percentage points, and the ÖVP , which lost 1.9 percentage points, then formed a grand coalition under Chancellor Franz Vranitzky, who had replaced Sinowatz on June 16 after Sinowatz had been elected after the election of the ÖVP candidate Kurt Waldheim had resigned as Federal President.

His mandate ended on December 16, and his successors as ministers and vice-chancellors were sworn in on January 21. Nine and a half months later, his second daughter Petra was born.

Further activity

After the end of his political career, Steger continued to work as a lawyer until he retired. His law firm specialized in corporate law (in particular company formation), real estate and real estate law, insolvency law , corporate restructuring, international law and business law .

Steger has been a member of the ORF Board of Trustees for the FPÖ since 2010 . In May 2018 he was elected Chairman of the Board of Trustees. In the election by the 35-member ORF supervisory body, he received 25 votes in favor and nine votes against. One member abstained.

In April 2018 , when he criticized the ORF's report on the Hungarian parliamentary election, which was critical of Orbán, his statement in the "Salzburger Nachrichten" caused controversy : "We will cut a third of the foreign correspondents if they do not behave correctly." the comment that he had set up “threatening sceneries” against the ORF editorial team, said Steger after his election as chairman of the ORF foundation board, he thought “it has already worked”. He wanted to become the “consensus chairman”, but trying to make a “modern, new ORF”. At the same time as the Ibiza affair in May 2019, which ended with the FPÖ being released from government responsibility, Steger announced that he would suspend his work on ORF for several months for health reasons.

Others

According to Norbert Steger, his father Karl Mittendorf was “an upright South Tyrolean” who had been adopted by a Jewish banker named Steger and who “never would have been a party member”. That turned out to be wrong: Karl Steger joined the NSDAP in 1932 (membership number 903.441). Norbert Steger claimed in interviews that his father was locked up in a concentration camp, but that it was probably a Wehrmacht prison. With reference to the alleged imprisonment of his father in Mauthausen concentration camp , Steger claimed that it would not have been so bad if the blast furnace for cremation was only installed after the war.

In an interview with the Internet television broadcaster OE24 , he stated that his grandmother had converted to Judaism and was murdered in the Theresienstadt concentration camp after the National Socialist seizure of power .

His daughter Petra Steger (* 1987) has been a member of the National Council for the FPÖ since 2013.

swell

  1. ↑ ORF Board of Trustees are complete , article in the Wiener Zeitung from April 6, 2010
  2. ↑ derStandard.at: FPÖ-Steger is chairman of the ORF foundation board . Article dated May 17, 2018, accessed May 17, 2018.
  3. ↑ Controversial FPÖ man Steger becomes the highest ORF supervisor. Retrieved May 17, 2018 .
  4. ^ FPÖ attacks ORF correspondents - dispute over reporting on Hungary. Retrieved April 16, 2018 .
  5. ↑ Steger: "Drohkulisse" against ORF editors "has already worked." Kurier.at, May 17, 2018, accessed on June 3, 2018
  6. ↑ Norbert Steger is temporarily relinquishing the chairmanship of the ORF Board of Trustees - derStandard.at. Retrieved on May 24, 2019 (Austrian German).
  7. ↑ : Norbert Steger . In: Spiegel Online . tape April 15 , 1984 ( spiegel.de [accessed April 24, 2019]).
  8. ↑ PERSONNEL: Norbert Steger . In: Spiegel Online . tape 46 , November 14, 1983 ( spiegel.de [accessed April 24, 2019]).
  9. ↑ philipp.wilhelmer: Chairman of the Board of Trustees Steger on Armin Wolf's "Striker" comparison: "Pervers". Retrieved April 24, 2019 .
  10. ↑ Erika Wantoch: Stegers ancestors . In: Profil , No. 24, June 12, 1984, p. 26.
  11. ↑ Wolfgang Pensold, Silvia Nadjivan, Eva Tamara Asboth: Common history ?: A century of Serbian and Austrian myths . StudienVerlag, 2015, ISBN 978-3-7065-5753-5 ( google.at [accessed April 24, 2019]).
  12. ↑ Niki Fellner: Fellner! Live: Norbert Steger on ORF. Retrieved April 27, 2019 .

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Steger, Norbert
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Austrian lawyer and politician (FPÖ), member of the National Council
DATE OF BIRTH March 6, 1944
PLACE OF BIRTH Vienna