Stefan Petzner

Stefan Petzner (2008)

Stefan Petzner (born January 17, 1981 in Tamsweg , Land Salzburg ) is a former Austrian politician ( Alliance Future Austria ; BZÖ). From 2008 to October 1, 2013 he was a member of the BZÖ in the National Council and its deputy club chairman . Today Petzner works as a book author on populism and as a PR consultant.

Life

Petzner grew up on his parents' farm in the Styrian-Carinthian border region in Laßnitz near Murau and came from a political family. His great-great-grandfather, economist Friedrich Kocher , was a member of the Constituent National Assembly from 1919 to 1920, the first freely elected parliament in the history of the Republic of Austria: Among other things, he helped to decide on the Austrian Federal Constitution, which is still valid today. His father, Hubert Petzner, was committed to the FPÖ as a councilor and local party chairman for decades. After graduating from high school in 1999, Stefan Petzner studied journalism at the University of Klagenfurt .

Political career

At the university he appeared as a spokesman for the - non-mandated - ring of freedom students . In 2004 he was hired by the then Carinthian Governor Jörg Haider , at that time still the Freedom Party of Austria (FPÖ), as press spokesman and spin doctor and is therefore counted as part of the so-called Buberlpartie . After Haider founded the BZÖ in 2005, Petzner was the managing state party chairman of the BZÖ Carinthia from 2006 to 2008 and from 2009 to 2011, from June 2006 to October 2008 also deputy federal party chairman of the BZÖ and from 2008 to 2010 with a short interruption General Secretary of the BZÖ .

As BZÖ election campaign manager, Petzner successfully led the party's election campaigns in the 2006 National Council elections for the federal state of Carinthia, the 2008 national council elections nationwide, the 2009 nationwide EU elections and the Carinthian state elections in 2009 and 2013. He was also responsible for numerous campaigns for the BZÖ, which repeatedly caused heated public debates and political controversies and sometimes even occupied the judiciary. Petzner was reported by the Carinthian Greens in May 2007 because of his slogan “Do you want a final solution to the place-name sign?” On suspicion of incitement . In July 2008, the then Deputy Governor of Carinthia, Gabriele Schaunig-Kandut , resigned as a result of the ongoing campaign against her person. Petzner had previously caricatured her as a “red quack duck” and attacked her family in advertisements. In October 2011, an animated commercial by Petzner sparked protests by the Roman Catholic Church. In 2013, cinema operators refused to broadcast a cinema commercial produced by Petzner, in which then incumbent Carinthian state politicians were equated with dictators such as Erich Honecker , Slobodan Milošević or Nicolae Ceaușescu , as this commercial was "hateful and inhuman". As a result, Petzner posted the spot on YouTube , where it received over 50,000 hits within a few hours.

After Haider's accidental death, Petzner was unanimously nominated as the new party leader by the BZÖ's executive committee on October 12, 2008. He stood up for the independence of his party and against unification with the FPÖ . His first goal was to prevent the red-black coalition from being reissued in Austria.

Petzner was initially also considered the sole candidate for the position of club chairman in the National Council. However, after emotional statements and interviews in which he had referred to Jörg Haider as his “man of life ” after his death , Petzner came under internal party criticism. On October 22, 2008, Josef Bucher was unanimously elected as club chairman. After the vote, Petzner said that he himself had proposed Bucher. Petzner was elected one of Bucher's five deputies at the meeting. On November 19, 2008, he resigned as managing director of the BZÖ, his successor until the convention in spring 2009 was Herbert Scheibner . Petzner led the state election campaign in Carinthia in 2009 , in which the BZÖ was able to clearly defend its top position.

As a result of the split off from members of the "Freedom in Carinthia", a founding convention took place on January 30, 2010, at which the BZÖ Carinthia was re-established. Josef Bucher was elected as regional chairman and Stefan Petzner unanimously as managing country chairman.

On April 8, 2010, Petzner resigned as General Secretary of the BZÖ, because he wanted to concentrate on his task as the executive regional party chairman of the BZÖ Carinthia. On March 9, 2011, he committed himself to a payment of 38,000 euros as part of a diversion . In 2007, in his role as spokesman for the former Governor of Carinthia, Jörg Haider, he illegally published the contents of a negative decision on the granting of Austrian citizenship and thus violated official secrecy.

On March 25, 2011, Petzner resigned from the post of executive Carinthian BZÖ regional party leader. The trigger was his behavior in traffic after he was caught twice driving a motor vehicle without authorization in the spring of 2011 . His driver's license was revoked in December 2010 because of a massive speeding violation. Petzner kept his seat in the National Council, and Sigisbert Dolinschek was appointed as the new managing BZÖ state party chairman .

After Petzner, together with Ewald Stadler, demanded that regional chairman Josef Bucher withdraw , both were expelled from the BZÖ on October 1, 2013 because of “behavior that was harmful to the party”. A day later, Bucher withdrew from politics.

PR consulting agency

In autumn 2014, Petzner and partners founded a PR consulting agency that specializes in advising customers in political crises.

Brochure Affair

On November 5, 2013, the public prosecutor's office for business and corruption brought charges against Petzner, Uwe Scheuch , Harald Dobernig and Gerhard Dörfler in the so-called “brochure affair” of infidelity . The defendants were accused of using an advertising brochure for Carinthia as a business location in a slightly modified form as the BZÖ's election brochure in the 2009 state election campaign. According to the indictment, the damage is said to have amounted to 219,000 euros. In 2014 the charges were dismissed by the Graz Higher Regional Court after appeals from the defense lawyers. However, after obtaining an opinion from the expert Georg Jeitler, the public prosecutor renewed the indictment, as announced on November 2, 2015. This became final, as this time it was not the indictment but the appeals of the accused who were rejected by the Graz Higher Regional Court. In the process, which began on January 17, 2017 at the Klagenfurt Regional Court, Petzner pleaded guilty. He was sentenced to ten months' conditional imprisonment on March 16, 2017. After the verdict was pronounced, he waived his right to appeal because he saw the verdict as a "relatively mild sentence". The procedure was "positive for political hygiene in this country". A hearing before the Supreme Court took place on April 19, 2018 with regard to the entitlement to private parties. The appeal on the private law claims was followed and the private parties referred to the civil law route with their claims.

racism

In 2020, in a television interview, Petzner described “the Chinese in general” as “dirty, dirty people” who not only have “no manners” but also “no culture”. He referred to Covid-19 several times as the "slit-eye virus" and called for "resistance to the yellow danger ". The standard compared the choice of words with the "rhetorical arsenal of German imperialism " (see Huns speech ).

Others

In a vote on the Internet, the expression “Lebensmensch” was chosen as the Austrian word of the year 2008. As an author, Petzner landed in autumn 2015 with the biographical political non-fiction book Haiders Schatten - At the side of Europe's most successful right-wing populist, a bestseller and placed first on the book sales charts.

The main character in David Schalko's novel White Night is modeled on Stefan Petzner. Petzner has sued the Czernin Verlag , in which the book was published in 2009, for alleged violation of his personal rights. Petzner failed in the first instance with his lawsuit against the publisher. The Vienna Regional Criminal Court rated the book as a "fictional fairy tale". Petzner appealed against it, but failed in the second instance at the Higher Regional Court of Vienna.

In 2016 he was a guest on the ORF programs Wir sind Kaiser and Willkommen Österreich .

From March 15, 2019 to May 3, 2019, he was a candidate for the twelfth season of the ORF dance show Dancing Stars . His dance partner was the professional dancer Roswitha Wieland . The couple reached fourth place in the semifinals.

Publications

• Haider's shadow: At the side of Europe's most successful right-wing populist . edition a, Vienna 2015, ISBN 978-3-99001-144-7 .
• Trump to go: A little explanation of how populism works , edition a, Vienna 2017, ISBN 978-3-99001-210-9 .

literature

• Lionel Baland: Jörg Haider le phénix: Histoire de la famille politique libérale et national en Autriche, Paris, Éditions des Cimes, coll. «Politica» 2012, ISBN 979-10-91058-02-5 .

Web links

Commons : Stefan Petzner  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

• Stefan Petzner on the website of the Austrian Parliament
• Biography , September 13, 2006, on ORF .at

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Stefan Petzner, biography. Retrieved July 24, 2018 . 
2. ↑ BZÖ excludes Petzner and Korak. kaernten.orf.at, October 1, 2013, accessed on October 1, 2013 . 
3. ^ Friedrich Kocher on the side of the parliament
4. ^ Petzner on the pages of Parliament
5. ↑ Kleine Zeitung : Strutz and Petzner: Your Career ( Memento from September 21, 2013 in the Internet Archive ), February 19, 2012
6. ↑ [1]
7. ↑ [2]
8. ↑ SPÖ boss as "red quack duck". In: oesterreich.orf.at. August 17, 2006. Retrieved November 21, 2018 . 
9. ↑ [3]
10. ↑ [4]
11. ^ Jörg Haider's widower - The tears of Stefan Petzner. In: the daily newspaper of October 25, 2008
12. ^ BZÖ: Josef Bucher elected club chairman. In: www.orf.at of October 22, 2008
13. ^ BZÖ: Petzner resigns as BZÖ boss. ( Memento of the original from December 6, 2008 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. In: www.orf.at from November 19, 2008 
14. ↑ ots.at: Bucher elected BZÖ regional chairman with 99.6 percent. January 30, 2010.
15. ↑ resignation Petzners by the Office of the Secretary
16. ↑ Stefan Petzner burdens Jörg Haider heavily In: Die Presse March 9, 2011 ORF : Petzner trial ends with diversion , March 9, 2011
17. ^ BZÖ boss Bucher confirms Petzner's transfer. In: oesterreich.orf.at. March 25, 2011, accessed November 2, 2018 . 
18. ↑ Petzner replaced as executive BZÖ regional party leader. In: derStandard.at. March 25, 2011, accessed December 7, 2017 . 
19. ↑ Stefan Petzner excluded from BZÖ . In: The Standard of October 1, 2013
20. ↑ Petzner enters the PR business , Kurier article from September 30, 2014
21. ↑ Infidelity and bribery: charges against ex-FPK head. In: orf.at. November 5, 2013, accessed November 5, 2013 . 
22. ^ BZÖ election brochure: Further investigations are necessary . August 26, 2014. Retrieved August 24, 2015.
23. ↑ Wolfgang Rössler: This report supports charges against Carinthian BZÖ politicians | NZZ . In: Neue Zürcher Zeitung . May 19, 2017, ISSN  0376-6829 ( nzz.ch [accessed on August 6, 2018]).
24. ^ Charges against the BZÖ election campaign brochure. In: orf.at. November 2, 2015, accessed November 2, 2015 . 
25. ^ BZÖ election brochure: Fixed charges . May 24, 2016. Retrieved May 25, 2016.
26. ↑ Trial against Scheuch, Dörfler and Dobernig starts on January 17th . December 6, 2016. Retrieved December 7, 2016.
27. ^ Election brochure: Petzner makes confession . January 18, 2017. Retrieved March 16, 2017.
28. ↑ Four convictions in the BZÖ process . March 16, 2017. Retrieved March 16, 2017.
29. ↑ Appointment notice: Public hearing in the criminal case against Stefan P, Gerhard D, DI Uwe S and Mag. Harald D. (No longer available online.) In: Supreme Court. March 23, 2018, archived from the original on March 28, 2018 ; accessed on March 28, 2018 . 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.  
30. ^ OGH confirms the convictions against Gerhard D. and DI Uwe S. In: OGH. April 19, 2018. Retrieved April 20, 2018 . 
31. ↑ Bernhard Weidinger: “Yellow Danger”: Hatred with a future and a past Der Standard , June 5, 2020.
32. ^ "Lebensmensch" Haider - word of the year. ( Memento from October 5, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) In: Basler Zeitung from December 11, 2008
33. ↑ [5]
34. ↑ A black Karl May novel. In: Der Standard from September 24, 2009
35. ↑ profile No. 3, volume 41, January 18, 2010, p. 15
36. ^ Ralf Leonhard: Litigation in Austria - Petzner does not want to be a character in a novel. In: the daily newspaper of February 1, 2010
37. ↑ Report by the daily newspaper Die Presse on the Petzner vs. Czernin publishing house. ( Memento from February 23, 2010 in the Internet Archive )
38. ↑ Kleine Zeitung: Petzner failed again with lawsuit against Schalko ( Memento from October 4, 2013 in the Internet Archive )
39. ↑ oe24.at: shouting match between Petzner and emperors . Report dated December 21, 2015, accessed April 8, 2019.
40. ^ Diepresse.com: "Willkommen Österreich": Criticism of dealing with Stefan Petzner . Report dated September 28, 2016, accessed April 8, 2019.
41. ↑ End of the line semifinals: Out for Stefan Petzner - Dancing Stars 2019. May 3, 2019, accessed on May 5, 2019 .