Thomas Prinzhorn

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Thomas Prinzhorn (born March 5, 1943 in Vienna ) is an Austrian industrialist and politician ( FPÖ and BZÖ ). He was first second president of the National Council from 2000 to 2002 and then third president of the National Council until 2006 .

Life

Thomas Prinzhorn attended the private middle school Bad Aussee , studied mechanical engineering at the Technical University in Vienna and graduated in 1967 with the academic degree of Diplomingenieur . In Harvard studied Prinzhorn also economy, concluding there he made in 1973. He subsequently established himself with the company of his father Harald, the W. Hamburger AG and Mosburger AG, as the paper industrialist. Prinzhorn's companies are combined in the Prinzhorn Group .

As long-time chairman of the board of various companies in the paper industry, he came into politics through the Federation of Industry . In 1978 he became a member of the board of the Association of Austrian Industrialists, from 1975 to 1988 he was chairman of the committee for educational and social policy, from 1988 to 1993 chairman of the committee for economic policy and from 1991 to 1993 president of the Viennese industrial association. In 1996 he was elected to the National Council for the first time, to which he was a member until 1998. At this point, after almost three years on the National Council, he said goodbye to all functions. The reason at the time: massive differences of opinion regarding the Haider course . At the time, Prinzhorn played a key role in drawing up a restructuring concept for the Lower Austrian FPÖ , which had got into considerable financial difficulties due to the Rosenstingl cause . Prinzhorn only became a member of the FPÖ in 1998.

For the 1999 National Council election , he was surprisingly named the top candidate for the Freedom Party. Originally intended for a ministerial office, it was rejected by Federal President Thomas Klestil in the course of the formation of the government in 2000 because of xenophobic statements in the election campaign that were perceived as particularly tasteless (foreigners are preferred by the authorities to Austrians and are given fertility drugs free of charge). Instead, at the suggestion of the FPÖ, which was the second strongest party at the time, he was elected second president of the National Council, which, however, allowed him less room for maneuver on the day-to-day politics. In autumn 2002 it looked as if he should play a bigger role again in the party, because in September 2002 he was appointed deputy party leader in Linz. After the early National Council elections in 2002 , the FPÖ fell back to third place, and as a result, Prinzhorn was now the third President of the National Council. At this point in time, the entrepreneur and economic spokesman for the Freedom Party was primarily seen as a support to the government team around the former Vice Chancellor and FPÖ leader Susanne Riess-Passer . The relationship with Carinthia's governor Jörg Haider, on the other hand, had cooled noticeably in the meantime. In the course of the intra-party turmoil and his exit from the FPÖ in 2005, he was a member of the FPÖ until April 27, 2006, and then for the BZÖ until October 29, 2006. He held the office of Third President of the National Council until October 30th.

Private

In 1987 Prinzhorn adopted his biological son Karl Philipp Ernst Ferdinand Alwig Kilian Schwarzenberg, son of Therese Schwarzenberg (née Hardegg ), who was married to Karel Schwarzenberg .

With a fortune of 1.3 billion euros, Prinzhorn is the second richest politician in Austria after Frank Stronach and the ninth richest Austrian (as of 2017).

Awards

Individual evidence

  1. André Heller "with the bad blood". In: Der Standard , April 29, 2005; derstandard.at, December 29, 2005
  2. Lothar Höbelt : Rise and Fall of the VdU: Letters and Protocols from Private Estates 1948-1955. Böhlau, 2015, p. 66 ( online in the Google book search)
  3. Vladimír Votýpka: Böhmischer Adel: Familiengeschichten , Böhlau 2007, p. 362 ( online in the Google book search)
  4. "I find my husband very attractive, absolutely" - Therese Schwarzenberg. In: kurier.at , January 19, 2013, accessed on May 12, 2020.
  5. ^ "Forbes" list: The nine Austro billionaires. In: diepresse.com , March 22, 2017, accessed on May 12, 2020.
  6. List of all decorations awarded by the Federal President for services to the Republic of Austria from 1952 (PDF; 6.6 MB)

Web links