Association of Independents

The Association of Independents ( VdU ), also the electoral party of the Independents ( WdU ), was an Austrian party in the Second Republic and the predecessor of today's FPÖ .

history

The VdU was founded as a party in 1949 by Herbert Alois Kraus and Viktor Reimann . The original founding day of the VdU (as an association) was March 25, 1949. The next day the constituent general assembly took place in Salzburg . Kraus became federal party chairman , federal chairmen were Josef Karoly , Karl Hartleb , Karl Winkler and Viktor Reimann.

While the ÖVP feared a split up of the bourgeois camp, the SPÖ , namely Interior Minister Oskar Helmer , supported the founding of the VdU, but also campaigned heavily for the former National Socialists (e.g. leaflets with a "question of conscience to every former National Socialist": " Anyone who has forgotten that we were national and socialist will go to the ÖVP today. "). The VdU saw itself as a political representative of former NSDAP members, expellees and returnees. In the second free National Council election (1949) after the Second World War , the VdU ran for the first time as the electoral party of the independents and achieved its best result with 11.7% of the votes, while it won votes from both major parties to the same extent - the calculation of a " Splitting the bourgeois camp ”, but also the campaign by the SPÖ and ÖVP to attract these voters, did not work out. The VdU achieved the best results in the Inn and Hausruck districts (in Wels over 30%), in Upper Carinthia and in Vorarlberg, thus in the traditional strongholds of the “ Third Camp ”.

In the subsequent election in 1953, the VdU formed an electoral alliance with the Action for Political Renewal , a right-wing conservative ÖVP split, and slightly lost votes. This loss of votes and internal quarrels between the party functionaries meant that the VdU did not develop into a people's party, but mainly became a basin for German national -minded forces.

In 1956 the Association of Independents was dissolved or absorbed by the newly founded Freedom Party of Austria ( FPÖ ).

literature

• Lothar Höbelt : From the fourth party to the third force. The history of the VdU. Leopold Stocker Verlag , Graz et al. 1999, ISBN 3-7020-0866-7 .
• Lother Höbelt (Ed.): Rise and fall of the VdU. Letters and minutes from private estates 1948–1955 . Böhlau Verlag, Vienna 2015, ISBN 978-3-205-79634-3 .
• Viktor Reimann : The Third Power in Austria. Molden, Vienna and others 1980, ISBN 3-217-00552-X .
• Margit Reiter: “National” versus “Liberal”? Political lines of conflict and struggles for interpretation in the Association of Independents (VdU) and in the FPÖ . In: Heuss-Forum 14/2017.

Web links

Commons : Association of Independents  - collection of images, videos and audio files

• Rolf Steininger : An SS brigade leader as FPÖ chief , short review on the rise and fall of the VdU. Letters and minutes from private estates 1948–1955 , in: faz.net , July 27, 2015
• Hans Werner Scheidl: The “Third Camp” with weaving defects. DiePresse.com, October 23, 2015, accessed on February 3, 2018 . 

Individual evidence

1. ↑ "Out of honest conviction". In: diepresse.com. January 23, 2009. Retrieved September 19, 2019 . 
2. ↑ See graphics and tables in Höbelt (1999), pp. 281–285.