United Greens of Austria

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United Greens Austria ( VGÖ ) was founded in 1982 and was one of the two predecessor organizations of the Greens in Austria .

history

The VGÖ was an ecological movement that referred positively to Konrad Lorenz and was founded in the wake of the 1978 referendum on the use of atomic energy in Austria and numerous citizens' initiatives. The VGÖ were the most important collecting movement of the bourgeois-conservative environmental protection camp. Alois Englander , who previously worked in the ARGE Nein zu Zwentendorf , created a concept for a green platform for celebrities with the motto "Small is beautiful" in the summer of 1981. Englander tried to win over Konrad Lorenz, Otto Koenig , Friedensreich Hundertwasser and the geologist Alexander Tollmann as chairmen . Englander finally registered the VGÖ as a party on March 9, 1982, and Alexander Tollmann took over the party leadership in the summer of 1982. Inhomogeneity in terms of content - social democratic, liberal, conservative and right-wing tendencies - in connection with Tollmann's controversial leadership style, however, led to splits early on ( VÖGA - United Austrian Green Alternative , Green Democrats ), which united the formula of "ecological humanism" as the programmatic basis of the party too different people.

Even Herbert Fux and Josef Buchner were in 1982 in the field of VGÖ. At the constituent federal assembly in Linz on February 19, 1983, Fux was elected second chairman, Buchner was elected his deputy. After talks with the Alternative List of Austria (ALÖ) about a joint candidacy in the National Council elections failed due to Tollmann's negative attitude, the VGÖ entered the National Council elections as the Tollmann List alone. Opinion polls already saw the VGÖ in parliament with a high degree of probability when the magazine Basta revealed Herbert Fux's supposedly dissolute sex life in a largely fabricated report. Tollmann took the opportunity to exclude the internal party opponent from the party, Englander anticipated this step by voluntarily resigning. As a result, more and more far-right activists found shelter in the VGÖ. Weakened by the events, the VGÖ clearly failed to get into the National Council with 93,798 votes (1.93%). Tollmann had to resign and was replaced by Josef Buchner as federal chairman. Buchner managed to consolidate the party and introduced a new program based on the eco-social market economy. However, alliances with the ALÖ in various federal states did not lead to success. Only in Vorarlberg did the united green movement in October 1984 under Kaspanaze Simma achieve a surprising success with 13% of the vote. In 1986, too, the ALÖ entered the state parliament in Styria . However, it was not possible to move back in.

Later, the VGÖ failed to enter the National Council if they stood alone . In 1990 92,277 votes and around 2% were obtained, in 1994 5,776 votes and around 0.1%. Only together with other groups of the Hainburg unification talks about a common (electoral) party of the green and alternative camp, such as the majority of the ALÖ, was the move in 1986, whereby two mandates were held by VGÖ men (the then chairman Josef Buchner and Herbert Fux ), the third mandate for the VGÖ was narrowly missed due to the electoral law at the time. The concluded agreement also included the right to a third of the mandates and the funds for the VGÖ as well as its organizational independence. When the now-founded Green Alternative did not reach the 5% hurdle with 4.4% in the state and municipal council elections in Vienna in 1987 (with survey values ​​of around 8%), the cooperation with the VGÖ, which with an independent candidacy 0, 84% had been canceled. At this point in time, many VGÖ members had already switched to the green alternative or were now changing, which led to another shift to the right of the VGÖ. Due to the rapid rise of the FPÖ under Haider from autumn 1986, many of these German nationalists in the VGÖ switched to the FPÖ, including the VGÖ regional chairwoman of Lower Austria, Ilse Hans, who was elected to the state parliament in 1988 for the FPÖ. The VGÖ thus commuted back to the political center, and some activists who had resigned because of the right-wing extremist tendencies returned to the VGÖ. The most important of these was the newspaper publisher Günter Ofner , one of the leaders of the Green Democrats , who had already been the head of the organization in 1983. The surprisingly good result in the 1990 National Council election (2%), the top candidates were Josef Buchner and the prominent judge Marianne Geyer, was a consequence of this middle course. In Upper Austria and Vienna, the VGÖ missed the decisive basic mandate, and thus the parliamentary entry, by only about 5000 votes each. Despite all the setbacks, the VGÖ received around 30% of the green vote potential. Despite successes in the following state elections (1991: Upper Austria: 2.6%, Vienna: 1.8%, 1993: Lower Austria: 1.2% - each of the best election results in their history), the VGÖ's 1993 amendment to the National Council took every chance. Instead of the hurdle of achieving a basic mandate, you now had to get 4% nationwide - that would have meant doubling the votes. That is why cooperation talks were started in 1993 with both the Green Alternative and the newly created Liberal Forum , and long-term cooperation with the Green Alternative was agreed in October 1993 . This was ready because its own future prospects were not particularly promising (some polls saw the party below the four percent hurdle ). After FPÖ chairman Haider revealed that one of the VGÖ general secretaries, Wolfgang Pelikan, had also called on him for cooperation, the Green Alternative terminated the agreement. Other VGÖ exponents switched to the Green Alternative (most prominently Georg Willi in Tyrol ), the more moderate VGÖ regional organizations Vienna, regional chairman Günter Ofner, and Lower Austria , regional chairman of the chemist Rudolf Dunkl, split up as the civil green of Austria (BGÖ ) from. The long-time federal chairman Josef Buchner resigned. With the ex-soccer coach Adi Pinter as the top candidate, the remnants of the VGÖ only scored 0.1% in the 1994 National Council election and sank into political insignificance. For this expensive election campaign, she was also heavily in debt, so that two years later she had to go bankrupt and was officially dissolved.

At the university level , the United Green Austrian Students were represented in the Central Committee of the Austrian Students' Union from 1983 to 1995; the best result was achieved in 1989 with 6.5%. At the local level, the VGÖ succeeded in moving into municipal representative bodies, for example in Klagenfurt (around 10%), in Linz with 3 mandates, in Innsbruck, Traun, Leonding, etc. and in six district representatives in Vienna with one mandate each in 1991. International gave There were loose contacts with the Ecological Democratic Party (ÖDP) in Germany.

Election results

National Council elections

literature

  • Heinz-Siegfried Strelow: Rise and fall of conservative environmental parties in Europe , in: Naturkonservativ heute. Yearbook of the Herbert Gruhl Society eV 2006 . Essen: Verl. Die Blaue Eule, 2006, pp. 98–112; (Excerpt, under: Naturkonservativ.de ).
  • Othmar Pruckner: A Brief History of the Greens. Events - personalities - dates. Vienna 2005, ISBN 3-8000-7124-X .
  • Günter Ofner: "Green shades, the history of the founding phase of the VGÖ, a factual report". Typescript 1984.
  • Franz Schandl, Gerhard Schattauer: "The Greens in Austria, Development and Consolidation". Promedia Verlag 1995.

Individual evidence

  1. ^ As " Carinthian Greens - VGÖ - VÖGA - Independent Municipal Councils ", only the Carinthian VGÖ competed, the rest of the VGÖ supported the Freda Meissner-Blau list