Wolfgang Purtscheller

Wolfgang Purtscheller (born September 11, 1955 , † January 6, 2016 in Vienna ) was an Austrian journalist and publicist . He was the author of several books on right-wing extremism .

Life

Purtscheller originally came from Tyrol , moved to Vienna in the 1970s and later to Innsbruck . In the 1980s he was active in the squatter scene, in 1987 in Vienna-Mariahilf he witnessed an arson attack by right-wing extremists on a house occupied by the left and an eviction by the police.

Among other things, he wrote articles for Standard , Profil , News and Falter , and was also responsible for a documentary on right-wing extremists in Germany on ZDF . He also carried out education about right-wing extremism in schools on behalf of the Ministry of Education. Purtscheller worked with the Documentation Archive of the Austrian Resistance (DÖW) and contributed to the discovery of the neo-Nazi group VAPO . In addition, he was partly responsible for the fact that the occupied Ernst-Kirchweger-Haus could not be sold to an interested party with contacts in the right-wing extremist milieu.

Purtscheller stated that he was ill-treated by Viennese police officers on September 22, 1994 when he tried to intervene by plainclothes officers when a black asylum seeker was arrested. He is said to have been injured in the face, wrists and ligaments of the knee. The police said he had resisted the state authority . Amnesty International and the Special Rapporteur of the UN Human Rights Commission , Nigel S. Rodley , dealt with this case. An investigation into the officers was closed in 1997.

In 1995 he was awarded the Willy and Helga Sales-Verlon Prize of the DÖW for Austrian anti-fascist journalism. In retrospect, right-wing extremism researcher Andreas Peham from DÖW was considered to be "one of the most profound experts on the Austrian neo-Nazi scene". Even after the editor-in-chief of the weekly Falter , Florian Klenk , Purtscheller was “one of the most important observers of the right-wing extremist scene” in the 1990s.

Purtscheller, who u. a. lived in Brixen , was the father of two children. In the meantime he had to leave Austria (to Mexico City ) due to his investigative work in connection with the right-wing scene - also on the advice of the authorities . He was buried at the Sieveringen cemetery .

Fonts (selection)

• Open youth work: between commerce and niche . In: Austrian Institute for Youth Research (Ed.): Youth Report (1989) 4, pp. 3–29.
• Awakening of the Volkish. The brown network . Picus-Verlag, Vienna 1993, ISBN 3-85452-239-8 .
• "10 letters for 10 years". From VAPO to letter bomb terror . In: Brigitte Bailer , Wolfgang Neugebauer : Handbook of Austrian right-wing extremism . Edited by the Documentation Archive Foundation of Austrian Resistance , updated and extended. New edition, Verlag Deuticke, Vienna 1994, ISBN 3-216-30099-4 , p. 495 ff.
• (Ed.): The right in motion. Clergy and networking of the “new right” . Picus-Verlag, Vienna 1995, ISBN 3-85452-289-4 .
• (Ed.): The order they mean. “New rights” in Austria . 2nd Edition. Picus-Verlag, Vienna 1995, ISBN 3-85452-256-8 .
• with Markus Kemmerling, Václav Kopecky: Delikt: Antifaschismus. Letter bomb terror in Austria and criminalization campaigns from the right (= Antifa edition ). Elefanten Press, Berlin 1998, ISBN 3-88520-680-3 .

Filmography

• with Victor Grandits : The brown network. Right-wing extremists in Germany, film, ZDF, 1993.

literature

• Journalist and author Wolfgang Purtscheller has died . In: Der Standard , January 6, 2016.
• Andreas Peham : Wolfgang Purtscheller (1955–2016) . In: DÖW-Mitteilungen , volume 225, March 2016, p. 8.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Wolfgang Purtscheller (Ed.): The right in motion. Clergy and networking of the “new right” . Picus-Verlag, Vienna 1995, ISBN 3-85452-289-4 , p. 201.
2. ↑ Norbert Mappes-Niediek : Austria's rights are hunting uncomfortable journalists. Extremism expert suspected of being a bomb maker. In: Berliner Zeitung . September 30, 1997, accessed June 10, 2015 . 
3. ↑ amnesty international : Amnesty international: Annual Report 1996. Austria (Republic) , September 11, 1997 ( Memento of October 16, 2008 in the Internet Archive )
4. ↑ Report of the Special Rapporteur, Mr. Nigel S. Rodley, submitted pursuant to Commission on Human Rights resolution 1997/38 (E / CN.4 / 1998/38) , December 24, 1997
5. ↑ http://daccess-dds-ny.un.org/doc/UNDOC/GEN/G96/144/94/PDF/G9614494.pdf (link not available)
6. ↑ Invitation to the presentation of the Willy and Helga Sales-Verlon Prize of the Documentation Archive of the Austrian Resistance for Austrian and Anti-Fascist Journalism 1998 to Anton Pelinka (pdf; 489 kB)
7. ^ Andreas Peham : Wolfgang Purtscheller (1955-2016) . In: DÖW-Mitteilungen , volume 225, March 2016, p. 8.
8. ↑ Florian Klenk : The death of Wolfgang Purtscheller has been resolved. No external fault . In: Falter , No. 03/2016 of January 20, 2016, p. 19.
9. ↑ Markus Götte: "We are packing our suitcases again" (Interview with Heribert Schiedel ). In: the daily newspaper , December 13, 1995, p. 3.
10. ^ Wolfgang Purtscheller grave site , Vienna, Sieveringer Friedhof, Group 35, No. 9.