![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() Indeed, the Waldheim affair may be properly said to date from March 3, 1986, when the Austrian weekly Profil published documents first revealing details of Waldheim's unknown past. The relatively uneventful early phase of the campaign, in which Kurt Waldheim was the clear front runner, ended abruptly in March 1986. Two minor candidates, Freda Meissner-Blau from the Greens, and Otto Scrinzi, former fpö member of parliament and representative of the (German) nationalist far right in Austria, also entered the race. One month later, the spö presented Kurt Steyrer, then minister for health and environment, as its standard bearer. The spö, also conscious of Waldheim's electoral appeal, had not ruled out a joint candidacy until confronted with the övp's fait accompli. The övp hoped to draw maximum political advantage from Waldheim's candidacy for itself, without identifying him so closely with it that it would endanger either Waldheim's election as president or the hoped-for attendant political "turn." Then chairman Alois Mock pushed through Waldheim's nomination by the övp as a "non-partisan" candidate in March 1985, more than a year prior to the elections, very early by traditional Austrian standards. Waldheim's international prominence and personal ambition left few in doubt that he would run for the Austrian presidency in 1986, but it was unclear whether as the candidate of the övp, or as a consensus candidate of the two major parties. His bid for a third term, however, failed, and in March 1982, Waldheim, described by one journalist as "the most successful Austrian diplomat since Metternich," finally came home to Austria. ![]() On December 22, 1971, Waldheim was elected secretary general of the un, and reelected to a second term in 1976. Though he made a very respectable showing, Waldheim lost to the incumbent Socialist Franz Jonas and afterward returned to his post in New York. In January 1971, he was again in Vienna temporarily to run as the övp candidate for president, which in Austria is a largely ceremonial post for which elections are held every six years. Shortly thereafter, Waldheim returned to New York as Austria's ambassador to the un. His term as minister ended in March 1970, when the Socialists (spö) under Bruno Kreisky won the parliamentary elections. Taken on as secretary to Foreign Minister Karl Gruber in 1946, Waldheim served in various posts abroad and in Vienna, including two stints as Austrian representative to the un, and was appointed foreign minister in January 1968 by Chancellor Josef Klaus (övp). Kurt Waldheim had enjoyed an exceptionally successful career in the Austrian foreign service after World War ii. The central assumption of this "Feindbild" was that Waldheim and Austria were under attack from an international Jewish conspiracy. Employing a coded idiom more appropriate to "post-Auschwitz" political debate, the Waldheim camp (principally the Christian Democratic Austrian People's Party, which had nominated him) helped construct a hostile image of Jews ("Feindbild") which served both to deflect criticism of Waldheim's credibility and to explain the international "campaign" against him. The affair not only focused international attention on Waldheim personally, but also raised broader questions relating to the history of antisemitism in Austria and the role Austrians played in the Nazi dictatorship and the "Final Solution." A concomitant of the Waldheim affair was the reemergence in Austrian political culture of the appeal to antisemitic prejudice for political ends. The "Waldheim Affair" is the term conventionally applied to the controversy surrounding the disclosure of the previously unknown past of Kurt Waldheim, former secretary general of the United Nations, which arose during his campaign for the Austrian presidency in 1986. ![]()
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