Yearbook 2006
Austria. The fate of 18-year-old Natascha Kampusch shook
the Vienna suburb of Strasshof in August, and her history
echoed worldwide. Kampusch, as a 10-year-old, had been
abducted on his way to school and had disappeared ever
since. It turned out that she had been held captive by a
man, Wolfgang Priklopil, who mostly kept her locked in a
windowless space under her garage in Strasshof. Priklopil,
44, committed suicide by throwing himself in front of a
train when Kampusch managed to escape.
The October parliamentary elections led somewhat
unexpectedly to a major setback for the ruling Conservative
OVP, which lost eight percentage points and received only
34% of the vote. The Social Democratic SPÖ also backed
slightly, but was the biggest with 35%. The environmental
party The Greens received 21% as did the "freedom", FPÖ. The
xenophobic FPÖ thus strengthened its position somewhat
despite the fact that the party split last year when founder
Jörg Haider broke away. According to
CountryAAH, Haider's newly formed party BZÖ
managed with barely a margin of four percent. Haider himself
resigned earlier this year from the party leader post in BZÖ
and was succeeded by Peter Westentaler. Social Democrats
leader Alfred Gusenbauer was commissioned to form a
government, and strongly pointed out that Austria would
again have a government consisting of a "large coalition"
between SPÖ and FPÖ. But the government negotiations dragged
on in time, i.a. because of the Social Democrats' demand for
a review of the purchase of eighteen Eurofighter fighter
aircraft. The deal, which was decided four years earlier,
was surrounded by rumors of bribery.
In October of that year, a national assembly proclaimed
the German part of Austria as an independent state and in
November, after the emperor's abdication, the republic was
proclaimed. The Social Democrat and Austrian Marxist Karl
Renner became leader of the first coalition government
consisting of the largest parties.
In the midst of the economic chaos and famine that were
reminiscences of the war, the Austrian social democracy
decided to fight both social distress and partly against the
Communists, who had drawn inspiration from the Soviet
revolutions in Russia 1917 and Hungary 1919.
Once the political and social order in Vienna had been
re-established, it had to be noted that the unrest was
merely diverted to the central parts of the country, where
some provinces had intentions of secession. The 1920
Constitution recognized a broad federation in which the
capital was ruled by the Socialists and the country by the
Conservatives.
The new constitution introduced the right to vote for
women, which came into force from the birth of the republic
in 1918.
Social democracy had an absolute majority in Vienna,
where a third of the population lived; the Christian-social
could also count on a secure hinterland among the peasants
and the conservatives, while German nationalism was
nourished by the dissatisfaction and had its supporters
among the middle class in the cities.
The League of Nations supported the economic recovery in
post-war Austria, on the condition that the country's
independence be maintained. The rationale was that they
wanted to avoid a merger with Germany. In 1922, the
government received a loan to stabilize the country's
economic situation.
The depression of 1929 brought the Austrian economy to
the brink of collapse. The government tried to make an
agreement on the establishment of a customs union with
Germany, which was, however, strongly rejected by the other
European countries. Along with the rise of Nazism, signals
from the German nationalists in Austria testified to
increased political strength.
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