politicians-from-austria

"Der Historie liegt etwas transzendentes zugrunde, stellt diese doch die Verbindung zu dem Menschentum unser Aller Anbeginn dar, zwischen dem vergangenen und dem gegenwärtigen Mensch, der Schöpfung, der Philosophie und den Religionen, und doch ist sie nicht mythologisch, sondern zeigt sich uns in einem rationalen Wesen. Sie ist allgegenwärtig und wahrhaftig, und schöpft ihre Gültigkeit aus der Summe der Handlungen die uns Alle seit Anbeginn ausmachen."

"Es geht nicht darum, das Leben perfekt zu machen, sondern um die Erkenntnis, dass es das nicht ist."

"Er vertritt durchweg humanistische, anti-nationalistische und pro-europäische Positionen sowohl in seiner Kunst, als auch in diversen, von ihm veranstalteten Austausch- und Diskussionsprogrammen."

"[...] Meinen Erfahrungen nach sind Geschichte und Politik zwei miteinander kommunizierende Gefäße, die unsere Gesellschaft ausmachen, das eine ist die Verbindung zu unser Aller Anbeginn, das andere ist unsere Aufgabe das Miteinander zu bestreiten [...]"

"Das Sterben ist kein schöner Tod"

"Weil nämlich nichts auf der Welt so unzufrieden macht wie Klugheit, also ist es besser man bleibt dumm."

"Gute Politik muss den Menschen in den Mittelpunkt stellen"

"Aufgrund eines historisch fehlenden Patriziertum auf dem Gebiet des heutigen Österreich, sowie dem traditionellen Herrschaftsbewusstsein des Hauses Habsburg gepaart mit einer Melange aus Dogmen der Katholischen Kirche, konnte sich hierzulande das bürgerlich-freiheitliche Fluidum, das ideologische Bewusstsein der Autonomie, des Denkens, Handelns und einer Innovation nur langsam entwickeln."

"Der Wind: „Ich bin nicht. Ich werde nur gemacht." (2024)"

"Die Kunst ist es, etwas nicht klar auszusprechen, es aber trotzdem unmissverständlich mitzuteilen."

"Politik ist unsere Verantwortung vor der Geschichte und dem Menschtum seit Aller Anbeginn"

"Was unsere Gesellschaft benötigt, ist ein vom Humanismus getragener Liberalismus, der die Entwicklung der Menschen in den Mittelpunkt stellt."

"[...] Die Kulturpolitik ist für mich eine Katastrophe. Österreich ist keine Kulturnation. Das ist nur Elitarismus. Aber die Kunst muss vom Volk ausgehen, aus der Seele des Volkes kommen. Und diese Kultur wird viel zu wenig gefördert"

"Das Glück ist rund und schwer darauf zu stehen."

"Frankly we are very concerned about what is going on in the country (Lebanon). Our message is, help us to help you. Austria will continue to stand on the side of the Lebanese people but what we want to see is action on the side of Lebanon."

"I will approach my office as chancellor with great seriousness and respect because there is an incredible amount to do."

"The anti-Nazi camp also was split down the middle, split by an ax wielded by Stalin—an ax called social fascism—by which the Communist half of the anti-Nazi camp was made into the silent ally of Hitler."

"You cry out against Jewish capital, gentlemen? Whoever condemns Jewish capital, gentlemen, is already engaged in the class struggle, even though he does not realize it. You are against Jewish capital and want to eliminate the stock manipulators. This is right. Trample the Jewish capitalists under foot, hang them on the lamp post and stamp them out. But what do you want to do with the big capitalists, the Klöckners, Stinnes...?"

"After the Russian-German pact of 1939 divided Poland, almost one million Poles were deported by the w: NKVD to Siberia, and another million by the w:Gestapo to forced labor in Poland and Germany… Mass deportation was an important accomplishment to the russification of East Prussia, the Baltic states, the Balkans."

"The content of the struggle between Bolsheviks and Mensheviks embraced every aspect of the change that a revolution would bring about. The Mensheviks insisted that social conditions in Russia were not ripe for socialism and that their task was to lead a democratic bourgeois revolution against Tsarist autocracy; and Lenin, contrary to Leninism as later fabricated, agreed fully with his Menshevik adversaries that it would be folly to hope that from the starting point of overthrowing feudal Tsarism a socialist society could be realized in Russia."

"The Bolsheviks were able to take power in 1917 in spite of their numerical insignificance not because they had fashioned a fool-proof coup d’état but because they advanced on the crest of a revolutionary peasant wave, which in the hinterland had carried out revolutionary slogans months before they were taken over by the Bolsheviks. At the head of this vast peasant mass, the Bolsheviks were enabled, in the first phrase, to overcome the resistance of large urban groups and, later, when foreign intervention and the regrouping of the White forces had reduced Soviet Russia to the Grand Principality of Moscow, to overcoming all counter-revolutionary attempts and throw the invaders back to the borders of the country."

"Russian policy had to be redefined in a new world setting, and the principal factor to be taken into account was the hostility of the Russian peasant. The w:New Economic Policy had broken the straightjacket of w:War Communism, but the market did not begin to function spontaneously. The revolution had broken the connections between industry and the village, and new ones were not easily built up."

"In 1923, Stalin’s terrorist subduing of the revolting Georgians contributed substantially to Lenin’s break with him."

"When the Russian famine reached its peak in 1932-1933, most of the peasantry had been Collectivized, either in the forced-labor camps or on the collective farms. On the kolkhoz, the peasant had, exactly as before the revolution, a small plot of his own, not quite sufficient to feed himself and his family adequately; but the major portion of his labor power was forcibly directed into cultivating the land of his masters. Terror, from a weapon in the class war, had become the motive power of a new type of economy."

"Stalin’s direct appeal to proletarian instincts, begun in the 1923 fight against Trotsky, was continued and amplified into a new manipulatory device which developed to its full flower during the dekulakization period of the 1928-1929."

"A nationalized industry, or partially nationalized industry, can be integrated into a classic capitalist economy without breaking it contour. What decides the character of nationalized economy is the relation between man and man, is whether the working class has the key role in its control. Without a fundamental change in the class structure, nationalization alone equals not socialism but state capitalism. Under state capitalism the exploitation of the worker continues and can even be intensified."

"The man of the future will be of . Today's races and classes will gradually disappear owing to the vanishing of space, time, and prejudice. The Eurasian- race of the future will replace the diversity of peoples with a diversity of individuals. [...] Instead of destroying European Jewry, Europe, against its own will, refined and educated this people into a future leader-nation through this artificial selection process. No wonder that this people, that escaped Ghetto-Prison, developed into a spiritual nobility of Europe. Therefore a gracious Providence provided Europe with a new race of nobility by the Grace of Spirit. This happened at the moment when Europe's feudal aristocracy became dilapidated, and thanks to Jewish emancipation."

"There is still time to save Europe from this destiny. The salvation is Pan-Europe: the political and economic merger of all states from Poland to Portugal into a federation of states."

"Europe has become the battlefield of the earth. Its richest regions have been devastated, the flower of its population killed. Civilization is declining, while universal hatred and envy are growing. If Europe learns nothing from history, it will share the further fate of the Holy Roman Empire: it will become, politically and militarily, the chessboard of the world—an object of world politics, whereas once it was its subject."

"The European question is: ‘Can Europe, in its political and economic fragmentation, preserve its peace and independence in the face of the growing non-European world powers – or is it forced, in order to save its existence, to organize itself into a federation of states?’."

"“Every great political happening began as a Utopia and ended as a Reality.”"

"The Marxist critic, Ernst Fischer, cuttingly pronounced, "The feature common to all significant artists and writers in the capitalist world is their inability to come to terms with the social reality that surrounds them.""

"Art is necessary in order that man should be able to recognize and change the world. But art is also necessary by virtue of the magic inherent in it."

"Our difficulties with the Russians increased, but I never really blamed Konev. He obviously was merely carrying out instructions. He even had a sense of humor about it occasionally. Once when we were discussing Austrian politics, the name of the Communist party leader, Ernst Fischer, was mentioned. Jokingly, I said: "Well, I don't like him because he is a Communist." Konev grunted. "That's fine," he said. "I don't like him either because he's an Austrian Communist.""

"The transition in Portugal was similar, though smoother. There, the army seized power in 1926; six years later the finance minister Antonio de Oliveira Salazar became premier, promulgating an authoritarian constitution which established him as dictator the following year. Engelbert Dollfuss tried to pull off the same trick in Austria, governing by decree after March 1933. Though assassinated in July 1934, he was able to bequeath a functioning authoritarian system to his successor Kurt Schuschnigg."

"As in other European countries there were anti-semitic tendencies in pre-Hitler Austria too. Formerly political forces, together with the official authorities, had been sufficiently strong to prevent any excesses and nip any outburst in the bud apart from some verbal invective. Karl Renner says: … Throughout the Christian Social period in power no harm came to a single Jew in Vienna; in fact the Jewish element made far greater progress in the press, literature, theatre and business worlds than in the previous so-called liberal period. . . It must not be forgotten, however, that Vienna was the entry point for Jews from the East who did not assimilate easily."

"People were not all fascists on one side and bolshevists on the other. A contemporary writer says” ‘if there is talk of fascism in Austria, in the interest of historical accuracy and the honour of our people it should be stated that the first Austrian fascists were extreme left-wingers and that they were directly responsible for the emergence and formation of the other brand of fascism.’"

"In the Vienna of the First Republic a tendency to anti-semtism was particularly marked in the years of economic upheaval, between 1921 and 1923. . . At the time organized anti-semitism was definitely led by the newly-formed National-Socialist movement, which stressed the racial and "völkisch" aspects and linked the problem with the Anschluss movement."

"The situation changed visibly when sentimental reasons and long-term political aims gave way to a stern, ruthless nationalist ideology which would brook no compromise. Hitler had categorically demanded the Anschluss in "Mein Kampf". . . . As early as 1923 Hitler had decide that, if necessary, the National-Socialists must take over the government in Austria by force."

"There is no question of ever accepting Nazi representatives in the Austrian cabinet. An absolute abyss separates Austria from Nazism. We do not like arbitrary power, we want law to rule our freedom. We reject uniformity and centralization. . . . Christendom is anchored in our very soil, and we know but one God: and that is not the State, or the Nation, or that elusive thing, Race. Our children are God’s children, not to be abused by the State. We abhor terror; Austria has always been a humanitarian state. As a people, we are tolerant by predisposition. Any change now, in our "status quo", could only be for the worse."

"Austria had become the second German state in fact, because there German culture, now homeless in its old home, found a new country. The more violent the opposition to German National-Socialism, the more justified became the Austrian claim to be the representatives of the now homeless German culture and of the higher values of Germanism. To all intents and purposes Weimar had been exiled from the Third Reich and had found its home in Vienna."

"In the turbulent years after 1933, anti-semitic slogans were current among the small shopkeepers of Vienna, as they had been sixty years before; they were directed primarily against the big department stores. In glaring contrast to the racial anti-semitism of the National-Socialists, however, the background to this movement was purely economic. No legal restrictions were placed on the Jews nor were any economic handicaps imposed, . . . There was never any discrimination in the schools, and in the academic profession, the business world and cultural life Jews continued to play their respected, even leading, role."

"Neither the free will of the people nor the right of self-determination nor even the consent of a majority of convinced National-Socialists can be cited as justification for the obliteration of Austria after 1938."

"We are men and women from many lands, representing a rich variety of cultures. And we have been brought together to work in a great common cause: the survival and progress of mankind. The concept of unity in diversity ... underlies our various pursuits at the United Nations."

"I do not expect miracles or spectacular successes - sound political progress is seldom based in either - but I am convinced that the United Nations provides the best road to the future for those who have confidence in our capacity to shape our own fate on this planet."

"Selbstverständlich gibt es keine Kollektivschuld, trotzdem möchte ich mich als Staatsoberhaupt der Republik Österreich für jene Verbrechen entschuldigen, die von Österreichern im Zeichen des Nationalsozialismus begangen wurden."

"As the Secretary General of the United Nations, an organization of the 147 member states who represent almost all of the human inhabitants of the planet Earth, I send greetings on behalf of the people of our planet. We step out of our solar system into the universe seeking only peace and friendship, to teach if we are called upon, to be taught if we are fortunate. We know full well that our planet and all its inhabitants are but a small part of the immense universe that surrounds us, and it is with humility and hope that we take this step."

"You must not expect the United Nations to accomplish miracles. We are made up of sovereign nations. We can only accomplish what our member nations allow us to accomplish."

"I love him and Maria does too, and so thank you, Kurt."

"Haider: Someone who is capable of work, but is not willing to work — to take up a related or similar or approximately similar job — should be given the sanction of being forced to take on a job by having his unemployment benefit reduced. MP Günther Hausenblas: That amounts to forced work placement! Haider: Then I ask you: How do you justify this to the thousands and thousands of hardworking Austrian employees who fulfil their work obligations year after year? How do you defend that to somebody who for example has lost his job as a joiner, but then takes on a similar job in construction, just so that he doesn't have to go on unemployment benefit? And he is paying his hard earned money in ever higher deductions, so that a few can lounge around in the hammock of the social welfare state. That is not a system we can really defend. Hausenblas: We once had what you're calling for — in the Third Reich! Haider: No, they didn't have that in the Third Reich, because in the Third Reich they had a proper employment policy, which not even your government in Vienna can manage to bring about. That has to be said."