Abstract
Bruno Kreisky was Chancellor of Austria for thirteen years, steering the Austrian Socialist Party (SPÖ) to unprecedented electoral triumphs in the period between 1970 and 1983. Under his leadership, the Socialists streamlined their organization, modernized their image, broadened their electoral constituency and transformed themselves into a genuine Volkspartei (party of the people). Adopting the model of Swedish Social democracy (Kreisky himself had lived in Sweden as a political émigré and then as a diplomat between 1938 and 1951) they broke through the old ideological ‘ghetto’ and militant class-war ethos of pre-war Austro-Marxism to become a reformist party of government. Thanks in no small degree to Kreisky’s pragmatism, his experience, shrewdness and personal popularity, the Socialists convinced the traditionally conservative Austrian electorate that they could manage a modern capitalist society more efficiently and more democratically than their political rivals.1 There were parallel successes in Sweden, West Germany and (to a lesser extent) Britain and France, but nowhere else did one statesman and politician dominate his party and national politics to the extent that Kreisky did before 1983.
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Notes
Nevertheless it should be noted that many middle-class Austrians maintained a certain ambivalence towards Kreisky’s achievements, his unconventionality, Europeanism and cosmopolitan socialist perspectives. See Hans Thalberg, Von der Kunst, Österreicher zu sein. Erinnerungen und Tagebuchnotizen (Vienna, 1984).
On Victor Adler and Otto Bauer, see Robert S. Wistrich, Socialism and the Jews. The Dilemmas of Assimilation in Germany and Austria-Hungary (London, 1982), pp. 232–61, 332–48.
Bruno Kreisky, Die Zeit in der wir Leben: Betrachtungen zur internationalen Politik (Vienna, Munich, Innsbruck, 1979), pp. 59 ff.
Wistrich, Socialism, pp. 151–7 on Kautsky and the latter’s pamphlet, Rasse und Judentum (Berlin, 1914), as well as Otto Bauer, Die Nationalitätenfrage und die Sozialdemokratie (Vienna, 1907), pp. 376 ff.
On Austrian collective amnesia in general, see Anne-Marie Revcolevschi, ‘L’Autriche a la Mémoire Courte’, Les Nouveaux Cahiers, no. 92 (Spring 1988).
See Robert S. Wistrich, ‘An Austrian Variation on Socialist Antisemitism’, Patterns of Prejudice, vol 8, no. 4 (July/August 1974), pp. 1–10.
Free Palestine, May 1976; The Observer, 27 February 1977; Der Spiegel, no. 48 (1979); NZZ, 15 March 1980; and the interview in Stern Magazine (Hamburg), 26 February–6 March 1980, pp. 78–82, where Kreisky drew a particularly unpleasant parallel: ‘Wer sagt: Russen aus Afghanistan muss auch sagen: Israelis raus aus der Westbank!’ See also Robert Wistrich, ‘Kreisky, Arafat and Friends’, Encounter (November, 1980).
See Martin van Amerongen, Die Samenzwering tegen Simon Wiesenthal (The Conspiracy against Simon Wiesenthal) (Amsterdam, 1976) and the remark of Jerusalem Mayor, Teddy Kollek (himself of Viennese origin) quoted in Die Welt, 6 September 1978: ‘Kreisky kann nur noch von einem Psychiater, wie es Alfred Adler oder Sigmund Freud war, geholfen werden.’ Also Heinz Galinski, ‘Ein Fall politischer Psychopathologie. Zum jüdischen Selbsthass Dr. Bruno Kreiskys’; and Jüdische Rundschau, 14 September 1978.
Ephrairn Kishon, ‘Schlage uns, Bruno, wir sind Deine Trommel’, Der Spiegel, no. 37 (11 September 1978), pp. 142–5 and Wistrich, ‘The Strange Case of Bruno Kreisky’, Encounter, May 1979), pp. 78–85 for an earlier discussion of these statements.
NZZ, 5 September 1978. In this report Kreisky referred to the Israeli Army as eine verfeinerte Form des Banditentums’. He later tried to repair the damage by suggesting that his ‘off-the-record’ remarks had been quoted out of context. He even declared himself ready to apologize if he had offended anyone but stood by his political views. See Jüdische Rundschau, 7 September 1978, and Jewish Chronicle, 8 September 1978. Kreisky’s underlying attitude comes out more clearly in his interview with Ma’ariv (Tel Aviv), 7 July 1979, following his royal welcome for Arafat in Vienna. Asked what they had talked about, he shot back: ‘One talks about the extraordinary arrogance of Israeli behaviour. Obviously — and this should be made clear to you — the central idea of these talks tends towards a comparison between Israel and South Africa ... Israel intends to set up a “Bantustan” on the West Bank — an area of Arab population which would have no effective rights, with Israel controlling all the resources.’ See also Bruno Kreisky, Im Strom der Politik. Der Memoiren. Zweiter Teil (Berlin, Zürich, Vienna, 1987), where he again condemns Israel’s’unbounded intolerance’ towards the Palestinians and alleged ‘refusal to create the preconditions for peaceful coexistence with the Arab States’. Extracts in English appeared in Austria Today, vol. 4, no. 88 (1988), pp. 51–2.
Kreisky made his remarks in the course of a stinging attack on Wiesenthal, ‘Kreisky Accuses Top Zionist of Nazi Collaboration’, Free Palestine (December 1975), and Palestine, vol. 2, no. 8 (January 1976) pp. 35–7.
Robert Knight, ‘The Waldheim Context: Austria and Nazism’, Times Literary Supplement, 3 October 1986.
Hanni Konitzer, ‘Leben bei den Oesterreichischen Sozialisten’, FAZ, 3 December 1967.
Franz Kirchberger, ‘Kreisky in der NS-Fälle’, Deutsche Wochen-Zeitung, 29 May 1970.
See, for example, Izydor Lucki, ‘Szymon Wiesenthal, na szlaku agentur, wywiadu i zdray’, Perspektywy (Warsaw) no. 25 (30 January 1970). The series in Profil (Vienna) entitled ‘Wer ist Simon Wiesenthal?’, beginning no. 44 (28 October 1975) answers these slanders and provides a reliable account of the whole background.
‘Der Fall Peter’, Profil, 14 October 1975, pp. 10, 12–16; ‘Peter und die Mordbrigade’, ibid., 21 October 1975, pp. 18–23; and Peter Michael Lingens, ‘Grenzen des Opportunismus’, ibid., no. 47, 18 November 1975. Also Die Presse, 8 November 1975, 11 November 1975, 22 November 1975 and Die Neue Mahnruf, December 1975.
Ulrich Brunner, ‘Kratzer am Kanzler’ (Kleinkrieg Kreisky-Wiesenthal und keine Ende), Vorwärts, 18 December 1975.
‘Sozialistische Schutzmauer um Kreisky gegen Wiesenthal’, FAZ, 4 December, 1975’ Hanni Konitzer, ‘Nach der Wiener Affäre: Eine miese Geschichte’, FAZ, 5 December 1975.
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© 1992 Robert S. Wistrich
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Wistrich, R.S. (1992). The Kreisky Phenomenon: A Reassessment. In: Wistrich, R.S. (eds) Austrians and Jews in the Twentieth Century. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-22378-7_14
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