Bruno Kreisky - Life and Political Career

Life and Political Career

Kreisky was born in Margareten, a district of Vienna, to a liberal Jewish family. His parents were Max Kreisky (1876-1944) and Irene Felix Kreisky (1884-1969). His father worked as a textile manufacturer. Shocked by the level of poverty and violence in Austria during the 1920s, he joined the youth wing of the Socialist Party of Austria (SPÖ) in 1925 at age 15. In 1927, he joined the Young Socialist Workers against the wishes of his parents. In 1929, he began studying law at the University of Vienna at the advice of Otto Bauer, who urged him to study law rather than medicine, as he had originally planned. He remained politically active during this period. In 1931, he left the Jewish religious community, becoming agnostic. In 1934, when the Socialist Party was banned by the Dollfuss dictatorship, he became active in underground political work. He was arrested in January 1935 and convicted of high treason, but was released in June 1936. In March 1938 the Austrian state was incorporated in Germany, and in September Kreisky escaped the Nazi persecution of Austrian Jews during the Holocaust by emigrating to Sweden, where he remained until 1945. In 1942 he married Vera Fürth.

He returned to Austria in May 1946, but he was soon back in Stockholm, assigned to the Austrian legation. In 1951 he returned to Vienna, where Federal President Theodor Körner appointed him Assistant Chief of Staff and political adviser. In 1953 he was appointed Undersecretary in the Foreign Affairs Department of the Austrian Chancellery. In this position he took part in negotiating the 1955 Austrian State Treaty, which ended the four-power occupation of Austria and restored Austria's independence and neutrality.

Kreisky was elected to the Austrian parliament, the Nationalrat as a Socialist during the 1956 election. He was elected to the Party Executive along with Bruno Pittermann, Felix Slavik, and Franz Olah, and thus became a member of the central leadership body of the party. After the 1959 election, he became Foreign Minister in the coalition cabinet of Chancellor Julius Raab (ÖVP). He played a leading role in setting up the European Free Trade Association, helped solve the South Tyrol question with Italy, and proposed a "Marshall Plan" for the countries of the Third World.

Kreisky left office in 1966, when the ÖVP under Josef Klaus won an absolute majority in the Nationalrat. In February 1967 he was elected chairman of the Socialist Party. At the March 1970 elections, the Socialists won a plurality (but not a majority) of seats, and Kreisky became Chancellor, heading only the second purely left-wing government in Austria. He was the first Jewish Chancellor of Austria. In October 1971 he called fresh elections and won the first absolute majority achieved by an Austrian party in a free election. He won comfortable victories at the 1975 and 1979 elections.

Kreisky turned 70 in 1981, and by this time the voters had become increasingly uncomfortable with what they saw as his complacency and preoccupation with international issues. At the April 1983 election, the Socialists lost their absolute majority in the Nationalrat. Kreisky declined to form a minority government and resigned, nominating Fred Sinowatz, his Minister of Education, as his successor. His health was declining, and in 1984 he had an emergency kidney transplant. During his final years he occasionally made bitter remarks directed at his party, who had made him their honorary chairman. He died in Vienna in July 1990.