Honored Persons

 

Franz Vranitzky

Franz Vranitzky (born October 4, 1937 in Vienna) is a former politician. In his active time he was Austrian Chancellor (1986 - 1997) and federal party chairman of the SPÖ. Vranitzky grew up as the son of an iron foundry in the working class milieu. The family lived in Vienna's 17th district of Hernals. He studied Business Administration at the University of World Trade in Vienna and financed his studies as a tutor and laborer. Professionally, Vranitzky managed in a few years through the National Bank to the adviser to the then Minister of Finance Hannes Androsch. As of 1976, Vranitzky held managerial positions in various Austrian banks, including Director-General of CA-BV and Deputy Director-General of the Österreichische Länderbank. From 1984 he was Minister of Finance in the Cabinet of Fred Sinowatz. When Sinowatz resigned after the election of Kurt Waldheim to the position of Federal President in 1986, Vranitzky became Federal Chancellor. The end of the "Iron Curtain" and the accession of Austria to the EU in 1995 occurred in Vranitzky's term of office. Thus tasks were the intensification of the contacts with the Eastern European states as well as the preparation and implementation of the accession of Austria to the European Union, whereby he closely worked together with the foreign minister Alois Mock (ÖVP). He was the first Austrian Chancellor to declare Austria's complicity in Nazi terror and the Second World War - both in the Austrian parliament and in the Israeli Knesset.