Hannes Androsch, 1938-2024
Austria's former finance minister, who navigated the economic storms of the 1970s and was once considered Bruno Kreisky's likely successor, has died
Servus!
Just as last week’s edition of the newsletter was arriving in your inbox came the news that Hannes Androsch, Austria’s former finance minister, long tipped to succeed Bruno Kreisky as chancellor, had died at the age of 87.
Androsch was born in Vienna in April 1938 into a middle-class family. His parents were tax consultants in Floridsdorf who founded the successful firm Consultatio. The young Androsch survived the Second World War with his family in Czechoslovakia where, in June 1945, they witnessed expulsions of ethnic Germans from southern Moravia. Returning to Vienna after the War, Androsch was drawn towards the Socialist Party (SPÖ), eventually becoming chair of the Association of Socialist Students.
His accession through the party was swift: member of parliament, 1967; finance minister, 1970. In office, Androsch sought to weather the global political and financial storms of the 1970s via a policy of Austro-Keynesianism. Full employment was prioritized over debt and deficit reduction, and the Austrian schilling was pegged to the German mark to stabilize and devalue the currency and boost exports. Austria’s state-owned industries, which were beginning to experience economic difficulties, were reformed and rationalized, and a major tax reform package was passed in 1973.
Androsch was the protégé of chancellor Bruno Kreisky who led the SPÖ to five consecutive election victories and built three SPÖ majority governments in 1971, 1975, and 1979. If Kreisky was the ‘sun king,’ Androsch was the crown prince, the pretender. Socialists of middle-class extraction but from different generations, experiences, and cultural and ideological backgrounds, Kreisky and Androsch in many ways complimented one another, yet as the 1970s worn on, the pair became increasingly disputatious and rivalrous.
It was always assumed that one day Androsch would succeed Kreisky as chancellor—not least by Androsch himself. After president Franz Jonas died in office in 1974, there were attempts to make way for Androsch by stunting Kreisky up to higher office, efforts the chancellor swiped down. The seeds of mistrust were sown, and as Paul Lendvai describes in his book Austria Behind the Mask, the back half of the 1970s were defined by the “years-long fight between the old and sick chancellor and his impatient and brilliant crown prince.”
In the end, Kreisky triumphed. The AKH scandal of the 1970s—cost overruns and bribery charges associated with the construction of Austria’s largest hospital—drew attention to Androsch’s connections to the accused. The finance minister had also inherited Consultatio from his parents, and the firm was in receipt of clients in the state’s orbit. If Androsch were any kind of princeling or heir, then he was Icarus, flying too close to the sun king. In 1981, he resigned and became director of the state-owned bank Creditanstalt.
Out of office and working in the private sector, Androsch became a vocal critic of his party. Lendvai quotes Androsch as saying of chancellor and SPÖ leader Franz Vranitzky that “he ruined the party in terms of content, morals, and finances because it didn’t interest him.” His judgement of the SPÖ since Kreisky, Lendvai writes, was that it had “forgotten how to address existing fears” and had committed “to a cosmopolitan internationalism.” The SPÖ had become irrelevant to the needs of the people who once voted for it.
The Kreisky era to which Androsch was central is remembered in Austria, and particularly in social democratic circles, as a golden age of economic stability, full employment, and rising standards of living in which Austria was also at the center of international affairs. With Androsch’s death, both Austria and the SPÖ have lost another connection to that era which, especially for the party, is becoming increasingly smaller in its rear view mirror.
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