Farewell Jörg | Abschiedsbrief Jörg Haider

Jörg Haider was the first person I met in Austria outside of my girlfriend's family.

Anna was dancing at the opening of the Carinthian Summer Musical Festival in July 2003. I had been in Austria for about two days before the festival. We'd had time to go swimming once and then it was off to the lake and Anna's performance there.

We were both thinking about the dance - mainly about her costume and Anna's hair. She'd had to get her head shaved for the asylum scenes in Lapinthrope. Wigs, scarves, hats were all proposed to make hide her shaved head. In the end the bare head prevailed (it's a lot easier to dance modern without something precarious glued to your head). With a woman as beautiful as Anna that summer, there's a lot to distract the audience from the length of her hair.

On the way there, I heard Haider would be there, in his role of Landeshauptmann to open the festival.

Of course, I'd heard of Jörg Haider before. Even in Canada we got news of the Austrian politician who was supposed to be a new Hitler, threatening the rise of a fourth Reich.

Based on what I'd read in the press, I expected to find a brute - either foaming at the mouth and shrieking like Hitler or a portly sadist like Goering.

Instead, an elegantly attired fortyish and athletic man in an immaculately tailored Italian suit rose and spoke for over half an hour. If Haider had notes, he didn't need or use them much. It was the first time I'd heard a long speech in German, outside of the vituperative extracts from Hitler's rallies.

Haider's voice was resonant and clear, the structure of his sentences as well tailored as his suit. Little acquainted with the German language at that time, I was only able to follow the phonetic balance of Haider's rhetoric.

The audience was as rapt as I'd ever seen at the speech of a politician. From Haider's end there appeared to be little grandstanding - none of the whipping up of the crowd that so cheapens many politician's public speaking. Just an engaging speech.

Like most young Carinthian women living in Vienna, Anna had an obligatory loathing of Haider. Later I learned why from Astrid. If you didn't profess anti-Haider sentiment, you would instantly be blackballed back in Vienna. You would be ghettoized as an undesirable Carinthian.

Anna Hein dancing at Carinthian Summer 2003

So even though she and Haider had headlined the event, Anna was determined not to meet him and certainly not to be photographed together. Ironically Haider did a lot to increase the role of culture in Carinthia. His government supported many of the music festivals and a lot of the theatres. Later on Anna would benefit considerably from Haider's largesse, while choreographing her own first works in Villach.

Haider was keen enough to meet Anna so the meeting and the photograph did take place (and as you can see they got on quite well). I had the chance to speak with Jörg Haider close up for about five minutes. Haider had an enormous energy that just radiated out of his handshake and his whole being. His English was nearly as eloquent as his German although he did have that soft Austrian accent. Haider had the ability to make his interlocutor feel that he was listening very closely, that he was really paying attention. In conversation, he had a quality of close to absolute sincerity, something which I've never felt when meeting with other politicians.

Anna Hein and Jörg Haider

Physically there is something quite elven about Haider. He had Eastern slanted eyes, a slender nose, a long face and pointy ears. It is something of a national look in Austria, although Austria has such a heterogenous population the elven look is far from universal.

In the years since, I've marvelled at Haider's capacity for reinvention in adversity. When he was played out of the FPO leadership by a former lieutenant with little of Haider's own charm and/or intellectual capacity, he started another party the BZO which boomed onto the national scene in the recent elections.

If one took the trouble to read the BZO platform (written by Haider himself), it was very reasonable. He focused on bringing the same security and stability and pride to Austria which he had brought to Carinthia. Haider was a true patriot.

What a sad irony that as Haider sped to his 90 year mother's home for her birthday the next day an unlucky turn of the steering wheel broke her and Carinthia's heart instead.

Did he fall asleep at the wheel? Did his cellphone ring? Did an animal run across the road causing him to swerve, hit a curb and lose control of his car?

Whatever happened to take Haider from Austrian politics is a loss for Austria and a danger. A reasonable voice on the right of the spectrum, an honest patriot, a seasoned governor is gone leaving too much space for the less talented and not so well-intentioned.

Haider represented much of what I admire in Austria. Value on nature and a pure environment. Taking care of Austria first but then helping the world. An example of a better way to live, in a strong social system which educates its citizens well and protects them from the excesses of the corporation.

Ironically, the first voice I heard in German is gone from the world just as I am able to read his obituary in the original. I had thought at some point, I would hear Haider speak again in Carinthia now that I understand German myself.

Haider lived every day like his first and his last, indefatigable in the defence of Carinthia, Austria and a better world. His life is an example of how to live life to the fullest and to have the courage of your convictions.

Leaving the world at 58 still in the prime of his strength after a successful election cycle, Jörg Haider will remain an icon of Austrian independence and capability for hundreds of year. No meandering or slow loss of power and intellect preceding an unwelcome retirement. Haider ascends to the next life, still a warrior and a legend.

Farewell Jörg Haider, Adieu.

Thank you for your warm welcome to Austria five summers ago.

Comments

[Account Deleted]

Thank you for this fascinating account.

[Hemaworstje]

biggest bullshit there is , his parents were pro nazi, so was he. he was a person who hated anything colored and died during a carcrash intoxicated with 3 times the amount of alchol allowed driving 120 mph on a road where 50 is alllowed.
Sad?
it was a sneaky lawyer who knew just how to get to the edge of racism. common in Austria and Vienna. ( still now ).

[Account Deleted]

Well, to be fair, Haider should not be held responsible for his parents' political leanings. It is never fair to judge a person based on opinions of their parents. And he was going 88 mph, not 120. There is a difference.

[DonS]

Hey, I just stumbled in here. My mom was born in Vienna, a Jew.

BTW I am anti-Zionist. And I love Eastern Europe.

I'll throw this into the ether. No need to discredit any human being. But no need, either, to get weepy over a right wing figure of this sort.

Austrians need to get over their more-Hitler-than-Hitler preoccupation.