For his last big performance, Heinz-Christian Strache has chosen the right stage. The restaurant "Vino Wien" is located close to the party headquarters and is known as the bastion of Strache's opponents of a smoking ban in the catering industry.
Half an hour before the restaurant officially opens, it is already "bummvoll" inside, as the Viennese say - cameramen, photographers and editors crowd around the man who was chairman of the Freedom Party of Austria (FPÖ) for 14 years and 17 months long Vice Chancellor. Strache has led his party after the split and the departure of Jörg Haider almost from scratch back up and made 2017 with 26 percent of the votes for the second strongest party in the country.
In May 2019, however, SPIEGEL and "Süddeutsche Zeitung" unveiled the so-called Ibiza video. Who saw the pictures of the vigorously smoking and drinking Strache in casual clothes, who could study how Strache of a supposed Russian oligarchs niece state orders in the prospect in the event that they guaranteed in return of the FPÖ journalistic tailwind with the help of Kronen-Zeitung - the was thunderstruck. In truth, the woman was not an oligarchic niece and the villa in Ibiza, chosen as a meeting place, was bugged. Strache and his group leader, Johann Gudenus, had lured themselves into a trap - and talked about their heads and collars.
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On this Tuesday, shortly after half past ten, the formerly most powerful man of the FPÖ draws the consequences and announces in the "Vino Wien" visibly attacked, he leaves his party membership immediately rest: he wants to concentrate now on his family. Strache is thus preceded by a party exclusion that the FPÖ committees wanted to discuss this Tuesday afternoon.
If the former party leader had made his decision weeks earlier, the FPÖ might have been spared such a massive election slump as on Sunday: a loss of almost ten percent was incurred by the Freedom Party. A new edition of the coalition with the ÖVP under Sebastian Kurz is currently considered unlikely.
It was not just "b'soffene G ', Schicht" in Ibiza, as Strache tried to soften his embarrassing appearance in the finca. It was also the ever new allegations against the longtime FPÖ top man, who have been in the past few months and now employ the prosecutor: the self-proclaimed Saubermann should have lush Spenenkonten approved, one of the party (and thus indirectly by the electorate) financed noble apartment and other extras. The allegations, which are evidently supported by ample evidence, are being denied by Strache.
Dashing appearance, steel blue eyes, biting joke
Undisputed, however, is: The only of his followers called "HC" Strache was the rise of Sebastian Kurz the most popular politician in Austria. At the end of 2016, his party was ahead in all polls. More than 800,000 people watched on Facebook, which the social media professional Strache had to say. Who met him, at the seat of the party high above the rooftops of Vienna, who experienced a determined maker: dashing appearance, steel blue eyes, sometimes biting joke. He mocked the ÖVP as a "black widow" because it would kill any coalition partner in the long term; He dedicated the farewell to the plump SPÖ chancellor and wine lover Alfred Gusenbauer when he said goodbye.
The fact that Strache was at a young age close to the neo-Nazi scene and took part in military training exercises became known only late. The trained dental technician, who had already risen to the FPÖ party leader at that time, then assured him that he had purified himself. As men for the rough he kept his general secretary Herbert Kickl and his Adlatus Johann "Joschi" Gudenus. Strache himself worked purposefully to give himself a more serious, more statesmanlike paint job.
The culmination of his career was finally on 19 December 2017, the day on the Strache, dark suit, dark blue tie, was sworn in the Vienna Hofburg as vice-chancellor by the Federal President Alexander Van der Bellen - a former bitter political opponent. Strache believed himself to be at his destination, and he noted that in the following months - the poisonous opposition leader of yore had unmistakably found taste in power and its insignia. The Ibiza video destroyed the statesman's facade in one fell swoop.
Whether the story of the rise and fall of the Freedom Party Heinz-Christian Strache really ends with the chapter of this Tuesday is still open. For his party, it will depend on whether the deeply offended resists the temptation to open his personal poison cabinet: Concentrated knowledge from those nearly three decades, the Strache was in the FPÖ may be suspected there.
