The Green Alexander Van der Bellen was 50 and about to move into the National Council for the first time when the competition from the FPÖ came onto the market with a legendary slogan about their top candidate at the time: “You are against him.
Because it's for you."
"He," that was back then, in 1994, Jörg Haider, the people's tribune of the Freedom Party.
The man who promised the voters to take on the elites, those "up there" who somehow always "fix" things.
Haider's slogan, an expression of his role as a mouthpiece for the excluded, was popular at the time - the FPÖ gained more than 22 percent of the votes.
Alexander Van der Bellen, almost 30 years later and now Federal President, seems to have forgotten the resulting lesson.
Otherwise he would not have allowed himself to be carried away to an attack on the FPÖ on Wednesday, on the eve of his swearing-in for a second term of office.
The President's Conscience
Van der Bellen was asked on the ORF whether he would give the recently massively strengthened Freedom Party a government-forming order in case of doubt.
The answer, with a view to the right-wing populists led by Herbert Kickl, was: He would not try to promote "an anti-European party, a party that does not condemn Russia's war against Ukraine, through my measures".
According to the constitution, the task of entrusting a party with the formation of a government, according to Van der Bellen, is a "personal decision".
He is "free" in forming his own will and will follow his conscience if the worst comes to the worst.
For the record: It will be almost two years before the next scheduled National Council elections.
Accordingly, there was little reason to make hasty decisions.
Chancellor Kickl's dream
The next political test of mood, however, was only four days away at the time of Van der Bellen's interview: the state elections in Lower Austria, in the home country of Chancellor Karl Nehammer (ÖVP).
It then showed what people in Austria's largest state think when they are told from above who they shouldn't like if possible: The FPÖ grew by 9.4 percent in the historic heartland of the conservative ÖVP and became the second strongest party.
The FPÖ thanked Van der Bellen for the "turbo" that Van der Bellen had given his own election campaign with his statements - and they are already looking forward to a future "Chancellor Kickl".
The face of the election triumph belongs to the 36-year-old Udo Landbauer.
The smart lawyer, who has been politically active since his school days, has repeatedly made ugly headlines in beautiful Lower Austria in the past.
»Step on the gas, you old Germans«
He solicited donations for the right-wing extremist »Young Patriots« so that a little song book could be published containing, among other things, the lyrics to »Negro Uprising is in Cuba«.
As deputy chairman of the Germania fraternity in Wiener Neustadt, he was jointly responsible for another songbook in which racist texts, including anti-Semitic ones ("Then the Jew Ben-Gurion stepped into their midst: 'Gas on, you old Germans, we'll make the seventh million ›«) were played back.
Landbauer then resigned from all political offices in February 2018, but came back a good six months later with fresh energy.
Since then, he has been driving the governing mother Johanna Mikl-Leitner, especially on questions of immigration.
The ÖVP party, which was the sole governing party, lost almost ten percent of the vote on Sunday.
Mikl-Leitner was once christened "Moslem Mama" by the farmer, who accused her of "forced Islamization" in the Lower Austrian school system.
In him, her future deputy, she will now have an even more powerful opponent than before.
The highlight of Landbauer's personal details: the mother of the man who warned in the past against "presenting Islam as belonging to us" came from a predominantly Muslim country.
She was born in what was then Persia.
Stories we recommend you today:
What the electoral defeat in Lower Austria means for the ÖVP: Now it's getting dangerous for Austria's chancellor
The Wirecard scandal and the Alpine republic: How Jan Marsalek spied on Austria's protection of the constitution
Affair in the office of Vice-Chancellor Werner Kogler: Kogler's section head resigns part-time
Kind regards,
Walter Mayr
, correspondent for Austria and Southeast Europe, DER SPIEGEL
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