Word: figl
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...independent Die Presse, which published the Gruber memoirs, there appeared one day a chapter relating how Austrian Communists sat down with leaders of Gruber's own Catholic People's Party in 1947 to negotiate a partnership. People's Party leaders-including, implied Gruber, ex-Chancellor Leopold Figl and the present Chancellor Julius Raab-agreed to force the militantly anti-Red Socialists out of the coalition government and to make a Communist stooge Chancellor, in return for concessions from Moscow. "Such a catastrophe and criminal nonsense must be prevented," Gruber recalls himself as saying then. He credited himself...
Also, McCarthy has set his own wierd rules of proof. Theodore Kaghan, Deputy Director of Public Affairs in Germany, gave, in evidence of his political purity, character references from former anti-Communist Chancellor of Austria, Leopold Figl, Berlin Mayor Ernst Reuter, and Geoffrey Keyes, ex-High Commissioner of Austria. Balancing against these references some lines in Kaghan's plays, written around 1930, and the fact that he roomed from 1935 to '40 with a suspected Communist, McCarthy has demanded more testimony...
Last October the balancing act began to break down. Figl resigned, and in new elections his party lost three seats in the parliamentary election, the Socialists gained six. The rightists in Figl's People's Party charged him with softness toward the Socialists. The leaders of Figl's party announced that they would not join any new coalition government unless it included the neo-Nazi Union of Independents. The Socialists refused. For 38 days Austria was without a cabinet...
Last week the deadlock was broken. A new coalition cabinet was formed. The neo-Nazis were excluded, which was a victory for the Socialists. But the rightists in the People's Party also won, for Figl was out as Chancellor, and in his place was a blunt, tough-talking engineer, Julius Raab, a right-winger. Raab, 61, was a charter member of the Heimwehr, Prince Ernst Rüdiger von Starhemberg's private fascist army back in the late '20s; in 1930 he took the famous Heimwehr oath, ". . . We reject the democratic western Parliament...
Socialists respect Raab for being a man of his word and for speaking it frankly but detest his politics. Chances are that before long, Austria will be wishing for the return of Figl's famous balancing...