"Der Kärntner Landeshauptmann und BZÖ-Chef Jörg Haider ist am Samstag in den frühen Morgenstunden in Klagenfurt bei einem Verkehrsunfall ums Leben gekommen. Haider war nach Angaben der Polizei auf der Rosentaler Straße im Süden der Landeshauptstadt mit seinem Dienstwagen von der Straße abgekommen. Das Auto dürfte sich überschlagen haben, Haider, der alleine im Fahrzeug war, erlitt schwerste Verletzungen im Kopf- und Brustbereich, denen er wenig später erlag."
So die erste Pressemeldung zum Tod Jörg Haiders heute Früh. Für FM4 Reality Check hat Jill Zobel mittlerweile mit der Journalistin Anneliese Rohrer und dem Historiker Lothar Höbelt gesprochen.
Ausführliche Berichterstattung zum Ableben von Jörg Haider liefert ORF.at.
In den Interviews mit Anneliese Rohrer und Lothar Höbelt geht es sowohl um Jörg Haiders politischen Werdegang von den Achtziger Jahren bis heute, als auch um die Person Jörg Haider. Außerdem wird die Frage behandelt, welchen Änderungen die politische Landschaft Österreichs mit dem Ableben Haiders entgegensieht.
Jill Zobel: Anneliese, love him or hate him - what we are certainly learning today is that even his political opponents have admired him very much. Your reaction to Haider's sudden death? Your assessment of his impact on Austria?
Anneliese Rohrer: It's shocking. (...) And as you said, "love him or hate him", my assessment of what he has been doing - I mean, his comeback was remarkable in the last election. But my first thought really was "Oh, this is gonna change the entire political game in Austria, tomorrow or today."
There's the possibility of reunification. Is that something that Haider would have wanted? Was he ever aiming for, truly aiming for a reunification of the FPÖ and the BZÖ?
No, I don't think he was aiming for a reunification. I think he was aiming for a, you know, German model - go separate, but fight united. Like the Christian Democrats and the Christian Social Union in Bavaria. I think that was his long-strategy-game. It would very well have been - but all this is over now - that in the next election, the two parties together would have come out first.
What did Jörg Haider want for Jörg Haider and for Austria? I mean, he changed his tune so many times during his political career. ?
I mean, even in a tragic moment like this, one has to say it: This was always unclear.
title: Das ganze Interview mit Anneliese Rohrer length: 11:48 MP3 (11.311MB) | WMA
Jill Zobel: Lothar, what first attracted you to Jörg Haider? Because you are associated with him in his early political career.
Lothar Höbelt: Basically of course I do come from a certain tradition of politics that we both shared, but what really attracted me during those 1980-years was that he seemed to provide sort of the Austrian answer to what Maggie Thatcher and Ronald Reagan were doing in the Anglo-Saxon world. Sort of something which then was called 'neoconservative' which is completely different from what 'neoconservative' stands for today. A real break with this sort of social democratic politics that we had and that of course Austria was famous for during the Kreisky years. So he was the real opponent of Bruno Kreisky, even though on some levels, they shared some things.
Others might call him a nationalist, an anti-semite, a fan of Hitler during those same early years and that all made him a very controversial figure
Being controversial for an exponent of a minor party is quite a good thing because the only news is bad news. All these sort of old stories - I think the one thing you could really say [is that] he never (sort of) was caught doing or saying anything that was supposedly anti-semitic. I mean, that's a no-go. As far as a "fan of Hitler": That will boil down to his respect for the war generation and for his father who fought in the war and so on. The nationalist bit is the more interesting one, because that is exactly the thing where he ruffled feathers even within his own party, his own movement by sort of subtly switching the emphasis of that sort of nationalism (...).
title: Das ganze Interview mit Lothar Höbelt length: 9:25 MP3 (9.033MB) | WMA
Österreich | 11.10.2008 | 13:42 
