Politischer Extremismus#

Political extremism in Austria: 1) Right extremism: After the departure of the allied forces in 1955, some organisations increasingly developed from moderate German nationalism to outright neo-Nazism. At the "Schiller-Feier" (200th anniversary of the birth of Friedrich Schiller) in 1959 the Austrian public was for the first time confronted with the massive emergence of "nationalist" youth, culture and sport organisations. Around 1960, during the South Tirol crises, when Austrian and German right-wing extremists (mainly students) committed acts of terrorism these forces gained more importance. The National Democratic Party (NDP), which was founded by N. Burger and prohibited in 1988, was the most important right-wing extremist organisation for a long time, but was gradually replaced by smaller, rivalling neo-Nazi groups. From 1992 police action against the more radical groups resulted in a wave of arrests. Various Assassinations with bombs or letter bombs were attempted between 1993 and 1995 and resulted in severely injuring their victims. In 1999 Franz Fuchs was sentenced as perpetrator responsible for these crimes and the most serious political crime of the Second Republic on February 4, 1995 a bomb attack in the vicinity of the Roma settlement of Oberwart (in the province of Burgenland), which killed four people.

2) Left extremism: In the second half of the 1970s the German Rote Armee Fraktion (RAF) undertook a number of attacks in which Austria became involved. After a bank robbery in December 1976, the German terrorist W. Boock was arrested in Vienna. This was followed by several acts of terrorism in an attempt to force the authorities to free her. The kidnapping of the industrialist W. M. Palmers in November 1977, who was freed for a ransom of ATS 31 million, was also carried out by the RAF. The kidnappers were arrested a short time after their hostage was released. In 1995, two left extremists were killed as they tried to blow up a high-voltage transmission pylon at Ebergassing (Lower Austria).

Literature#