Misplaced Pages

Martin Graf

Article snapshot taken from Wikipedia with creative commons attribution-sharealike license. Give it a read and then ask your questions in the chat. We can research this topic together.
Austrian politician (born 1960) Not to be confused with Martin Graff.
You can help expand this article with text translated from the corresponding article in German. Click for important translation instructions.
  • View a machine-translated version of the German article.
  • Machine translation, like DeepL or Google Translate, is a useful starting point for translations, but translators must revise errors as necessary and confirm that the translation is accurate, rather than simply copy-pasting machine-translated text into the English Misplaced Pages.
  • Do not translate text that appears unreliable or low-quality. If possible, verify the text with references provided in the foreign-language article.
  • You must provide copyright attribution in the edit summary accompanying your translation by providing an interlanguage link to the source of your translation. A model attribution edit summary is Content in this edit is translated from the existing German Misplaced Pages article at ]; see its history for attribution.
  • You may also add the template {{Translated|de|Martin Graf}} to the talk page.
  • For more guidance, see Misplaced Pages:Translation.

Martin Graf
Graf in 2020
Born (1960-05-11) 11 May 1960 (age 64)
Vienna, Austria

Martin Graf (born 11 May 1960) is an Austrian politician. He is a member of the Freedom Party of Austria and former third president of the Austrian Parliament.

Biography

Graf was born in Vienna and studied law at the University of Vienna. He graduated in 1987 and trained as a lawyer. In his student days, he became a member of the student fraternity Burschenschaft Olympia. From 1994 to 2002 and again since 2006, he has been a member of the Austrian Parliament. The years in between, he was managing director of the Austrian Research Centers; from 2000 until 2006 he also served as a board member of the PVA, a government-owned insurance company. Graf is the president of Viennese football club FC Hellas Kagran. He is married and has three children.

Criticism

Following the 2008 general election which put the Freedom Party in third place, on 28 October 2008, he was elected the National Council's third president, despite heavy opposition by the Green Party of Austria, which fielded its own candidate, Alexander Van der Bellen, and by the Jewish community of Vienna, by artists and intellectuals who strongly disapprove of Graf. Efraim Zuroff from the Simon Wiesenthal Center also expressed deep concern over the "well-known ties" Graf has with extreme-right groups.

His opponents consider Graf to be unsuitable for the office because of his rightist leanings and continuing Burschenschaft Olympia membership. The student fraternity, which still practices academic fencing, is alleged to have Neo-Nazi links. In the discussions prior to his election, he condemned National Socialism and anti-Semitism but said he would, in any event, remain a member of the Burschenschaft. Freedom Party leader Heinz-Christian Strache called the election of Graf a "victory for democracy" and emphasized his belief that Graf was a seasoned and "irreproachable parliamentarian".

On 12 February 2009, the Public Prosecutor's office in Vienna asked the parliament to lift his immunity because they wanted to charge him with embezzlement and fraud in connection with his former job as a manager of the Austrian Research Centers. The prosecutor's focus was on Graf's severance payment and the bonus he got when the ARC was in financial difficulties. Graf denies the allegations, calling them "baseless".

In April, Graf hosted the presentation of a book written by his party colleague Andreas Mölzer containing strong criticism of the European Union, in the rooms of the Austrian parliament. The keynote speaker at that event was Walter Marinovic, a former teacher who has links to the hard-right National Democratic Party of Germany and also writes for the Deutsche Nationalzeitung of Gerhard Frey. A deputy of the Green Party protested against Marinovic's invitation.

References

  1. "Mag. Dr. Martin Graf, Biografie | Parlament Österreich". www.parlament.gv.at (in German).
  2. ^ Thomas Hochwarter, "FPÖ's swordsman Graf 3rd President", Wiener Zeitung, 29 October 2008
  3. Biography of Martin Graf, Austrian Parliament, http://www.parlament.gv.at/EN/AP/NR/PRAES/PRAES/BIOGR/show.psp?P_INF2=3,
  4. http://www.sundayherald.com/international/shinternational/display.var.2502909.0.0.php "Sunday Herald: The Hitler Legacy"
  5. ^ "Disputed Far-Rightist Elected to Top Post in Austrian Parliament" DW-World.de, 29 October 2008
  6. Prosecutor angling to nail FPÖ man Graf "Prosecutor angling to nail FP? Man Graf - General News - Austrian Times Online News - English Newspaper". Archived from the original on 31 May 2011. Retrieved 24 February 2009.
  7. "Archived copy" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on 19 October 2007. Retrieved 6 May 2009.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link) German Office for the Protection of the Constitution
  8. Austria's Far Right Blames the Jews…Again

External links

Categories: