Federation of Independents
former political party
The Federation of Independents (German: Verband der Unabhängigen, VdU) was a German nationalist and national-liberal political party in Austria active from 1949 to 1955. It was the predecessor of the Freedom Party of Austria (FPÖ).
Formation
The party was officially founded on 25 March 1949 by Herbert Kraus and Viktor Reimann. The party's formation had been encouraged by the Socialist Party of Austria (SPÖ), which sought to split the right-wing vote in the 1949 legislative election in order to weaken the conservative People's Party (ÖVP) and gain a parliamentary majority. On the next day the constituent assembly was held at Salzburg, then in the US occupation zone. Herbert Kraus was elected Chairman (Bundesobmann), while Viktor Reimann, Josef Karoly, Karl Hartleb and Karl Winkler were appointed Vice-Chairmen (Bundesobmann-Stellvertreter). Kraus was party leader until 1952.
VdU saw itself as representing the interests of former members of the Nazi Party, expellees from Central and Eastern Europe, returning prisoners of war and other discontent portions of the Austrian population. Although close to the ÖVP, the party also advocated liberal individualism, and did not concern itself much with the "Catholic question." VdU supported the abolition of denazification laws limiting the political activities of former Nazis.
While Kraus and Reimann (who himself had been active in the resistance against the Nazis) envisioned a liberal and moderately nationalist party, an alternative to the dominant SPÖ and ÖVP, appealing to the educated middle- and upper middle-class, VdU in fact became a rallying point for former National Socialists.
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This entry incorporates text from “Federation of Independents” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.