Federation of Independents

The Association of Independents ( VdU ), also choice of the Independent Party ( WdU ), was an Austrian party in the Second Republic and the predecessor of today's party FPÖ.

History

As a party of VdU was founded in 1949 by Herbert Alois Kraus and Viktor Reimann. The original founding of the Union of Independents ( as a club ) was the 25th März 1949. The next day the Constituent General Meeting was held in Salzburg. Kraus was federal party leader, federal deputy chairman were Josef Karoly, Karl Hartleb, Karl Winkler and Viktor Reimann.

While the ÖVP feared a splintering of the bourgeois camp, supported the SPÖ, including Interior Minister Oskar Helmer, the establishment of the Union of Independents. This saw himself as the political representative of former NSDAP members, expellees and returnees. In the second free parliamentary election (1949 ) after the Second World War, the Union of Independents ran for election party of the Independent for the first time, reaching 11.7 % of the vote their best result, which she won by two major parties to the same extent votes - the calculus of " cleavage of the bourgeois camp " was not risen. The best results were achieved in the WdU Inn and Hausruckviertel ( in Wels over 30%) in upper Carinthia and Vorarlberg, thus in the traditional strongholds of the "third camp".

In the subsequent elections in 1953 the Union of Independents formed an electoral alliance with the action for political renewal, a right-wing conservative ÖVP elimination, and easily lost votes. These voices losses and internal squabbles between party officials meant that the VdU not with the People's Party developed, but mainly a refuge for German national -minded forces was.

In 1956, the Association of Independents was extinguished, or by the newly founded Austrian Freedom Party ( FPÖ) absorbed.