Figl, Leopold

(1902–1965)

   Trained as an agricultural engineer, Figl was one of the moving forces in the refounding of the Christian Social Party (CP) as the Austrian People’s Party (ÖVP) following World War II. A spokesman for Austrian farmers and agrarian interests in the interwar period, Figl was the executive officer of the Lower Austrian Peasants’ Union between 1934 and 1938. Deeply opposed to German Nazism and the Anschluss, Figl spent the war in two concentration camps, Dachau between 1938 and 1943 and Mauthausen from 1944 to 1945. Serving in a variety of political offices as a representative of his party—from 1945 to 1953 he was the Austrian chancellor and from 1953 to 1959 the foreign minister—Figl worked to erase the ideological antagonisms that had poisoned relations between the CP and the Social Democratic Workers’ Party of Austria between the two wars. His personal political agenda stressed goals that a majority of Austrians supported: economic recovery and the restoration of independence.

   Figl signed the Austrian State Treaty for his country in 1955. His flexibility and willingness to accommodate the Socialists, however, were heavily criticized within his own party, leading to his resignation from the chancellorship in 1953 in favor of Julius Raab.

   See also Political Parties.