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Gedenkdienst
Gedenkdienst is the concept of facing and taking responsibility for the darkest chapters of one's own country's history while ideally being financially supported by one's own country's government to do so. Founded in Austria in 1992 by Andreas Maislinger the Gedenkdienst is an alternative to Austria's compulsory national military service as well as a volunteering platform for Austrians to work in Holocaust- and Jewish culture-related institutions around the world with governmental financial support. In Austria it is also referred to as Austrian Holocaust Memorial Service provided by the Austrian Service Abroad. The Austrian Gedenkdienst serves the remembrance of the crimes of Nazism, commemorates its victims and supports Jewish cultural future. The program is rooted in the acknoledgment of responsibility by the Austrian government for the crimes committed by National Socialism. Concept Gedenkdienst is the concept of facing and taking responsibility for the darkest chapters of ...
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Austrian Service Abroad
The Austrian Service Abroad is a non-profit organization founded by Andreas Hörtnagl, Andreas Maislinger and Michael Prochazka in 1998, which sends young Austrians to work in partner institutions worldwide serving Holocaust commemoration in form of the Gedenkdienst, supporting vulnerable social groups and sustainability initiatives in form of the Austrian Social Service and realizing projects of peace within the framework of the Austrian Peace Service. Its services aim at the permanence of life on earth. The Austrian Service Abroad carries and promotes the idea of the House of Responsibility for the birthplace of Adolf Hitler in Braunau am Inn. The Austrian Service Abroad is the issuer of the annually conferred Austrian Holocaust Memorial Award. The program is funded by the Austrian government. Origin The Austrian Service Abroad has its origin in the acknowledgement of the Austrian government, in particular by chancellor Franz Vranitzky in 1991, regarding the Austrian peopl ...
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Andreas Maislinger
Andreas Maislinger (born 26 February 1955 in St. Georgen near Salzburg, Austria) is an Austrian historian and political scientist and founder and chairman of the Austrian Service Abroad, including the Gedenkdienst, the Austrian Social Service and the Austrian Peace Service. He also is the founder of the Austrian Holocaust Memorial Award, the Braunau Contemporary History Days and the inventor of the idea of the House of Responsibility regarding the birthplace of Adolf Hitler. Studying and learning Maislinger studied law and political science in Salzburg and political science and eastern-European history in Vienna, with study visits in, amongst others, Frankfurt am Main and Innsbruck. During his studies in Salzburg, Maislinger advocated for Austrian participation in the International Youth Meeting Center in Oświęcim/Auschwitz; Austrian president Rudolf Kirchschläger declined. Kirchschläger later acknowledged the value of Maislinger's proposal of civilian service for reconcili ...
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Holocaust
The Holocaust, also known as the Shoah, was the genocide of European Jews during World War II. Between 1941 and 1945, Nazi Germany and its collaborators systematically murdered some six million Jews across German-occupied Europe; around two-thirds of Europe's Jewish population. The murders were carried out in pogroms and mass shootings; by a policy of extermination through labor in concentration camps; and in gas chambers and gas vans in German extermination camps, chiefly Auschwitz-Birkenau, Bełżec, Chełmno, Majdanek, Sobibór, and Treblinka in occupied Poland. Germany implemented the persecution in stages. Following Adolf Hitler's appointment as chancellor on 30 January 1933, the regime built a network of concentration camps in Germany for political opponents and those deemed "undesirable", starting with Dachau on 22 March 1933. After the passing of the Enabling Act on 24 March, which gave Hitler dictatorial plenary powers, the government began isolating Je ...
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Michael Spindelegger
Michael Spindelegger (born 21 December 1959) is an Austrian politician. He served in the cabinet of Chancellor Werner Faymann as foreign minister of Austria from 2008 to 2013 and as finance minister from 2013 to 2014; additionally, he held the office of vice-chancellor from 2011 to 2014. Spindelegger was also the leader of the Austrian People's Party (ÖVP) from 2011 to 2014. In August 2014 he unexpectedly resigned from all political positions. Since 2016, he has been serving as Director General of the Vienna-based International Centre for Migration Policy Development (ICMPD). Early and personal life Spindelegger was born in Mödling, Lower Austria. His father Erich, a railway worker and union leader, was mayor of Hinterbrühl, a suburb of Vienna, and represented the Mödling district in the National Council in the Austrian Parliament.Eric Culp (May 11, 2011)The quiet Austrian'' European Voice''. He went to school in Hinterbrühl (1965–1969) and to the Keimgasse '' gymna ...
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Wolfgang Schüssel
Wolfgang Schüssel (; born 7 June 1945) is an Austrian People's Party politician. He was Chancellor of Austria for two consecutive terms from February 2000 to January 2007. While being recognised as a rare example of an active reformer in contemporary Austrian politics, his governments were also highly controversial from the beginning, starting with the fact that he formed a coalition government with Jörg Haider's Freedom Party of Austria (FPÖ) on both occasions. In 2011, he retired from being an active member of parliament due to a multitude of charges of corruption against members of his governments. Early life, education, and start in politics Born in Vienna, Schüssel attended that city's ''Schottengymnasium'', a well known Roman Catholic '' gymnasium'' for boys, where he took his ''Matura'' exams in 1963. He went on to study at the University of Vienna, receiving a doctorate in law in 1968. Schüssel was secretary of the parliamentary group of the Austrian People's Pa ...
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Dietmar Schönherr
Dietmar Otto Schönherr (; 17 May 1926 – 18 July 2014) was an Austrian film actor. He appeared in 120 films between 1944 and 2014. He was famous for playing the role of Major Cliff Allister McLane in the German science fiction series '' Raumpatrouille''. He was born in Innsbruck, Austria. He was married to the Danish actress Vivi Bach from 1965 until her death in 2013. In 2011 he was awarded with the Austrian Cross of Honour for Science and Art, 1st class. Selected filmography * ' (''Young Eagles'') (1944) - Theo Brakke * ''Les Amours de Blanche-Neige'' (1947) - Joe Burton * ''Das Fräulein und der Vagabund'' (1949) - Gerhard Renken * ' (1951) - Vigo, Leutnant der Grenzpolizei * '' Love's Carnival'' (1955) - Leutnant Hans Rudloff * '' Bonjour Kathrin'' (1956) - Duval * ' (1956) - Müller-Staen jr. * ' (1956) - Ferry Singer * ''Das Mädchen Marion'' (1956) - Günter Legler, Turnierreiter * ''Made in Germany'' (1957) - Dr. Roderich Zeiss * ''Die verpfuschte Hochzeitsnacht'' ( ...
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Christoph Schönborn
Christoph Maria Michael Hugo Damian Peter Adalbert Graf von Schönborn, O.P. (; born 22 January 1945) is a Bohemian-born Austrian Dominican friar and theologian, who is a cardinal of the Catholic Church. He serves as the Archbishop of Vienna and was the Chairman of the Austrian Bishops' Conference from 1998 to 2020. He was elevated to the cardinalate in 1998. He is also Grand Chaplain of the Order of the Golden Fleece (Austrian branch), of which he has been a member since 1961. He is a member of the formerly sovereign princely House of Schönborn, several members of which held high offices of the Holy Roman Empire and the Catholic Church as prince-bishops, prince-electors and cardinals. Family and early life Schönborn was born at Skalka Castle, west of Litoměřice in Bohemia (then Czechoslovakia, now part of the Czech Republic), the second son of , and Eleonore Schönborn. He is a member of the princely House of Schönborn whose members have historically borne the title of ...
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Walter Kohn
Walter Kohn (; March 9, 1923 – April 19, 2016) was an Austrian-American theoretical physicist and theoretical chemist. He was awarded, with John Pople, the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1998. The award recognized their contributions to the understandings of the electronic properties of materials. In particular, Kohn played the leading role in the development of density functional theory, which made it possible to calculate quantum mechanical electronic structure by equations involving the electronic density (rather than the many-body wavefunction). This computational simplification led to more accurate calculations on complex systems as well as many new insights, and it has become an essential tool for materials science, condensed-phase physics, and the chemical physics of atoms and molecules. Early years in Canada Kohn arrived in England as part of the Kindertransport rescue operation immediately after the annexation of Austria by Hitler. He was from a Jewish family, and has wr ...
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Thomas Klestil
Thomas Klestil (; 4 November 1932 – 6 July 2004) was an Austrian diplomat and politician who served as President of Austria from 1992 to his death in 2004. He was elected in 1992 and re-elected into office in 1998. Biography until 1992 Born in Vienna to a working class family — his father was a tramway employee — Klestil went to school in Landstraße where he made friends with Joe Zawinul. He studied at the Vienna University of Economics and Business Administration and received his doctorate in 1957. After entering the civil service he worked in Austria as well as abroad, e.g. for OECD. In 1969, he established the Austrian consul (representative), consulate-general in Los Angeles, where he befriended Arnold Schwarzenegger. Fluent in English, Klestil was the Austrian Ambassador (diplomacy), ambassador to the United Nations (1978–1982) and Ambassador to the United States (1982–1987) prior to his election as president. Presidency After being nominated by the conservati ...
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National Socialism
Nazism ( ; german: Nazismus), the common name in English for National Socialism (german: Nationalsozialismus, ), is the far-right politics, far-right Totalitarianism, totalitarian political ideology and practices associated with Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party (NSDAP) in Nazi Germany. During Hitler's rise to power in 1930s Europe, it was frequently referred to as Hitlerism (german: Hitlerfaschismus). The later related term "neo-Nazism" is applied to other far-right groups with similar ideas which formed after the Second World War. Nazism is a form of fascism, with disdain for liberal democracy and the parliamentary system. It incorporates a dictatorship, fervent antisemitism, anti-communism, scientific racism, and the use of eugenics into its creed. Its extreme nationalism originated in pan-Germanism and the ethno-nationalist ''Völkisch movement, Völkisch'' movement which had been a prominent aspect of German nationalism since the late 19th century, and it was strongly i ...
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Austria – The Nazis' First Victim
The victim theory (german: Opferthese), encapsulated in the slogan "Austria – the Nazis' first victim", was the ideological basis for Austria under allied occupation (1945–1955) and in the Second Austrian Republic until the 1980s. According to the founders of the Second Austrian Republic, the 1938 ''Anschluss'' was an act of military aggression by the Third Reich. Austrian statehood had been interrupted and therefore the newly revived Austria of 1945 could not and should not be considered responsible for the Nazis' crimes in any way. The "victim theory" which was formed by 1949 insisted that all of the Austrians, including those who strongly supported Hitler, had been unwilling victims of the Nazi regime and were therefore not responsible for its crimes. The "victim theory" became a fundamental myth in Austrian society. It made it possible for previously bitter political opponents – e.g. the social democrats and the conservative Catholics – to unite and bring former Na ...
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