100th birthday - Austria / II. Republic of Austria 2011 - 55 Euro Cent

Bruno Kreisky (22.1.1911 - 29.7.1990) was one of the most important politicians of the Social Democratic movement, as the long-standing Chancellor of the Republic of Austria and a great statesman in the history of the country. Kreisky, a trained lawyer, spent the post-war years as a diplomat in Sweden. In 1951 he returned to Vienna and became an official in the Department of Foreign Affairs in the Chancellery. The then Federal President, Theodor Körner, appointed him as a political advisor and appointed him Cabinet Vice Director. Two years later, Kreisky became Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs and began working in the SPÖ - in this capacity he was also involved in the negotiations on the Austrian State Treaty. In 1959 he became Foreign Minister under Chancellor Julius Raab. In the parliamentary elections on 1 March 1970 Bruno Kreisky, now national chairman of the SPÖ, surprisingly reached the relative majority. Under toleration of the FPÖ he was able to form a minority government and was the first Chancellor. Only a year later he was able to conquer the absolute majority and repeated this victory twice later. His work as chancellor (from 1970 to 1983) initiated a series of long-term reforms in the social and legal system and in the democratization of higher education, in addition to modernizing the laws of family law and the penal system, legalizing abortion and homosexuality. Many social benefits for workers have been extended (among other things, the weekly working time has been reduced to 40 hours) and laws on equal opportunities have been adopted. In terms of fiscal policy Kreisky pursued the course of the so-called "deficit spending" in order to maintain the best possible full employment, which massively burdened the Austrian state budget and the balance sheets of the nationalized companies; his testimony to this - "I'm owed a few billion schillings of debt rather than a few hundred thousand unemployed" - became legendary. On the foreign policy side, Bruno Kreisky took many initiatives to settle the Middle East conflict, promoted the North-South dialogue and was committed to an active peace and development policy. When the SPÖ lost the absolute majority in the 1983 parliamentary elections, Kreisky declined another chancellor period. He resigned the party chairmanship and retired to private life. In 1989 he also completed his work for the Socialist International, whose deputy chairman he was since 1976. On July 29, 1990, Bruno Kreisky died. His funeral, a state ceremony at the Vienna Central Cemetery, took place under great international sympathy.