AUSTRIA: Comes Herr Figl

Austria’s Dr. Karl Renner, the veteran Social Democrat whom Russia had placed in power, last week resigned as Chancellor. The Volkspartei, victorious at the elections (TIME, Dec. 3) was busy organizing a new multi-party Cabinet. The incoming Chancellor, slender, pleasant, subtle, 43, was a man few Austrians knew much about until the Allied victory in Europe. His name: Leopold Figl.

Figl had played a minor role in pre-Anschluss politics. Politically to the left of Dollfuss, he was never close to the inner circle of Dollfuss’ Christian Social Party. A peasant-born agronomist, Figl was a director of the Catholic Bauernbund (farmer’s association) of Lower Austria.

When Hitler came, Figl, who opposed Anschluss, obscurely and honorably disappeared into concentration camps, first Dachau, then Flossenburg. After six years the Nazis slipped up, set him free. Promptly Figl set to work as an organizer in what little underground movement Austria developed. He represented the Austrian resistance in contacts with the much stronger Polish underground. After liberation he founded the Volkspartei of small agrarians, much like Mikolajczyk’s Polish Peasant Party.

The Vatican, which keeps a close eye on Austrian developments, was delighted with Figl’s victory. Informally, Vatican circles last week called it “clear proof of Austria’s intention to tread the middle path between leftist extremism and out-of-date conservatism in harmony with the great, widespread European movement, now apparent, toward progressive moderation.”

By last week Leopold Figl had charted his first objectives for Austria: 1) reduction in the size of the Allied occupation armies; 2) a foreign policy turned toward the West, but hoping to bridge East and West; 3) solution of food and fuel problems. Point three was crucial. Said Figl: “Only a government that, with Allied help, can provide food and fuel, will survive.”