Heinz Fischer

Heinz Fischer  link (Politician)
Born	9 October 1938 Graz, Germany
Nationality	Austrian
Alma mater	University of Vienna
Children	2
Spouse	Margit Binder
Party	Social Democratic Party of Austria, Independent
Relatives	Otto Binder, Lennart Binder
Austrian politician who was selected for Henry Kissinger's Harvard/International Seminar, then became President of Austria for 12 years. 3 Bilderberg

Heinz Fischer is an Austrian politician who was selected for Henry Kissinger's Harvard International Seminar 1967, and later became President of Austria from 2004 until 2016. He attended 3 Bilderberg meetings.

Background

Fischer was born in Graz, Styria, into a Social democratic family. His father, section head Rudolf Fischer (1908-2001), was state secretary in the Ministry of Commerce. He was an avowed Esperantist and for many years chairman of the workers' Esperantists of Austria.

According to his own statement, Heinz Fischer spent a few months as a young man in a kibbutz in Israel. His father-in-law, Otto Binder, as well as his own grandfather, Jakob Fischer (1876-1964), were Jews.

Education

He graduated from high school in 1956. He studied law at the University of Vienna, getting a doctorate in 1961. Apart from being a politician, Fischer also pursued an academic career, and became a professor of Political Science at the University of Innsbruck in 1994.

Fischer was selected to attend Henry Kissinger's Harvard International Seminar in 1967.

Career

Fischer was a member of the Austrian parliament, the National Council, from 1971, and was its president from 1990 to 2002. He attended the 1979 Bilderberg meeting when deputy party chairman. From 1983 to 1987 he was minister for science in a coalition government headed by Fred Sinowatz.

In January 2004 Fischer announced that he would run for president to succeed Thomas Klestil. He was elected on 25 April 2004 as the candidate of the opposition Social Democratic Party. He polled 52.4 per cent of the votes to defeat Benita Ferrero-Waldner, then foreign minister in the ruling conservative coalition led by the People's Party.

Fischer was sworn in on 8 July 2004 and took over office from the college of presidents of the National Council, who had acted for the president following Klestil's death on 6 July.

In April 2010, Fischer was re-elected president of Austria, winning a second six-year term in office with almost 79% of the votes. The voter turnout of merely 53.6% was a record low. Around a third of those eligible to vote voted for Fischer, leading the conservative daily Die Presse to describe the election as an "absolute majority for non-voters". The other large party, ÖVP, had not nominated a candidate of their own, and had not endorsed any of the three candidates. Prominent ÖVP members, unofficially but in public, even suggested to cast a blank vote, which 7% of the voters did.

Post-presidency

In 2017, he and former UN secretary-general Ban-Ki Moon co-founded the Ban Ki-Moon Centre for Global Citizens, an international non-governmental organization to advance the Sustainable Development Goals, headquartered in Vienna.

In November 2021, at the same time Austria became the first country to make COVID "Vaccine" mandatory, Fischer joined a campaign to propagandize for the jab. It focused "on the personal experiences and convictions of prominent Viennese people, such as: 'My daughter is a doctor and advised us to get vaccinated. You can't play with the pandemic. We have to do everything together to get rid of it. It is in everyone's interest for them to do something good by getting vaccinated,'" said Fischer.