Jörg Haider, head of the FPO Liberal party in Austria, now in the new governmental coalition, has also been in charge of culture in the province of Carinthia and his policy has left no doubts about his determination to impose his own views regarding cultural matters. The Governor of Carinthia believes that the development of culture is strictly a popular matter meaning that life in his province is essentially linked to old folkloric customs. As a result, artists sponsored by the Vienna government have not been free to work in that province.
Haider took an interest in culture several years ago and notably claimed that Valentin Oman, an artist from Slovenia, had nothing to do in Carinthia. In 1998 he also lashed out at Cornelius Kollig, a regional artist who had produced frescoes in the palace of the Carinthian government at the request of the authorities of Vienna.
Haider went as far as describing Kollig as decadent while expressing concern about the dilapidation of public funds regarding the costs of his frescoes.
The FPO then launched a violent campaign against Kollig but Haider lost his battle after failing to make people forget that Anton Kollig, father of Cornelius, had produced the frescoes of the regional parliament of Carinthia that the Nazis ripped off in 1938.
It remained that Haider's strategy had much to do with that employed by the Nazis some 60 years ago. For instance his aim was to find a scapegoat to denounce and people were then forced to stand in his favour or against him.
After Haider took power in Klagenfurt, the region's cultural policies underwent deep changes under his direction while the budget for culture was cut down to become the smallest in Austria.
The FPO now supports painters who seem acceptable to its leaders in Carinthia. As a result only conventional artists are set to please them but worse, Haider's main adviser for cultural matters is the editor of an extreme-right wing magazine against which a court action was launched recently after it published articles in support of Nazi revisionist theories.
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