Kurt Waldheim facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
Kurt Waldheim
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Waldheim during a press conference at the United Nations Headquarters in 1981
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| Secretary-General of the United Nations | |
| In office 1 January 1972 – 31 December 1981 |
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| Preceded by | U Thant |
| Succeeded by | Javier Pérez de Cuéllar |
| President of Austria | |
| In office 8 July 1986 – 8 July 1992 |
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| Chancellor | Franz Vranitzky |
| Preceded by | Rudolf Kirchschläger |
| Succeeded by | Thomas Klestil |
| Minister of Foreign Affairs | |
| In office 19 January 1968 – 21 April 1970 |
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| Chancellor | Josef Klaus |
| Preceded by | Lujo Tončić-Sorinj |
| Succeeded by | Rudolf Kirchschläger |
| Personal details | |
| Born | 21 December 1918 Sankt Andrä-Wördern, Lower Austria, Republic of German-Austria |
| Died | 14 June 2007 (aged 88) Vienna, Austria |
| Political party | ÖVP |
| Spouse | |
| Children | 3 |
| Alma mater |
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| Profession |
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| Signature |  |
| Military service | |
| Allegiance |  Federal State of Austria
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| Branch/service |  Austrian Armed Forces German Army |
| Rank | Oberleutnant |
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| Battles/wars | World War II |
| Awards |
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Kurt Josef Waldheim ( 21 December 1918 – 14 June 2007) was an Austrian politician and diplomat. Waldheim was the Secretary-General of the United Nations from 1972 to 1981 and president of Austria from 1986 to 1992. While he was running for the latter office in the 1986 election, the revelation of his service in Greece and Yugoslavia, and participation in Nazi atrocities, as an intelligence officer in Nazi Germany's Wehrmacht during World War II, raised international controversy.
Contents
Early life and education
Waldheim was born in Sankt Andrä-Wördern, near Vienna, on 21 December 1918. He was the eldest child of Walter Watzlawik, a schoolmaster of Czech origin, and his wife Josefine Petrasch. Watzlawick (original Czech spelling Václavík) changed his name to "Waldheim" that year as the Habsburg monarchy collapsed and eventually rose to become superintendent of schools for the Tulln District, attaining the rank of Regierungsrat (government councillor). Active in the Christian Social Party, he was well regarded as a devoutly Catholic family man. Waldheim and his two younger siblings, a brother, Walther, and a sister, Gerlinde, enjoyed a comfortable middle-class upbringing. From his youth, Waldheim was distinguished by his unusual height of 1.92 m (6 ft 4 in). As a gymnasium student in Klosterneuburg, he excelled at languages and was a competent violinist in the school orchestra, also enjoying swimming, boating and tennis.
Although his father wanted him to study medicine, Waldheim had an aversion to the sight of blood, and had already decided to enter the foreign service. In March 1936, the Schuschnigg government passed a law mandating a period of military service for prospective civil servants. Consequently, following his graduation Waldheim volunteered for a 12-month term of enlistment in the Austrian Army, and was posted to the 1st Dragoon Regiment on his 18th birthday. In the autumn of 1937, now an army reservist, Waldheim entered the prestigious Consular Academy in Vienna on a scholarship, where he began his studies in law and diplomacy. Along with his family, Waldheim opposed the German annexation of Austria in 1938, and while actively campaigning against it in Vienna was attacked and injured by Austrian Nazis. Following the annexation, Waldheim's father was briefly arrested by the Gestapo and dismissed from his post, while Waldheim's scholarship was cancelled. He managed to continue his studies by working as a Latin and Greek tutor and borrowing funds from relatives.
Waldheim applied for membership in the National Socialist German Students' League (NSDStB), a division of the Nazi Party. Shortly thereafter he became a member of the Sturmabteilung (SA), the Nazi Party's original paramilitary wing.
On 19 August 1944, he married Elisabeth Ritschel in Vienna; their first daughter, Lieselotte, was born the following year. A son, Gerhard, and another daughter, Christa, followed.
Military service in World War II
In early 1941, Waldheim was drafted into the Wehrmacht, the armed forces of Nazi Germany, specifically to the Heer (Army), and posted to the Eastern Front where he served as a squad leader. In December, he was wounded but returned to service in 1942. His service from 1942 to 1945 was the subject of international review in 1985 and 1986. In his 1985 autobiography, he claimed that he was discharged from further service at the front and, for the remainder of the war, finished his law degree at the University of Vienna, in addition to marrying in 1944. After publication, documents and witnesses came to light that revealed Waldheim's military service continued until 1945, during which time he rose to the rank of Oberleutnant.
Diplomatic career
After finishing his studies in law at the University of Vienna Waldheim joined the Austrian diplomatic service in 1945. He served as First Secretary of the Legation in Paris from 1948, and in the Ministry for Foreign Affairs in Vienna from 1951 to 1956. In 1956 he was made Ambassador to Canada, returning to the Ministry in 1960, after which he became the Permanent Representative of Austria to the United Nations in 1964. For two years beginning in 1968, he was the Federal Minister for Foreign Affairs for the Austrian People's Party, before going back as Permanent Representative to the U.N. in 1970. Shortly afterwards, he ran and was defeated in the 1971 Austrian presidential elections.
United Nations Secretary-General
As secretary-general from 1972 onward, Waldheim opened and addressed a number of major international conferences convened under United Nations auspices. These included the third session of the U.N. Conference on Trade and Development (Santiago, April 1972), the U.N. Conference on the Human Environment (Stockholm, June 1972), the third UN Conference on the Law of the Sea (Caracas, June 1974), the Third World Population Conference (Bucharest, August 1974) and the World Food Conference (Rome, November 1974), and the World Conference on Women, 1975 (Mexico City, June 1975). During the later, UN Resolution 3379, which considered Zionism as a form of racism and equated it with South African Apartheid, was approved by impulse of Arab countries, the Soviet bloc, and Non-Aligned Movement countries. His diplomatic efforts particularly in the Middle East were overshadowed by the diplomacy of then U.S. Secretary of State, Henry Kissinger.
In 1977, Waldheim recorded a greeting for the Voyager Golden Records, a pair of discs containing sounds and images representing the diversity of life and culture on Earth, which were launched into deep space on the Voyager spacecraft. The craft were also inscribed with a written message from then-U.S. President Jimmy Carter.
Waldheim was the first Secretary-General to visit North Korea, in 1979. Near the end of his tenure as secretary-general, Waldheim and British popular musician Paul McCartney organized a series of concerts for the People of Kampuchea to help Cambodia recover from the damage done by Pol Pot.
Presidency of Austria
Waldheim had unsuccessfully sought election as President of Austria in 1971, but his second attempt on 8 June 1986 proved successful. During his campaign for the presidency in 1985, what became known internationally as the "Waldheim affair" began. Before the presidential elections, investigative journalist Alfred Worm revealed in the Austrian weekly news magazine Profil that Waldheim's recently published autobiography had several omissions about his life between 1938 and 1945.
Waldheim had previously claimed to have received a medical discharge after being wounded in winter 1942. His aides at the United Nations even accused the Israeli mission of spreading rumors that he supported the Nazis. Israeli ambassador Yehuda Zvi Blum denied the charges, saying, "We don't believe Waldheim ever supported the Nazis and we never said he did. We have many differences with him, but that isn't one of them."
A short time later, beginning on 4 March 1986, the World Jewish Congress alleged that Waldheim had lied about his service in the mounted corps of the SA and had concealed his service as a special missions staff officer (Ordonnanzoffizier) for Germany's Army Group E in Yugoslavia and Greece, from 1942 to 1944, based primarily on captured German wartime records held at the United States National Archives in Washington, DC, and in other archives. The 23 March 1986 public disclosure by the World Jewish Congress that the organization had unearthed the fact that the United Nations War Crimes Commission concluded after the war that Waldheim was implicated in Nazi mass murder and should be arrested arguably transformed the Waldheim affair into the most sensational of all post-war Nazi scandals.
Waldheim called the allegations, which grew in magnitude in the ensuing months, "pure lies and malicious acts".
In view of the ongoing international controversy, the Austrian government decided to appoint an international committee of historians to examine Waldheim's life between 1938 and 1945. Their report found no evidence of any personal involvement in those crimes. Although Waldheim had stated that he was unaware of any crimes taking place, the committee cited evidence that Waldheim must have known about war crimes. The International Committee in February 1988 concluded that Waldheim had been "in close proximity to some Nazi atrocities, knew they were going on and made no attempt to stop them". The committee also noted that "he only had very minor possibilities to act against the injustices happening".
Later years and death
After his term ended in 1992, Waldheim did not seek re-election. The same year, he was made an honorary member of K.H.V. Welfia Klosterneuburg, a Roman Catholic student fraternity part of the Austrian Cartellverband. In 1994, Pope John Paul II awarded Waldheim a knighthood in the Order of Pius IX and his wife a papal honor. He died on 14 June 2007, at the age of 88 from heart failure. On 23 June, his funeral was held at St. Stephen's Cathedral, Vienna, and he was buried at the Presidential Vault in the Zentralfriedhof ("central cemetery").
In his speech at the cathedral, Federal President Heinz Fischer called Waldheim "a great Austrian" who had been wrongfully accused of having committed war crimes. Fischer also praised Waldheim for his efforts to solve international crises and for his contributions to world peace. At Waldheim's own request, no foreign heads of states or governments were invited to attend his funeral except Hans-Adam II, the Prince of Liechtenstein. Also present was Luis Durnwalder, governor of the Italian province of South Tyrol. Japan and Syria were the only two countries that laid wreaths on his grave. Ban Ki-moon, the secretary-general of the United Nations, issued a message 'voicing sadness'. In a two-page letter, published posthumously by the Austrian Press Agency the day after he died, Waldheim admitted making "mistakes" and asked his critics for forgiveness.
Images for kids
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Waldheim (2nd from left), SS General Artur Phleps (with briefcase), and others at Podgorica airfield in Montenegro during Case Black, 22 May 1943. This photograph caused much controversy when it was published while Waldheim was running in the 1986 Austrian presidential election.
See also
In Spanish: Kurt Waldheim para niños
