Dr. Karl Renner - Vienna, Austria
Posted by: 
Metro2
N 48° 12.537 E 016° 21.587
33U E 601022 N 5340418
Dr. Karl Renner was the First President of the Second Austrian Republic after the fall of Nazi Germany.
Waymark Code: WMK54X
Location: Wien, Austria
Date Posted: 02/14/2014
Views: 13
This Monument to Dr. Karl Renner is located on the Ringstrasse not far from the Parliament Building. It has a larger than life bust made from a silver-colored metal atop a black marble plinth which is surrounded by a metal-framed gazebo-like structure. Renner is depicted as a middle-aged bearded man...with the features not rendered very clearly. Unfortunately there is no sign at the site indicating the artist or date...nor could that information be found online.
Wikipedia (
visit link) informs us:
" Karl Renner (help·info) (14 December 1870 – 31 December 1950) was an Austrian politician of the Social Democratic Party. He is called the Father of the Republic because he headed the first government in German Austria and the First Austrian Republic in 1918/19, and was once again decisive in establishing the present Second Republic after the fall of Nazi Germany in 1945, becoming its first President.
The 1977–1978 academic year at the College of Europe was named in his honour...
In April 1945, just before the collapse of the Third Reich, the defeat of Germany and the end of the war, Renner set up a Provisional Government in Vienna with other politicians from the three revived parties Social Democratic Party (SPÖ), Austrian People's Party (ÖVP, a conservative successor to the Christian Social Party) and Communist Party (KPÖ). On April 27, by a declaration, this Provisional Government separated Austria from Germany and campaigned for the country to be acknowledged as an independent republic. As a result of Renner's actions Austria was to benefit greatly in the eyes of the Allies as she had fulfilled the stipulation of the Moscow Declaration of 1943, where the Foreign Secretaries of US, UK and USSR declared that the annexation (Anschluss) of Austria by Germany was null and void calling for the establishment of a free Austria after the victory over Nazi Germany provided that Austria could demonstrate that she had undertaken suitable actions of her own in that direction. Thus Austria, having been invaded by Germany, was treated as an unwilling party and "the first victim" of Nazi Germany. Being suspicious of the fact that the Russians in Vienna were the first to accept Renner's Cabinet, the Western Allies hesitated half a year with their recognition, but his Provisional Government was in the end recognised by all Four Powers on Oct. 20 and Renner was thus the first post-war Chancellor. In late 1945, he was elected the first President of the Second Republic.
Karl Renner died in 1950 in Vienna and was buried in the Presidential Tomb at the Zentralfriedhof. Relatives of Karl Renner still live in the United States in the states of New York, California, and Utah. One of Renner's grandsons, Karl Deutsch-Renner, a well known journalist at the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, died in Ottawa in 2005 at the age of 95. His brother John (Hans) Deutsch-Renner died in Washington D.C. in 2004. A granddaughter of Dr. Karl Renner and sister of Karl and Hans Deutsch-Renner still lives in northern California."