23 October, 2008

EU: Austrian secrecy

They used to say that the genius of Austria was in persuading the world that Mozart was Austrian* and Hitler wasn't.

Now I think it's a talent for keeping things covered up. If someone had told me the ghastly story of Mr Fritzl and asked me to guess which country it had taken place in, I should immediately have said Austria. It is a country whose former president, Kurt Waldheim, managed to conceal his wartime membership of the SS.

Now we learn that the extreme right politician Joerg Haider, who campaigned for family values, had a homosexual lover.

*Salzburg didn't become part of Austria until the early 19th century

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