Kurt Waldheim (*1918)
Federal President from 1986 until 1992
The Predecessors Kurt Waldheim comes from St.Andrä-Wörder n in Lower Austria. After leaving school, he served for some time in the Austrian Federal Army before he entered the Consular Academy and started to study law at Vienna University. Then he was conscripted into the German Wehrmacht where he was assigned to various fronts in the Second World War. After 1945, Waldheim joined the diplomatic service. He served in Paris, at the United Nations in New York and in Ottawa.In 1968, Federal Chancellor Josef Klaus made him Foreign Minister, but not long after, in1970, he became Austria’s Ambassador to the United Nations. As the Austrian People’s Party’s candidate in the presidential elections in 1971, he was narrowly defeated by the incumbent Federal President, Franz Jonas.In the same year, he was unanimously elected Secretary-General of the United Nations. In 1976, he was re-elected for another term of five years. After a spell as a Professor at Georgetown University in Washington DC, he was elected Austrian Federal President on the Austrian People’s Party’s ticket on 8 June 1986. His term of office ended on 8 July 1992.
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