On January 18th at 9:05 p.m. on ORF 2
Vienna (OTS) – On January 18, 2024, Federal President Alexander Van der Bellen will celebrate his 80th birthday. The new “People & Powers” production “Alexander Van der Bellen – From Refugee Child to President” by Roland Adrowitzer and Viktoria Tatschl reconstructs his biography of the refugee child from the time of the Second World War on Thursday, January 18th at 9:05 p.m. on ORF 2 via the eloquent economics professor to the first head of state who does not come from the ranks of the grand coalition.
Van der Bellen was born in Vienna in 1944 as the son of an Estonian-Russian refugee family. The Red Army’s advance on the city forced the family to move further to the west of the country in the spring of 1945. They finally end up in the Tyrolean Kaunertal, where “Sascha” Van der Bellen spends his first years of childhood. While filming in Kaunertal, former mayor Josef Raich talks about the traditional, positive excitement in the valley when Van der Bellen’s father, a “global merchant” from Estonia, settled there with his family.
Alexander Van der Bellen spends his school and study years in Innsbruck. In high school he became head boy, recalls his school colleague at the time, Tilmann Märk. “In a sense, you could see this as your first political activity,” he adds. However, as a doctor of economics, the future politician initially pursued a career in science and appeared in the media for the first time as an economic expert in “Club 2” programs. His former doctoral student Peter Pilz brought him into politics in 1993: “I had the feeling that he was a bit boring at university, but it still wasn’t easy to convince him.”
Van der Bellen became a member of the National Council for the Greens, and in 1997 he took over the party chairmanship for eleven years. In 2016, Alexander Van der Bellen is running for the office of Federal President. The dramatic runoff election with a repeat election against the liberal candidate Norbert Hofer is leading to unprecedented polarization in the country, which is also causing a stir internationally. As Federal President, Van der Bellen initially strives for reconciliation. However, his relationship with the FPÖ remains tense. “I think that the way he did politics was not entirely non-partisan,” said Norbert Hofer in an interview.
Van der Bellen’s term of office included the Ibiza scandal, the deselection of Sebastian Kurz as Chancellor, the appointment of a civil servant government with Brigitte Bierlein as the first woman in the Chancellery, as well as the corona pandemic and chat affairs. The map of political action in these times is the Austrian Federal Constitution, which Van der Bellen attests to elegance. Statements like “That’s not who we are” or “What happened again?” are part of the president’s ironic undertone.
In the “People & Powers” documentary, in addition to the head of state himself, many companions have their say, including former Federal President Heinz Fischer, former Federal Chancellor Wolfgang Schüssel, former Federal Chancellor Brigitte Bierlein, Salzburg’s long-time festival president Helga Rabl-Stadler and the Climate activist Lena Schilling. Foreign heads of state such as Slovenian President Nataša Pirc Musar and German Federal President Frank-Walter Steinmeier also speak about their Austrian counterpart and what unites them in Europe.