BRUNO KREISKY PRIZE
FOR SERVICES TO HUMAN RIGHTS
 
FOUNDATION
     
  Actual: 30 years Bruno Kreisky Foundation for Human Rights, only German texts are available >> Link  
     
  At the time of his 65th birthday, Bruno Kreisky asked colleagues dispense with gifts. A circle of friends and co-workers of the then mayor of Vienna, Leopold Gratz, and the president of the Austrian Trade Union Federation, Anton Benya, evolved the idea of a Foundation and a Prize for Services to Human Rights, which should bear the name of Kreisky.  
     
 

At that time the Austrian perception of the problems of international human rights was determined by the crimes of dictatorial regimes in Central and South America, the Soviet bloc and the beginnings of the Conference for Security and Cooperation in Europe process, the apartheid system in South Africa and the under-developed southern hemisphere, and the North-South conflict.

 

Bruno Kreisky had been imprisoned by both the Dollfuß regime in 1935 for 15 months and by the National Socialists in 1938 for another five months, and eventually forced into exil in Sweden, from where he returned only in 1951.

These experiences marked his political life, most especially in relation to dictatorial regimes, human rights abuses and regarding those who must seek asylum.


Bruno Kreisky in exile in Sweden
Bruno Kreisky
   

These experiences were reflected in Kreisky's policies on the great issues of his time, the East-West conflict and Détente, development aid policies, but also in his engagement for individuals in east Europe or Latin America.


Criminal Identification Department photo 1935.

 

„In awareness of the responsibility I bear, and in its broadest sense, I have come to the conclusion that it is necessary, without hate and without design, to intervene in the internal affairs of other states.“


13 September, 1971, Bruno Kreisky, conference of the international council of Amnesty International.
 

To emphasise the independent and non-partisan character of the foundation, companies and institutions which were not allied to the Social Democratic camp in Austria also contributed to raising the capital for the foundation. € 700,000 (ATS 10 million) were collected in two tranches. The foundation is financed substantially from returns on this capital until the present.

The foundation was initially tied to the Austrian Trade Union Federation, ÖGB, then the Bruno Kreisky Archive, and is today connected to the Democracy Centre Vienna.

Since its foundation Professor Alfred Ströer, former member of parliament and leading unionist, has been in charge of it as managing director, most recently together with Prof. DDr. Oliver Rathkolb. Austrian tax regulations require that the foundation distribute 50% of prize money within Austria.

 

Bruno Kreisky with friends Olof Palme and Willy Brandt in the
garden at Armbrustergasse 15 in Vienna.

While Bruno Kreisky exercised no influence over the establishing of the foundation, the composition of the first international and independent jury most definitely did reflect the international network of Kreisky the statesman. As well as international personalities such as the German journalist and Resistance fighter Countess Marion Dönhoff, statesmen and personal friends of Kreisky Willy Brandt, Olof Palme and Roland Dumas, Austrian social science experts, such as Professor Herwig Büchele, SJ, were also prominent jury members. This emphasised the foundation's readiness in its awards to also honour special merit in the area of protecting and supporting economic and social human rights.

____top