Karl Nehammer
Karl Nehammer became chancellor of Austria in the wreckage of a scandal and resigned three years later rather than govern with the far right. He served in the army, worked as a communications trainer for the defence ministry, and rose through the People's Party as its general secretary - a party manager rather than a public figure. He was interior minister when Sebastian Kurz resigned in October 2021 over an investigation into polling paid for with public money and placed in a newspaper, and Kurz's immediate successor lasted two months. He took the chancellorship in December 2021, the third holder of it that year. He flew to Moscow in April 2022 to meet Putin, the first European leader to do so after the invasion of Ukraine, and reported afterwards that the conversation had been very direct and not friendly - a trip criticised as legitimising and defended as necessary. He governed through the inflation of 2022 and 2023 with price caps and payments, and Austria's neutrality kept it out of the NATO enlargement that Finland and Sweden chose. The Freedom Party won the election of September 2024 with 28.8 per cent, its first national victory. He had ruled out serving under Herbert Kickl and did not move. When three-party talks with the Social Democrats and the liberal NEOS collapsed in January 2025 he resigned rather than reverse himself, and Christian Stocker took the party and, after the Freedom Party's own coalition attempt failed, the chancellorship. Whether the refusal was principle or arithmetic is argued in Austria still, and it cost him the office either way.
- Lived: 1972 CE – ?
- Nationality: Austrian
- Roles: head_of_government, politician
