Hugo Portisch

Hugo Portisch     (journalist)
Born	19 February 1927 Bratislava, Czechoslovakia
Died	1 April 2021 (Age 94) Vienna, Austria
Nationality	Austrian
Alma mater	University of Vienna
Parents	• Emil Portisch • Hedi Portisch
Spouse	Traude Portisch
US-trained Austrian editor-in-chief and journalist who attended 4 Bilderberg meetings. His documentaries "helped to shape Austria's collective historical awareness".  Foreign Correspondent In office 1967 - 1991 Employer ORF  Editor-in-chief In office 1958 - 1967 Employer Kurier

Hugo Portisch was an Austrian journalist. Selected and trained by the US occupation authorities after World War 2, he became one of the leading journalists in Austria for decades, thanks to his talent for explaining complex political and economic relations in an understandable way. He attended the 1965 an 1966 Bilderberg meetings as editor-in-chief of Kurier, and the 1979 and 1987 meetings as foreign correspondent and doucmentary film maker for the state channel ORF.

Background

Hugo Portisch grew up in Bratislava (Pressburg), which culturally in the last decades of Austria-Hungary looked like a smaller sister city of Vienna also located on the Danube, from which it is only 60 kilometers away. In addition to Slovak, German and Hungarian were spoken in the city at that time. After World War 1 it became part of Czechoslovakia.

Portisch's parents were Austrians Emil and Hedi Portisch, who married in 1920. In 1920 he became editor and in 1924 the last editor-in-chief of the Preßburger Zeitung, a liberal, democratically oriented newspaper that first appeared in 1764. After the end of the Preßburger Zeitung in 1929, Emil Portisch tried twice more to revive the newspaper. The follow -up sheet, the Neue Preßburger Zeitung, was ultimately destroyed during the "smashing of Czechoslovakia" on March 15, 1939 in the newly created Slovak state under Jozef Tiso, with the immediate expropriation of the Jewish owners. During the war, Emil Portisch was able to work in the newly founded Slovak news agency, which provided international news links.

Education

Hugo Portisch attended the German high school in Pressburg. To avoid being called up for military training or the Waffen-SS, he volunteered in 1944 for the volunteer fire brigade, which could use him as a volunteer in view of the constant bombings in the last year of the war and the resulting fires. His parents left Pressburg in early 1945 to their family in St. Pölte, Austria, while he continued to attend high school in Pressburg.

According to his own statements, he received his school-leaving certificate on April 4, 1945, just a few hours before the Red Army marched into the city. He was drafted, but avoided any active fighting. With all other Germans, the family was expelled from Czechoslovakia after the war.

Hugo Portisch then studied history, German, English and journalism at the University of Vienna and graduated in 1951 with a dissertation on newspapers andpublic opinion in the United States before and during the civil war of 1861-1865.

Journalistic career

Portisch began in 1947 as an editorial trainee in the Viennese editorial department of the St. Pöltner Press Association. In 1948 he worked as an aspiring editor at the Wiener Tageszeitung, whose foreign policy department he was assigned in 1950.

In 1950 he was one of ten selected Austrian journalists who were allowed to complete the six-month journalism course "School of Journalism" at the University of Missouri in the United States, financed by the US. He worked as an intern at the New York Times and the Washington Post, among others.

He and his wife considered settling in the USA, but in 1953, Portisch became deputy head of the Austrian information service in New York, which was based at the Consulate General. He had to accompany Federal Chancellor Julius Raab, who did not speak English, on his visit to the USA, his first overseas trip.

In 1954 Hans Dichand invited Portisch to work on the Neue Kurier, which was to follow the US occupation newspaper Wiener Kurier. Through his good contacts, on April 14, 1955, as deputy editor-in-chief of the Kurier, Portisch was the first in Austria to learn that the negotiations on the Austrian State Treaty in Moscow had been successfully concluded, and he decided to work with editor-in-chief Hans Dichand to bring out a special edition announcing this.

In 1958 Ludwig Polsterer, the owner of the Kurier, made Portisch editor-in-chief, succeeding Dichand. During his time at the Kurier, Portisch also worked for Bavarian television. In 1964, the new state channel ORF General Director Gerd Bacher brought him to the Austrian Radio in 1967, where he acted as chief commentator. For many years later he was ORF's foreign correspondent in London.

In addition to these activities, Portisch wrote books, some of which became bestsellers, initially reports on his worldwide travels such as So I saw China (1965) and So I saw Siberia (1967), then publications on political topics such as The German Confrontation ( 1974).

In 1969 Portisch was admitted to the Viennese Masonic lodge "Sapientia".

In addition to his books, Portisch became known through his television programs and series. Many of his documentaries were accompanied by books, for example the TV documentary Friede durch Angst (1969) about the nuclear arms race was followed the next year by a book of the same title.

In his documentary film series Austria I (1989) and Austria II (1981–1995), for which corresponding books were also published, Portisch presented the history of the First and Second Republics in a generally understandable and vivid way, thereby helping to shape Austria's collective historical awareness.

In connection with the Waldheim affair in 1986, he convinced Chancellor Franz Vranitzky of the necessity to take an official position on the period of the Third Reich and proposed its wording. His thoughts were incorporated into Vranitzky's speech to the National Council on July 8, 1991. In this speech, Vranitzky moved away from the victim thesis and officially confessed that the Austrians were complicit in the National Socialist misdeeds.

In 1991, Portisch was proposed as the successor to the outgoing Federal President Kurt Waldheim, who did not want to run again because of a successful smear campaign regarding his activities during the Second World War. The competing parties SPÖ and ÖVP were even willing to jointly support Hugo Portisch's candidacy. Portisch politely declined the candidacy, pointing to his lack of talent for submitting to protocol formalities.

In 1978, he co-founded the School of Journalism in Nairobi (Kenya).

 

Events Participated in

Event	Start	End	Location(s)	Description
Bilderberg/1965	2 April 1965	4 April 1965	Italy Villa d'Este	The 14th Bilderberg meeting, held in Italy
Bilderberg/1966	25 March 1966	27 March 1966	Germany Wiesbaden Hotel Nassauer Hof	Top of the agenda of the 15th Bilderberg in Wiesbaden, Germany, was the restructuring of NATO. Since this discussion was held, all permanent holders of the position of NATO Secretary General have attended at least one Bilderberg conference prior to their appointment.
Bilderberg/1979	27 April 1979	29 April 1979	Austria Baden Clubhotel Schloss Weikersdorf	27th Bilderberg, 95 guests, Austria
Bilderberg/1987	24 April 1987	26 April 1987	Italy Cernobbio	35th Bilderberg, in Italy, 106 participants

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