Kurt Waldheim

Biography

Kurt Waldheim was born on 21 December 1918 in Sankt Andrä-Wördern, near Vienna, the son of a schoolteacher of Czech origin. After a year of volunteer service in the Austrian Army he entered the Consular Academy in Vienna in 1937 to study law and diplomacy. Following the Anschluss he joined the mounted unit of the SA in November 1938.

During the Second World War he served in the German army, from 1942 as a staff officer with Army Group E in Yugoslavia and Greece, rising to the rank of Oberleutnant. He received a doctorate in law from the University of Vienna in 1944 and joined the Austrian diplomatic service in 1945.

Waldheim was Austria's ambassador to Canada from 1956 to 1960 and its permanent representative to the United Nations from 1964. He was foreign minister from 1968 to 1970 and ran for the Austrian presidency in 1971. In December of that year he was chosen as Secretary-General of the United Nations. He held the post for two terms, from 1972 to 1981, but his bid for a third term in 1981 failed.

During his successful campaign for the Austrian presidency in 1986, revelations about his wartime service in the Balkans, which he had left out of his memoirs, caused an international controversy. An international commission of historians appointed by the Austrian government examined his record. He served as president from 1986 to 1992 and died on 14 June 2007.