"A roaring night"
Academics’ Ball in Vienna accompanied by demonstrations
The Academics' Ball in Vienna's Hofburg Palace kicked off on Friday evening with a number of FPÖ celebrities. In addition to the Third President of the National Council, Norbert Hofer, who is a regular guest at the ball, his predecessor, ex-FPÖ leader Heinz-Christian Strache, who was expelled from the party after failing to make the Ibiza video, also attended. Also among the guests: Identitarian Martin Sellner and master builder Richard Lugner.
Vienna's FPÖ leader Dominik Nepp also attended the dance event, which critics described as an international networking meeting of right-wing extremists.
"A roaring ball night"
"We are looking forward to a roaring ball night", wrote FPÖ politician Leo Kohlbauer on X. Kohlbauer is press spokesman for the FPÖ Vienna and is in a relationship with Lugner's daughter Jacqueline.
Photos from the Akademikerball 2024:
Kickl and Vilimsky not present
Burgenland's former FPÖ leader Johann Tschürtz and FPÖ "veteran" Andreas Mölzer were also spotted. FPÖ leader Herbert Kickl had already announced in advance that he would not be attending, and EU top candidate Harald Vilimsky also stayed away from the event despite it being a "super election year". As in 2023, FPÖ Ombudsman Walter Rosenkranz was planned as the opening speaker.
"I don't think he came for me"
As in 2023, Hofer brought Baumeister Lugner with him - the two have been friends since the 2016 presidential election campaign, Hofer said. The Third President of the National Council, who faced the media just a few meters away from Sellner when he arrived, had stated several times during the 2016 presidential election campaign that he wanted nothing to do with people like Sellner. "I don't think he came for me - and I didn't come for him," he said when asked how he saw Sellner's participation in the ball.
Sellner caused a stir in the run-up to the event
Sellner - the former head of the "Identitarian Movement", which has been classified as right-wing extremist by the Office for the Protection of the Constitution - recently caused a stir when he attended a meeting of right-wing extremists in Germany on November 25, which was also attended by AfD politicians and at which mass deportations of millions of people were discussed. He willingly faced the media for a long time in front of the Hofburg and received far more attention than the FPÖ celebrities. He is "right-wing", but not right-wing extremist, he says.
Strache, who had opened the ball several times in the years before his involuntary departure from the FPÖ leadership, also attracted the cameras. He was there with friends and was looking forward to a "wonderfully elegant" ball, he told journalists. That the event was a networking meeting of right-wing extremists was the opinion of "anti-democrats", said Strache.
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