Austria's Dr. Karl Renner, the veteran Social Democrat whom Russia had placed in power, last week resigned as Chancellor. The Volkspartei, victorious at the elections (TIME, Dec. 3) was busy organizing a new multi-party Cabinet. The incoming Chancellor, slender, pleasant, subtle, 43, was a man few Austrians knew much about until the Allied victory in Europe. His name: Leopold Figl.
Figl had played a minor role in pre-Anschluss politics. Politically to the left of Dollfuss, he was never close to the inner circle of Dollfuss' Christian Social Party. A peasant-born agronomist, Figl was a director of the Catholic Bauernbund (farmer's association)...
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