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Immediate result of these revelations last week was the resignation from Austria's Cabinet of a valuable minister, blunt, honest General Carl Vaugoin, Director of Railroads and onetime (1930) Chancellor of Austria. Because Austrians trusted General Vaugoin as a genuine patriot, shrewd Dr. Berliner picked him to be chairman of Phönix-Wien's board. Shocked by the discovery of what had been going on under his nose, General Vaugoin resigned every official position.
A more serious blow to Prince von Starhemberg was the forced dismissal of Dr. Franz, Georg Strafella as Chief of the Tourist Bureau. Handsome, blond, unscrupulous, Dr. Strafella first caught the eye of Viennese bigwigs when he neatly stopped a serious strike in his native Graz. On the strength of this, honest General Vaugoin, then Vice Chancellor, decided that Dr. Strafella was just the person to handle Austria's railroads. The Viennese Arbeiter Zeitung promptly announced that
Franz Strafella had persuaded General Vaugoin to push him for the railroad post so that Strafella could get his hands on the State railroad funds to use in backing the Heimwehr. "Dr. Strafella," it added, "is a man of unclean hands and dishonorable methods." Strafella sued for libel, won his case, but was awarded no damages. Ingenuous General Vaugoin believed him, got him his railroad post.
In 1931 more whispered charges forced Franz Strafella to resign from the Cabinet, but in 1934 little Engelbert Dollfuss made him head of the Austrian Tourist Bureau.
Adolf Hitler had nearly ruined Austria's tourist traffic by imposing a 1,000-mark visa on Germans wishing to enter Austria.
In three years Strafella doubled Austria's tourist traffic from the U. S., Britain, France, Italy. In so doing, it was dis covered last week, he forced Phönix-Wien to buy from him at face value 550.000 schillings worth of worthless stock "totally unsuited to form an insurance company's reserve." Franz Strafella did not wait to be ousted from office last week. He ducked out of Austria the day the scandal broke.