The successor to the Austrian right-wing populist Jorg Haider, Stefan Petzner, has shocked the staunchly conservative country after revealing in a tearful interview that they shared a “special relationship.”
Petzner, 27, who was confirmed on Wednesday as the leader of the Alliance for the Future of Austria after Haider’s death in a car crash two weeks ago, made the statement on Austrian radio, effectively confirming long-standing rumors that he and Haider were lovers.
Attempts by the party to stop repeats of the broadcast failed after the state broadcaster ORF insisted it would not be gagged.
Petzner, who met Haider five years ago when he was working as a beauty correspondent, said he felt a “magnetic attraction” to the firebrand politician, who was 31 years his senior. He said Haider’s main worry was that their relationship would not withstand the age gap.
“We had a relationship that went far beyond friendship. Jorg and I were connected by something really special. He was the man of my life,” Petzner said.
The news stunned Austria, which has been coming to terms with the death of the anti-immigrant politician. Haider, who voted against a parliamentary motion to lower the age of consent for homosexuals, had presented himself as a family man who drank sparingly.
But after the car crash it was revealed that he had been driving at twice the speed limit, his blood alcohol level had been four times the legal limit and he had spent his final hours in a gay bar in Klagenfurt, the capital of the southern state where he was governor.
There has been further speculation that the crash happened after Haider and Petzner argued at a party.
Petzner said that Claudia, Haider’s wife of 32 years and the mother of his two daughters, had not objected to their relationship.
But in an interview published in an Austrian women’s magazine, Petzner’s sister Christiane seemed to suggest otherwise.
“Claudia was sometimes jealous of him because he spent more time with her husband than she did,” she said.
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