Adolf Schärf

Adolf Schärf
6th President of Austria
In office 22 May 1957 – 28 February 1965
Preceded by	Theodor Körner
Succeeded by	Franz Jonas
Personal details
Born	(1890-04-20)20 April 1890 Mikulov
Died	28 February 1965(1965-02-28) (aged 74) Vienna
Nationality	Austrian
Political party	Social Democratic Party of Austria
Spouse	Hilda Schärf

1964 in Köln, 2nd from right

Adolf Schärf (born 20 April 1890 in Mikulov, back in those days known as Nikolsburg; died 28 February 1965 in Vienna) was, from 1957 to his death, the sixth President of Austria. Born into a poor working class family, he put himself through law school working part time and with a scholarship granted for academic excellence. He received a doctorate in law from the University of Vienna in 1914 and volunteered for service in the Austro-Hungarian Armed Forces in the same year. At the end of the Great War, he was discharged as a Second Lieutenand. He entered politics and found employment as the secretary of the social democratic president of the Nationalrat during the years of the first republic (1918-1934) and served on the Bundesrat 1933-1934. After the fall of the Republic in 1934 and twice during the Nazi occupation, he served time as a political prisoner. Unemployed after the dissolution of the Socialist Party, he passed the Austrian Bar exam in 1934 and worked as an associate with a law firm. However, in 1938, he aryanized the office of Arnold Eisler, a Jewish lawyer who had to leave Austria. He took over the law firm and it was never restituted. Later on, he also helped in the aryanization process of buildings in Vienna.

After World War II, he became the chairman of the refounded Social Democratic Party of Austria and a member of the new Nationalrat. In 1955, he also took part in the Moscow negotiations for the Austrian Treaty. He became Vice Chancellor in 1956, before being elected president in 1957 and 1963.

Suggestive abuse of biographical similarities

• The neo-Nazi song "Adolf's Ehrentag" by Frank Rennicke attempts to bypass German anti-Nazi glorification laws by pretending to be about Adolf Schärf instead of Adolf Hitler; at the end of the song similarities are listed: both are born on April 20, both have been imprisoned, and both were leaders of Austria.
• The same approach is visible in a poem by Wolf Martin, a columnist from the Kronen Zeitung, published in 1994 on the occasion of Adolf "Schärf"'s birthday which caused an uproar at the time.