HANS DICHAND; TO HIS many admirers he was Uncle Hans, a tireless advocate for the little man against the arrogant powers-that-be. But to his countless enemies Hans Dichand, who has died in Vienna aged 89, was an unscrupulous publisher who used his Krone tabloid newspaper to bully and blackmail.
Read by one in four Austrians, Dichand leaves behind a newspaper of unique reach and influence, an opinion shaper which Austrian politicians cross at their peril.
Dichand's was a life in newspapers: born in 1921 in Graz, the cobbler's son began his newspaper career after serving with the German marines in the war.
After a time working in local papers, in 1959 he hit on the idea of reviving the Krone, a title suppressed by the Nazis.
Within a few years, despite its unusually small format tabloid, the Kronehad built up a huge influence in Austrian politics with an idiosyncratic editorial style dictated entirely by Dichand.
Under his tutelage, Krone journalists perfected the technique of resentment-building campaign journalism against any target of choice: politicians, the EU, nuclear energy, foreigners.
The newspaper employed a diverse tabloid arsenal to achieve its ends: from vicious headlines to satirical poems and a long-running cartoon character commenting on daily events, believed to have been penned by Dichand himself.
With the passing years, the backing of Krone was crucial for success in Austrian political life. It was an outspoken supporter of Kurt Waldheim, the former UN secretary general whose Nazi past caught up with him during his successful campaign to become Austria's president.
A decade ago, the Kronehelped to power the extreme-right populist Jörg Haider and his Freedom Party.
More recently, Dichand threw his weight behind Social Democrat Werner Faymann's campaign to become chancellor. Faymann won, but only after promising - in an open letter to the Krone- to introduce referenda on major EU decisions in the future.
Faymann called Dichand, a close confidant, an "exceptionally gifted" journalist and one of the "great personalities" of Austrian life. The Kronedescribed its late publisher as "a simple, modest man, almost a little shy".
Competitor newspapers were more cautious in their obituaries, praising the publisher's achievements but criticising his methods. Die Pressedescribed Dichand as a man whose "journalistic passion was considerably larger than his journalistic ethics".
"He suppressed information that called into questioned his version of an event and consciously exaggerated those that served his argument," it wrote.
"Tabloids do this the world over ... but Austria lacks institutions that, in a functioning democracy, could act as a corrective."
Though he handed editorial control to his son Christoph in 2003, to the end the increasingly frail, grey-haired Dichand had the final word in the Krone, prowling the corridors of the office block outside Vienna that housed his publishing empire.
His death is likely to spark a boardroom battle between the Dichand family, which holds 50 per cent of the Kronepublishing company, and Germany's WAZ newspaper group.
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Hans Dichand: born January 29th 1921; died June 17th 2010