Alexander Van der Bellen

Alexander "Sascha" Van der Bellen (German: [alɛkˈsandɐ fan deːɐ̯ ˈbɛlən]; born 18 January 1944), also referred to by the abbreviation VdB, is an Austrian politician serving as the president of Austria since 2017. He previously served as a professor of economics at the University of Vienna, and after joining politics, as the spokesman of the Austrian Green Party.

Van der Bellen was born in Austria to Russian and Estonian parents who were refugees from the occupied Estonia, and he became a naturalized citizen of Austria together with his parents in 1958. He is a descendant of the former Russian Empire's aristocratic Van der Bellen family of patrilineal Dutch ancestry dating back to the 18th century.

He was a member of the National Council representing the Green Party there from 1994 to 2012, and served as both leader of the party as well as its parliamentary group.

He ran as a nominally independent candidate supported by the Greens in the 2016 presidential election, and finished second out of six in the first round before winning the second round against Norbert Hofer, a member of the Freedom Party. On 1 July, before he was due to be sworn into office, the results of the second round of voting were annulled by the Constitutional Court due to absentee votes being improperly counted too early, requiring the election to be re-held. On 4 December 2016, he won the ensuing election, taking approximately 54% of the vote.

Van der Bellen has described himself as a centrist liberal, and supports green and social liberal policies. As discussed in his 2015 book, he is supportive of the European Union and advocates European federalism. During the presidential election, he appealed to the political centre and was endorsed by the leaders of both the Social Democratic Party and the conservative People's Party. Van der Bellen is the second Green president of a European Union country (after Raimonds Vējonis of Latvia) and the first to be directly elected by popular vote.

In the 18th century, Van der Bellen's patrilineal ancestors emigrated from the Netherlands to the Russian Empire. During the Russian Civil War (1917–1922) part of his family escaped from the Bolsheviks and migrated to the newly independent Estonia. Before this, Van der Bellen's grandfather Aleksander von der Bellen served as head of the civilian regional government in Pskov. In Estonia, the family changed its name from von der Bellen to Van der Bellen. In 1931, Van der Bellen's father Alexander married his Estonian mother, Alma Sieboldt in Kihelkonna, Saaremaa, Estonia. Subsequently, his father obtained Estonian citizenship as well. In 1940, Estonia was invaded, occupied and annexed by the Soviet Union. In February or March 1941, Van der Bellen's father, mother, and older sister Vivian-Diana moved to Nazi Germany; in line with the German–Soviet Frontier Treaty they were accepted as the so-called Volksdeutsche.

Via Lauksargiai (former Laugszargen, Memelland) and a German resettlement camp in Werneck at Würzburg, Van der Bellen's parents moved to Vienna, where their son Alexander was born in 1944 and baptized into the Lutheran Church. As the Red Army approached Vienna, the family escaped to the Kauner valley in Tyrol, where his father later became active as a businessman again.

In 1954, after completing primary school in Innsbruck, Van der Bellen switched to the Academic Grammar School Innsbruck (Akademisches Gymnasium Innsbruck), where he took his Matura in 1962. Until this time Van der Bellen had Estonian citizenship like his parents; he obtained Austrian citizenship around 1958. According to Van der Bellen, he did not complete mandatory service in the Austrian Armed Forces. He underwent the medical examination for military service twice, the first one resulting in him being rated unfit (untauglich). However, he successfully passed the second one. Later, he received several respites during his studies and due to his marriage. After that Van der Bellen was no longer summoned for service, due to his subsequent professorship.