Bruno Kreisky Geburtstag
Every year, on or around 22 January, the Bruno Kreisky Forum hosts a festive event commemorating Bruno Kreisky’s birthday. A prominent representative from politics, science or culture gives a keynote address focusing on “Der Mut zum Unvollendeten” (the courage to accept the unfinished).
This motto, i.e. this courage to accept the unfinished, played an important role in Kreisky’s thinking and relevant efforts. This courage had nothing to do with hesitation or half-heartedness, but rather meant that for Kreisky, ideologies and social structures were not a final, self-contained system and certainly did not mark a final stage of history. It was rather a commitment to what was novel, to gradual reform, a commitment to the verifiability of political decisions in the spirit of Karl Popper. And it was a clear differentiation and dissociation from dogmatic or even totalitarian positions.
Every political and social system is unfinished and needs to be unfinished. Because what people do may also be changed for the better by people – and they must never be deprived of the freedom to do so.