By Alexandra Zawadil
VIENNA (Reuters) - Austrian far-right leader Joerg Haider, a charismatic populist who helped thrust anti-immigrant politics into the European mainstream, was killed in a car accident on Saturday.
Haider, 58, who led the right into a coalition government from 2000 to 2006, polarised Austria and drew international condemnation with his anti-foreigner outbursts and for appearing to endorse some Nazi policies.
Last month, after years of retreat into provincial politics, he helped engineer a surge of Austria's far right to about 30 percent of the vote in a parliamentary election, mining discontent over feuding mainstream governing parties, inflation and immigration.
His spokesman Stefan Petzner said Haider, who was governor of Carinthia province, had been driving to his rural home near Klagenfurt early on Saturday morning for a family gathering to mark his mother's 90th birthday when the accident occurred.
The government car he was driving skidded out of control after he overtook another vehicle. His car hit a concrete traffic barrier and rolled over several times, police said.
Haider was pronounced dead on arrival at a hospital.
"This is for us like the end of the world. He wasn't just my boss but also my best friend," a weeping Petzner said.
Haider shook up Austria's political scene with his plain-spoken, engaging manner. He struck a chord with ordinary people and was on good personal terms with political foes.
Austrians of every political stripe voiced shock at his death and said he had influenced public life, for better or worse, as no one else had over the past 20 years.
Mourners began depositing wreaths and condolence letters and lighting candles in front of Carinthia government headquarters even before dawn broke, and a black flag was raised.
Along with France's Jean Marie Le Pen, Haider was instrumental in moving the far right, with its core grievances against rising immigration and a perceived loss of national identity through European integration, from the political fringes towards the mainstream on the continent.
POWER STRUGGLE
He sparked criticism by making foreign trips to see leaders like Iraq's Saddam Hussein and Libya's Muammar Gaddafi.
In the 1990s, he reproached Austria's government by citing the "proper labour policies" of Adolf Hitler's Third Reich. On another occasion he referred to Nazi concentration camps in a parliamentary debate as "penal camps." He once praised veterans of the murderous Waffen SS as "decent men of character."
But Haider denied Nazi tendencies.
Drawing on fears of immigration and eroding national sovereignty in the European Union, Haider led the Freedom Party with a shock 27 percent of the vote into a governing coalition with the conservative People's Party in 2000.
His triumph stirred widespread condemnation and temporary European Union sanctions against Austria.
After power struggles within Freedom, Haider formed the Alliance for the Future of Austria in 2005. It became junior partner in the governing coalition while the Freedom Party defected into opposition.
In an election in 2006, the Alliance, whose reins Haider had given to a protege while he turned to Carinthian affairs, scraped past the 4 percent threshold to enter parliament.
Haider returned as party chief this year and, adopting a more conciliatory approach open to coalitions with any party, led the Alliance to 10.7 percent of the vote in the September 28 election, behind Freedom's 17.5 percent.
The result could remake Austrian politics with the Social Democrats, returned as the largest party but falling under 30 percent for the first time, likely to struggle to form another coalition with only the similarly weakened conservatives.
"I'm a long-distance runner. We changed a lot of things in Carinthia and we'll do that in Austria at large too. And I won't have to become chancellor (prime minister) for that to happen," Haider said in an interview in the regional Kleine Zeitung daily that hit newsstands hours after his death.
In a comment echoed by many, President Heinz Fischer, a Social Democrat, said Haider was "a politician of great talent" and impact who both enchanted and repelled his contemporaries.
Heinz-Christian Strache, who took over the Freedom Party in 2005 and had feuded with his former mentor, said: "Whatever differences we had, one has to accord Haider recognition and respect. Austria has lost a great political figure."
Haider's father was once a member of Hitler's Storm Troopers. His mother was a teacher who had been a Hitler Youth leader. A marathon runner as well as passionate skier, Haider was married with two grown daughters.
(Writing by Mark Heinrich; Editing by Peter Millership)
