Alexander Van der Bellen

Uncommon card · No. 79744

Alexander "Sascha" Van der Bellen (born 18 January 1944), also referred to by the abbreviation VdB, is an Austrian politician serving as the president of Austria since 2017. He was previously a professor of economics at the University of Vienna, and after joining politics, the spokesman of the Austrian Green Party. Van der Bellen was born in Austria to Russian and Estonian parents who were refugees from the recently 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 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...

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