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VIENNA — 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.
Mr. Haider, 58, who led the right into a coalition government from 2000 to 2006, polarized 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 30 per cent of the vote in a parliamentary election, mining discontent over feuding mainstream governing parties, inflation and immigration.
His spokesman Stefan Petzner said Mr. 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.
Mr. 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 Mr. Petzner said.
Mr. 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, Mr. 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.
He drew international headlines 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 Mr. Haider denied Nazi tendencies.
Drawing on fears of immigration and eroding national sovereignty in the European Union, Mr. Haider led the Freedom Party with a shock 27 per cent 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, Mr. 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 Mr. Haider had given to a protégé while he turned to Carinthian affairs, scraped past the four per cent threshold to enter parliament.
Mr. Haider returned as party chief this year and, adopting a strikingly milder tone, led the Alliance to 11 per cent of the vote in the Sept. 28 election, behind Freedom's 17.5 per cent.
The result could reconfigure Austrian politics with the Social Democrats, which re-emerged as the largest party, likely to struggle to form a stable coalition if it ignores the right.
In a comment echoed by many, President Heinz Fischer, a Social Democrat, said Mr. 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.”
Mr. 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 passionate skier and marathon runner, Mr. Haider was married with two grown daughters.
