On Monday, ORF Director General Roland Weißmann resigned from office. Ingrid Thurnher will assume the role on an interim basis. A new ORF chief is to be elected in the summer.
ORF Director General Roland Weißmann has resigned “with immediate effect,” Heinz Lederer, chairman of the Foundation Council, announced in a statement on Monday. In recent days, an ORF employee has made allegations of sexual harassment against the Director General. Weißmann denies the accusations.
Weißmann’s Lawyer Announces Legal Action
“My client has to this day not been provided with the specific facts alleged by the employee. Nevertheless, in order to prevent damage to the company, he was prepared to make far-reaching concessions and therefore resigned from his position as Director General with immediate effect,” Weißmann’s lawyer, Oliver Scherbaum, said in a statement. The “media dissemination of allegations that have in no way been clarified” constitutes a “completely inappropriate and excessive reaction.” “This approach, as well as any possible repetition of the allegations by third parties, massively violates my client’s personal rights,” Scherbaum said, announcing legal steps.
Lederer: Protect the Affected Person
Lederer told APA that immediately after learning of the allegations, he asked Weißmann to seek legal counsel and bring about clarification. Speaking to Ö1’s midday news program, Lederer said he had been shown “written, audio, and visual material that supports the allegation.” On Sunday morning, he received Weißmann’s resignation; Weißmann is currently on leave. He also said that “everything permitted under labor law has been initiated to ensure that the affected person is protected and suffers no harm.” Weißmann had been informed by the Foundation Council “that an employee accuses him of inappropriate behavior at the beginning of his term as Director General (2022),” the lawyer’s statement said. He had been given only a few days by the Foundation Council to declare his resignation, “although my client denied the allegations and no substantive review of the accusations took place.”
Foundation Council Calls for Swift Clarification
The allegation requires “swift and transparent clarification in close cooperation with the ORF compliance office,” Lederer and his deputy Gregor Schütze said, stressing that protecting the affected person must be the top priority. The Foundation Council meetings scheduled for this week will proceed as planned. As early as Thursday’s plenary session, current Radio Director Thurnher is to be entrusted—upon proposal by Schütze and Lederer—with the provisional management of the Director General’s duties.
“She is the most integrative person, fully committed to the public-service mandate, and she will also take on the important task of addressing this matter,” Lederer said. He also intends to establish a task force to review other cases of sexual harassment “once again in detail and draw lessons from them.” He views this as “the beginning of an era in which such things simply no longer occur.”
No Change in Timeline for Electing New ORF Chief
Weißmann’s resignation does not initially change the timeline for the election of a new Director General starting in 2027. Lederer still expects the position to be advertised in May and filled on August 11. “I am very hopeful that we will find strong personalities in the competition under the new legal tender criteria. This could even act as an accelerator.” Applicants will now be expected, among other things, to convincingly address their approach to gender relations within corporate culture. Following the departure of Weißmann, who had been considered the frontrunner, the pool of applicants is likely to grow.
