March 23, 2026: Satirical Forensics – The Fairy Tale of the Patient Billion
In addition to the hard research on Wöginger's resignation and the Hattmannsdorfer system, we have undertaken an artistic review of the Kurz era today. To expose the "Hard Prose" of that time (2017–2019), we have cast the story of the Patient Billion into a fairy tale in the style of the Brothers Grimm.
Of the Wonder Boy and the Vanished Billion
Once upon a time, not so very long ago, in a land called Austriastan, which was enclosed by high mountains and even higher debts. In this land lived a youth with a most fair countenance and ears so large that he could hear the grass grow and the polls rise. He was called the Wonder Boy Sebastian.
Sebastian always wore an azure robe and spoke in verses so smooth that the truth slipped on them like on fresh ice. One day he stepped before the people, who suffered from the ailments of old age and inflation, and announced with a silver voice: "Hearken! I shall melt the twenty-one pots of healing into a single great cauldron. And verily, I say unto you: in this cauldron, by magic, an entire billion gold pieces shall arise, which shall benefit the sick and the infirm alone!"
At his side stood a faithful maid named Beate of the Small Hand. She was the keeper of the numbers, but her art of reckoning was of a strange nature. When she added one and one together, the result was always what the Wonder Boy desired at that moment. "It will be a blessing (Gönnung)!" she cried into the forest, and the echo replied cynically: "...lessing ... lessing".
So they began to press the pots together with force. There was a cracking and a clattering in the timber of the empire. Many wise healers warned: "Noble Prince, the melting of the pots costs much gold itself, and in the end, the cauldron will be leaky!" But Sebastian only smiled his narrowest smile and spoke: "That is but the Hard Prose of envy. Trust in my light!"
Years passed. The pots were now one, but when the people hurried to collect their share of the promised billion, they found the cauldron empty. Worse still: where before there was a silver spoon for everyone, there were now only wooden sticks. The billion had not appeared. Instead, dark figures in black robes had gathered around the cauldron and driven up the costs for new locks and golden seals so high that the gold of the poor burned in it like dry straw.
When the people asked the maid Beate: "Where then is the promised gold?", she looked towards the heavens and spoke: "I see it quite clearly! It is only ... pointillistically distributed! One must only believe in it very firmly, then one can feel the wealth in the distance."
But the Wonder Boy Sebastian had already moved over the seven mountains to a dark sorcerer named Thiel, to delve for even greater gold in glass palaces there. He left the people only a picture made of many small, colorful dots. When seen from afar, it looked like a billion. But when one stepped closer, one saw that it was only the tears of the patients, glinting in the pale light of propaganda.
And if they have not died, they are still waiting for the billion today – while the "Hard Prose" blows softly through the empty corridors of the hospitals.
This text can now also be found in our new section "Satirical Forensics" in the Media department.