What, Vienna Becoming Chicago? Crime, Foreigners Are Voter Issues : Austria: Non-Germanic newcomers are targeted in a poster campaign. A parliamentary election is due Sunday.

Americans may be surprised these days to see campaign posters on the walls in the Austrian capital declaring in German: “Vienna Should Not Become Chicago.”

To anyone visiting this elegant seat of the old Austro-Hungarian Empire, it seems a far-fetched concern. The closest thing to the Chicago’s Sears Tower is the 404-foot Gothic steeple of St. Stephen’s Cathedral. The only Bears here are in the zoo and there are no El trains, although there is a spotlessly clean subway system. Vienna is known more for its woodwinds than its lake winds.

The overt message of the right-wing Austrian Freedom Party, which put up the posters, is that crime--especially a recent rash of pickpocketing and purse-snatching--has become a serious concern here. Chicago, with its history of gangsterism and its depiction in endless “Untouchables” reruns, apparently epitomizes crime for the Central European mind.

But the barely masked, underlying motif of the poster campaign in the days before Sunday’s parliamentary election here is anti-immigrant and anti-foreigner. The targets are the estimated 150,000 Poles, Romanians and Czechoslovaks who poured into Austria legally and illegally after the borders of Eastern Europe opened during the past year.

For many people in relatively crime-free Austria, especially those in Vienna, the recent “crime wave” is synonymous with newcomers and non-Germanic peoples.

Police have confirmed some of these fears with statistics. Some newly arrived Poles, in fact, are active in a thriving black market. A high percentage of petty-theft arrests, in fact, have involved Romanians. Nonviolent crime of this type is up 30% to 40% since the revolution in Eastern Europe began, according to government estimates.

“It is a matter of the criminal element moving to greener pastures,” explained a Western diplomat, whose wife was the victim of a recent purse-snatching. “What you have is abject poverty in many parts of Eastern Europe and a criminal element there that is now able to practice in cities where there is money.”

The same phenomenon, he noted, is true in many other Western European cities that have had influxes of newly liberated East Europeans.

To the frustration of the two mainstream parties that have ruled Austria since 1955--the social democratic Socialists and the Christian democratic Austrian People’s Party--the pint-sized Freedom Party has scored heavily with its anti-crime, anti-immigrant motif.

For the first time since Austria regained independence in 1955, the party is likely to gain more than 10% of the vote. Freedom Party organizers say they will be disappointed if it scores less than 20%.

In an election system that has traditionally governed by minority and coalition governments that alternate between the Socialist and People’s Party leadership, the Freedom Party could easily play the role of spoiler. Leaders of the Socialists, including the country’s popular head of government, Chancellor Franz Vranitsky, say they fear a potential coalition between the People’s Party and the Freedom Party.

Such a coalition would clearly mark a sharp turn to the right for Austria, especially if populist Freedom Party leader Jorg Haider, who is already governor of the southern province of Carinthia, were able to use the coalition to get the job he really wants--chancellor.

The political left here objects to what it sees as the Freedom Party’s evocation of the days of the Anschluss , the years of 1938-45, when Austria was a mostly enthusiastic participant in the German Nazi regime. In those years, a higher percentage of Austrians joined Hitler’s National Socialist Party than did Germans in Germany itself.

“One of our problems,” admitted Freedom Party spokeswoman Susanne Riess, “is that our party was originally founded by people who belonged to the Nazi regime.”

For example, longtime party chairman Friderich Peter, who led the party for most of the 1960s and ‘70s, was a former member of the Nazi SS (elite force).

However, Riess and other party leaders say the ranks of all other Austrian political parties contain many members who were active collaborators with the Nazis. They point, for example, to the much-discussed career of Austrian President Kurt Waldheim, the former German army intelligence officer now affiliated with the People’s Party.

Despite an international outcry over revelations that Waldheim had covered up specifics of his service in the German army in the Balkans between 1941-45, the former United Nations general secretary was elected president in 1986 with 54% of the vote.

Besides, Riess claimed in a recent interview, the Freedom Party has built a much younger, post-World War II following under the charismatic 40-year-old Haider. A dark-haired, handsome man who favors double-breasted Italian suits and sports a permanent George Hamilton-class suntan, Haider is something of a political enigma.

Although not in the same extreme right-wing camp as National Front leader Jean-Marie Le Pen in France or Republican Party chief Franz Schoenhuber in West Germany (“We consider them racist,” Riess said), Haider is not above appealing to extreme right-wing elements of the Austrian population.

“Most Austrians take the view that he is not a neo-Nazi,” said a Western diplomat, “but that he is willing to make an appeal to that segment to get votes.”

Asked during a recent interview about his objections to Haider as a potential partner in a coalition government, Chancellor Vranitsky responded carefully:

“There are two main points. First, he himself and some people in his party are not free enough in their wording to signal a clear distance vis - a - vis some ingredients we had here in the ‘30s and ‘40s. There is one expression he uses, difficult to translate, that is a kind of emphasizing of the German race, the German language and the German tradition--very much focused on that kind of Germanism.

“Secondly, I do not consider him as a politician who would cooperate for the common objective. He is always zigzagging to get himself on the front line.”

Vranitsky and others point to Haider’s contradictory statements on the issue of Austria’s neutrality.

When the Austrian government took the precedent-shattering move of allowing American aircraft to fly over Austria on their way to the Persian Gulf from West Germany, Haider accused it of breaking the Neutrality Act. However, in a recent speech in Munich, Haider argued that neutrality was a thing of the past and that Austria needed to more clearly align itself with the West.

Despite such inconsistencies, Haider is the politician who has most clearly identified the issues and set the tone for next week’s elections, which will decide the composition of the 183-seat lower house of Parliament, the National Council.

In reaction to Haider’s anti-crime, anti-immigrant platform, for example, the coalition government of Socialists and People’s Party has recently set strict visa requirements for Poles and Romanians coming into Austria. In addition, the government sent 1,600 Austrian troops to the border to guard against illegal crossings and smuggling.

In a controversial recent statement, Socialist leader Peter Marizzi used the expression “the boat is full” to describe his feeling that Austria has already accepted too many refugees from the East.