Emma Kapral

Emma Kapral (born June 18, 1877 in Vienna ; † February 18, 1969 there ) was an Austrian politician of the Christian Social Party (CSP).

Live and act

Emma Kapral comes from a Christian social milieu and was born in Vienna on June 18, 1877 as the eldest daughter of Johann Kapral, an inspector of the kk priv. Südbahn , and his wife Agnes, a housewife from Silesia . She had seven sisters and one brother. All girls received vocational training; there were teachers , railway officials or a seamstress among them; another sister ran a pension . The 15 years younger brother Alois was a graduate engineer , as well as a member of a German national fraternity and subsequently a member of the illegal NSDAP . One of her sisters was married to a Social Democrat .

After attending elementary and public school in Vienna, she attended a teachers' training college of the Ursuline and was then a teacher at various schools in Vienna. Later she was, among other things, director of the community and later secondary school Rennweg in Vienna / Landstrasse . In 1919 she made her political public appearance for the first time and was mainly involved in the Catholic women's organization (KFO). Kapral did not make a political career until the 1930s and from 1930 was a member of the party leadership of the Vienna Christian Social Party (CSP). From December 2, 1930 to May 2, 1934, in the fourth legislative period , she was the only female member of the National Council of the CSP. Before her candidacy, there were protests on the part of the KFO and other Catholic women's associations, since from 1927 to 1930 not a single Christian social woman had been elected to the National Council. In the National Council she was particularly active in the educational and socio-political sector. Furthermore, she held leading positions within the Catholic women's organization in the 1930s. Among other things, she headed their school section and was elected vice-president in 1933. From the previous year she was head of the Association of Catholic Women Teachers in Austria . In 1932 she succeeded Gabriele Walter as a member of the Catholic-intellectual Leo Society , which was dissolved in 1938 and 1939 respectively. In the authoritarian corporate state she was also a member of the Fatherland Front . 1934 protested Kapral against the two-earner law and was involved in the employment of single women.

After the KFO was allowed to act legally until then, this changed at the latest in 1935, when the KFO was integrated into the Catholic Action despite massive resistance from its functionaries and the President Alma Motzko . Due to her proximity to the clerical leadership, Kapral was initially appointed as the provisional chairperson. During the time of National Socialism , the native Viennese was always politically observed as a prominent Catholic and member of the Fatherland Front. On July 1, 1938, the school councilor joined the National Socialist People's Welfare (NSV), but was not a member of the NSDAP. In 1939, now 62 years old, Kapral retired and was taken into police custody in August 1944. The imprisonment, as well as the subsequent review, were related to the assassination attempt on Adolf Hitler on July 20, 1944 in the Fuehrer's headquarters in Wolfsschanze . After the Second World War , Kapral continued to be involved in the Catholic teaching body and in Caritas . Furthermore, she appeared from 1945 to 1948 as chairwoman of the ÖAAB Vienna / Landstrasse. In Alm near Salzburg , Kapral's long-term holiday destination, the ÖAAB initiated the naming of a home in Emma-Kapral-Heim .

Kapral, who remained unmarried, lived with her sister Poldi, who was also unmarried and who ran her household, in their parents' apartment on Hafengasse in Vienna's 3rd district, Landstrasse. When Emma Kapral moved to a retirement home in old age, her apartment was cleared and any inheritance that might have been destroyed. The former member of the National Council died on February 18, 1969 at the age of 91 in her hometown of Vienna and was buried on February 25, 1969 at the Vienna Central Cemetery (group 72 B, row 9, number 11).

literature

• Ilse Korotin (Ed.): BiografıA. Lexicon of Austrian Women. Volume 2: I-O. Böhlau, Vienna / Cologne / Weimar 2016, ISBN 978-3-205-79590-2 , pp. 1571–1572.
• Irene Bandhauer-Schöffmann : That women are raised to be women - women's politics and corporate state . Ed .: Brigitte Lehmann . Löcker Verlag , Vienna 2008, ISBN 978-3-85409-437-1 .

Web links

• Emma Kapral on the website of the Austrian Parliament
• Emma Kapral in the database Women in Motion 1848–1938 of the Austrian National Library

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Emma Kapral in the documentation archive of the Austrian resistance , accessed on May 3, 2019.
2. ↑ Emma Kapral on the official website of Friedhöfe Wien, accessed on May 3, 2019.