Helene Postranecky

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Helene Postranecky (* March 12, 1903 in Vienna ; † January 5, 1995 ibid), called "Hella", was an Austrian politician ( SDAP , KPÖ , BDFÖ ). She was the first woman to belong to an Austrian federal government.

Life

The daughter of a working-class family first attended elementary and community school and then began to work as a domestic help. At the age of 16 she had to earn a living as a laborer. In the same year, 1919, she joined the Social Democratic Labor Party (SDAP) and soon after became active in her party's women's movement. In the middle of 1927 she became the women's secretary of the SDAP in Lower Austria. In October 1933 she was elected to the party executive.

After the February fighting in 1934, she was arrested and spent around eight months in prison. After Austria was "annexed" to the German Reich , Postranecky joined the illegal Communist Party of Austria (KPÖ) and was active in the anti-fascist resistance.

In April 1945 Postranecky was nominated by the KPÖ as a member of the Renner Provisional State Government . As Undersecretary for People's Nutrition, she was responsible for raising food until December 1945. It would be 21 years before another woman, Grete Rehor (ÖVP), was appointed to a federal government as Minister of Social Affairs in 1966 . In August 1947, Postranecky married her long-term partner Karl Altmann (KPÖ), then Federal Minister for Energy and Electrification.

From September 1945 to November 1948 Postranecky was deputy chairwoman of the KPÖ. Until 1969 she was a member of the central committee of the party, until 1954 also a member of the Political Bureau and thus of the narrow party leadership. In April 1946 she was elected chairman of the Central Women's Committee of the KPÖ. From 1948 to 1952 she worked in the secretariat of the Federation of Democratic Women (BDFÖ), a women's organization founded by communists that felt it was non-partisan. At that time, the chairman of the BDF was the architect Margarete Schütte-Lihotzky , like Postranecky a former resistance fighter against National Socialism. Topics to which the BDFÖ was dedicated were peace, global disarmament and the strengthening of women's rights.

Until 1957 Altmann-Postranecky was a full-time functionary of the Lower Austrian provincial leadership of the KPÖ. After that she remained active as a volunteer in the union department. As a result of the crackdown on the Prague Spring by the Warsaw Pact and the subsequent critical development of the party, Postranecky withdrew from the KPÖ at the end of 1970. She died at the beginning of 1995 at the age of 91.

literature

  • Manfred Mugrauer: Hella Altmann-Postranecky (1903–1995). Functionary of the workers' movement and first woman in an Austrian government, in: Documentation archive of the Austrian resistance (ed.): Research on expulsion and the Holocaust. Yearbook 2018. Vienna 2018, pp. 267–306.

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Postranecky, Helene
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Austrian politician (SDAP / KPÖ)
DATE OF BIRTH March 12, 1903
PLACE OF BIRTH Vienna
DATE OF DEATH January 5, 1995
Place of death Vienna