Hertha Firnberg

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Hertha Firnberg in 1974.

Hertha Firnberg (born September 18, 1909 in Vienna , Austria-Hungary , † February 14, 1994 in Vienna) was an Austrian politician and Austria's first female social democratic minister .

The young years

Hertha Firnberg was born on September 18, 1909 as the eldest daughter of Anna, b. Schamanek, and Josef Firnberg , born in the middle-class 18th district of Vienna, Währing . The family later moved to Niederrußbach in Lower Austria, where the father worked as a community doctor. After Hertha's birth, the mother gave up her job as a civil servant and gave birth to two Hertha's brothers and a sister, Trude.

After elementary school, she attended secondary school in the 17th district of Vienna, Hernals , in Kalvarienberggasse (where Alfred Adler graduated from high school in 1888) and there she joined the Association of Socialist Middle Schoolers (VSM) in 1926 , where she soon became deputy chairwoman. As a student at the University of Vienna , she was a member of the Association of Socialist Students (VSSt) and in 1928 joined the Social Democratic Workers' Party , the leading party of "Red Vienna" . Together with her sister, she moved into a small housing estate in the 10th district, Favoriten , a typical working-class district. Trude ran a lending library in the house.

After two semesters of law, she switched to economic and social history. In 1930 she briefly studied at the University of Freiburg im Breisgau . In February 1934 the political tendency to which she belonged was banned by the corporate state dictatorship . In 1936 she did her doctorate with Alfons Dopsch in Vienna with a dissertation entitled Wage workers and free wage labor in the Middle Ages and at the beginning of the modern era: A contribution to the history of agricultural wage labor in Germany. to the doctorate of philosophy. The work published by Dopsch in 1935 identifies her as Hertha Hon-Firnberg; She was briefly married twice before the Second World War, both marriages were divorced.

As a staunch social democrat, Firnberg could not count on a professional career as a social researcher either in the corporate state or in the Nazi dictatorship that followed in 1938. In the first few years she earned her living with tutoring and as a freelance business journalist. From 1941 to 1945 she worked for Chic Parisienne , a leading fashion publisher; At the same time she learned bookkeeping and operational management and finally obtained the power of attorney .

1945 to 1959

After the end of the war, Hertha Firnberg got a job as a librarian and assistant at the University of Vienna. In addition, she familiarized herself with the methods of statistics and empiricism and their application to economic and social events. In addition, she worked part-time in an advertising and statistics office. When she started as an employee in the Lower Austrian Chamber of Labor in 1948 , it was only in the process of being rebuilt after the war. Firnberg then became the senior secretary, head of the statistics department and head of the study library.

Political career

Hertha Firnberg (right next to Bruno Kreisky) in the Kreisky I federal government (1970).

Firnberg was a member of the Federal Council for Vienna from 1959 to 1963 and a member of the National Council from 1963 to 1983 . In 1967 she succeeded Rosa Jochmann as chairwoman of the socialist women and held this position until 1981. Her political home was the SPÖ district organization in the classic Viennese workers' district of Favoriten .

In the National Council, she had functions in the finance, education and justice committees and as the second chairwoman of the foreign policy committee, as spokeswoman for the socialist parliamentary group in matters of education, science and research, and for questions of legal reform, especially family law.

1959–1970 she was also a member of the Austrian delegation to the then so-called Consultative Assembly of the Council of Europe , Vice-President of its Commission for Refugee and Population Issues and a member of the Asylum Advisory Council in the Ministry of the Interior .

When Bruno Kreisky formed his first cabinet in 1970 , Firnberg was initially appointed Minister without a portfolio, but with the task of founding a Federal Ministry for Science and Research . The ministry was established by law on July 24, 1970, and Firnberg was appointed Austria's first female science minister. After Grete Rehor, she was only the second female minister in the history of Austria. During her tenure as minister (1970–1983) - she also belonged to the federal governments of Kreisky II , Kreisky III and Kreisky IV - the university reform in 1975 ( University Organization Act 1975 ) took place.

Due to her intellectual background and her self-determined demeanor, Firnberg was able to assert her ideas against respected university professors, even though women were only rarely represented in top politics at the time. A major factor in her success was that she received full support for her university reform from Bruno Kreisky, who was almost the same age and who, like her, valued intellectuality. In 1979, the City of Vienna made her the first honorary citizen in the city's history. On her 100th birthday, she was referred to in the conservative Viennese daily Die Presse as Primadonna assoluta in Kreisky's team .

Vienna Central Cemetery - honor grave of Hertha Firnberg

In 2014, in the series of articles Homeland of Great Daughters, it was recalled that Firnberg had often been described as a “lady” , not least in order to draw a particularly sharp contrast to other traits that were said to her. Hannes Androsch , then finance minister, wanted to have recognized a “clever to brutal” tactician in Firnberg around the beginning of the 1970s with “admiring amusement”.

When Kreisky resigned in 1983 after losing the absolute SPÖ majority that it had held for twelve years, Firnberg, now 74, also withdrew from politics. In her later years she lived, looked after by her sister, in the former Savoy women's monastery in Johannesgasse in Vienna's old town.

She rests in a grave of honor in the Vienna Central Cemetery (group 14 C, number 1 B).

Own works

Hertha Firnberg herself was frequently active as a journalist. Your work is listed here bibliographically:

Awards, honors

The Hertha Firnberg Schools for Business and Tourism were opened in Vienna in 2011 , as well as Hertha-Firnberg-Strasse in Vienna- Favoriten in 2001 and Firnbergplatz in Vienna- Donaustadt in 2010 . Furthermore, a secondary school in Wiener Neustadt was named after her.

Others

Hertha Firnberg was married twice: 1932–1942 and 1947–1949. Later Ludwig Siegfried Rutschka († 1970) was her partner.

In 1981, Thomas Bernhard criticized the minister in a text that only appeared in 2009 for her behavior when he was awarded the Grillparzer Prize in 1972:

... the minister snored, albeit very softly [...] the minister ... asked with inimitable arrogance and stupidity in her voice: yes, where is the poet?

literature

  • Joachim Gatterer: About former Minister of Science Hertha Firnberg and her twofold connection to the Brenner Archive. In: Johann Holzner / Eberhard Sauermann (eds.): Messages from the Brenner archive 29/2010, innsbruck university press, Innsbruck 2010, pp. 201–204.
  • Marlen Schachinger: Hertha Firnberg. A biography , Mandelbaum-Verlag, Vienna 2009. ISBN 978385476-308-6 .
  • Barbara Steininger: Firnberg, Hertha. In: Brigitta Keintzel, Ilse Korotin (ed.): Scientists in and from Austria. Life - work - work. Böhlau, Vienna / Cologne / Weimar 2002, ISBN 3-205-99467-1 , pp. 175–178.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Catalog list Austrian National Library
  2. ^ Website of the daily newspaper Die Presse , Vienna, September 11, 2009, printed edition of September 12, 2009
  3. ↑ Beate Hausbichler: With statistical meticulousness against injustice , 33rd part of the series Home Big Daughters. In: Der Standard daily newspaper , Vienna, December 3, 2014, p. 12
  4. ↑ List of all decorations awarded by the Federal President for services to the Republic of Austria from 1952 (PDF; 6.9 MB)
  5. ↑ List of all decorations awarded by the Federal President for services to the Republic of Austria from 1952 (PDF; 6.9 MB)
  6. ↑ www.wu.ac.at , queried March 7, 2018
  7. ↑ Beate Hausbichler: With statistical meticulousness against injustice , 33rd part of the series Home Big Daughters. In: Der Standard daily newspaper , Vienna, December 3, 2014, p. 12, last paragraph
  8. ^ Thomas Bernhard: My Prices , Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 2009, ISBN 978-3-518-42055-3 , p. 7 ff.

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Firnberg, Hertha
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Austrian politician (SPÖ), member of the National Council, member of the Federal Council
DATE OF BIRTH September 18, 1909
PLACE OF BIRTH Vienna
DATE OF DEATH February 14, 1994
Place of death Vienna