Luise Renner

Luise Renner (* 25. June 1872 in Güssing , Kingdom of Hungary , as Luise Stoisits ; † thirtieth June 1963 in Vienna ) was the wife of the Social Democratic Austrian politician Karl Renner , who from 1945 until his death on December 31, 1950 President of the Republic of Austria was. Luise Renner was a co-founder and first president of Volkshilfe Österreich , after which the Austrian Nursing and Care Award was named.

Life

Origin and family

Luise Renner came from the city of Güssing in the far west of what was then the Kingdom of Hungary , which has belonged to Austria as part of Burgenland since 1921 . Her German-speaking family lived in simple circumstances. Her mother, nee Oswald, was the daughter of the farmer and innkeeper Oswald from the neighboring town of St. Nikolaus . Her mother had married a military man of Croatian origin named Stoisits at a young age . He served as a professional soldier and died in 1879. Luise Stoisits had five siblings, three brothers and two sisters.

At the age of 16, Luise Renner came to Vienna , where she worked in a small guest house run by relatives in order to contribute to the livelihood of her family in what would later become Burgenland.

Relationship and marriage with Karl Renner

In the summer of 1890 Luise Stoisits met her future husband Karl Renner in the 8th district of Vienna, Josefstadt , in a property on Lerchenfelder Strasse, where she lived. A love relationship also developed physically. At that time, after retiring from military service, Renner was looking for an apartment in Vienna.

In the summer of 1891 Karl Renner worked as a tutor at Johnsdorf Castle near Mährisch-Ostrau . Before his departure he had for Luise a room in sublease rent in Lammgasse 1 in Vienna Josefstadt. There Luise Stoisits gave birth to their daughter Leopoldine († 1977) on August 16, 1891. Karl Renner studied law in Vienna from the winter semester of 1891 and financed his studies as a tutor and with various paperwork.

From the spring of 1892 Luise worked as a housemaid to contribute to the family support; the daughter Leopoldine came to live with foster parents in Purkersdorf . At the beginning of November 1892, Karl and Luise moved into a spacious room in Vienna 8th, Stolzenthalergasse 14. The landlord Alois Rohrauer (1843–1923), socialist and co-founder of Naturfreunde Österreich (see monument here ), had given the unmarried couple the room. The daughter Leopoldine stayed with the foster parents in Purkersdorf.

In the summer of 1895 Luise accompanied her later husband Karl Renner to the Grundlsee near Markt Aussee , where he had a summer job as a tutor and gave lectures and training courses for the saltworks workers who were organized in the labor movement . As far as the care of her daughter Leopoldine allowed, Luise regularly accompanied her husband to his lectures. She thus came into contact with the ideas of the labor movement early and intensively.

In the summer of 1895, Luise and Karl Renner rented their first joint apartment in Viaduktgasse in Vienna's 3rd district, Landstrasse . Luise gave up her job and from then on was exclusively a housewife and mother until her daughter Leopoldine came of age . In the spring of 1896, Luise Stoisits and Karl Renner married, also at the urging of Karl Renner's superiors, who asked Renner to finally end his “immoral cohabitation ” in Vienna's Weißgerber Church . Renner had received his permanent civil servant position in the parliamentary library that year. In 1910, the couple bought the Renner Villa, which is now a memorial and museum, in Gloggnitz in southern Lower Austria . The Renner couple gave invitations. Luise Renner regularly organized sociable music evenings, where she acted as host.

Daughter Leopoldine began after reaching the age of majority law school , but she did not finish. During a stay abroad, she studied literature at Cambridge University . In May 1913 Leopoldine Renner married the civil engineer Hans Deutsch (* 1878, † 1953), head of the Hammerbrotwerke . The wedding took place according to the Old Catholic rite in Vienna's Salvatorkirche , although Hans Deutsch was of Jewish faith. The National Socialists therefore accused the Renner couple of having “Jewish infiltration” because of their son-in-law. The marriage of the daughter Leopoldine to Hans Deutsch resulted in three children: Hans (* 1913), Karl (Karl Deutsch-Renner, born February 7, 1917 in Vienna, died January 26, 2005 in Ottawa , Canadian radio author) and Franziska (* 1920). Leopoldine Deutsch-Renner emigrated to Great Britain in 1938 with Hans Deutsch-Renner and her children, and in 1939 she returned alone to Gloggnitz, where she lived with her parents. After the war ended in 1945, Hans Deutsch-Renner returned to his wife and in-laws in Vienna, where he died in 1953.

From 1918 to 1933, when Renner was State Chancellor (see State Government Renner I to Renner III ), from 1920 a member of the National Council and one of the most prominent social democratic politicians, Luise Renner regularly accompanied her husband to international socialist congresses where Renner spoke; they found u. a. in Schleswig-Holstein , South Tyrol , Milan , Genoa , Marseille and Lyon . At that time the couple lived in the 2nd district , Praterstrasse 8. Karl Renner jokingly and affectionately called his wife Luise “Chancellor”, probably an allusion to the fact that Luise Renner was attentive to her husband's political affairs.

Second World War and return to Vienna

During the Second World War , Luise Renner lived with her husband and daughter Leopoldine, who had returned to her parents shortly before the start of the war in 1939, in the villa in Gloggnitz, under house arrest under the supervision of the Gestapo . In April 1945 she accompanied her husband, who had been entrusted by the Soviet military government with the reconstruction of an Austrian government, the Provisional State Government , back to Vienna (see here ). In December 1945 the Federal Constitution was put into full force again and the previous State Chancellor Renner was elected President. From 1946 he officiated in the Hofburg .

Volkshilfe

Luise Renner was a co-founder of Volkshilfe Austria . This was founded on March 21, 1947 as a non-party and non-profit charity in Vienna. Luise Renner was elected its first president. The Luise , the Austrian nursing and care award , was named after her in 2014 . The statuette that is awarded to the award winners was designed by Manfred Wakolbinger .

Late years, death, reception and aftermath

Karl Renner wrote in his book At the Turn of Two Times in 1946 . Life memories of Karl Renner about meeting his future wife. The chapter A home, a meaningful encounter is dedicated to his meeting with Luise Renner.

After Karl Renner's death on December 31, 1950, Luise Renner was given an apartment on the ground floor of the right wing of Schönbrunn Palace . She lived there with her daughter Leopoldine and her son-in-law Hans Deutsch († 1952). She outlived her husband by 13 years. In the last few years she was in need of care and was looked after by her daughter. Luise Renner died at the end of June 1963 at the age of 92 in the bed of her apartment in Schönbrunn.

In the Arbeiter-Zeitung , the central organ of the SPÖ, Marianne Pollak , at that time already a senior citizen of the “party nobility”, wrote a very detailed obituary eight weeks before her suicide.

In the memories of her grandchildren, her "warm-hearted, balancing" nature and her "loving" character were particularly emphasized. She was considered an excellent cook . According to her grandson Karl Deutsch-Renner (1917–2005), Luise Renner was always aware of her simple origins, despite her high social advancement; she never forgot this. Karl Deutsch-Renner later reported in interviews that his grandmother had a bourgeois style of clothing, never wearing flashy jewels and jewelry or fur coats .

Luise Renner was buried at the side of her husband in the presidential crypt in Vienna's central cemetery.

In a commemorative text on the 25th anniversary of Renner's death, the Vienna City Hall correspondence wrote that Renner's wife - he had married early - was heavily involved in the socialist movement .

literature

• Senta Ziegler: Austria's first ladies. From Luise Renner to Margot Klestil-Löffler. Ueberreuter, Vienna 1999, ISBN 3-8000-3719-X , pp. 9-26.

Web links

• Karl Renner and his family. - Dr. Karl Renner Museum of Contemporary History.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Ernst Winkler: On the battlements of the party. Selected Writings. Druck- und Verlagsanstalt Gutenberg, 1967, p. 83.
2. ↑ ^{a b c} Norbert Leser : Grenzgänger: Austrian Intellectual History in Necromancy. Volume 2, Böhlau-Verlag, p. 259 [1]
3. ↑ Werner Röder, Herbert A. Strauss : Politics, Economy, Public Life. Walter de Gruyter Verlag , p. 127 (online)
4. ↑ Special edition - 60 Years of People's Aid - 1947–2007 ( Memento of the original from January 8, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. . Accessed January 8, 2014. 
5. ^ Volkshilfe Austria - history . Retrieved January 8, 2015.
6. ↑ Volkshilfe awards the "Luise" ( Memento of the original from January 8, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. . Retrieved January 8, 2015. 
7. ↑ Volkshilfe Österreich - Luise - Österreichischer Pflege- und Betreuungspreis ( Memento of the original from January 7, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. . Retrieved January 8, 2015. 
8. ↑ Volkshilfe awards the "Luise", the Austrian nursing and care prize . APA notification from November 5, 2014, accessed on January 8, 2015.
9. ^ Danubius-Verlag, Vienna 1946.
10. ^ Farewell to a great old lady. In: Arbeiter-Zeitung. Vienna, July 2, 1963, p. 3.
11. ^ Federal President condolences the death of Karl Deutsch-Renner , February 7, 2005.
12. ↑ Karl Renner in memory. In: Rathauskorrespondenz. Culture, December 29, 1975.