Stella Klein-Löw

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Stella Klein-Löw (nee Stella Herzig ; born January 28, 1904 in Przemyśl , Galicia , Austria-Hungary ; † June 7, 1986 in Vienna ) was an Austrian teacher and politician .

Life

Stella Herzig grew up in an upper-class Jewish family that became impoverished after the end of the monarchy. Her parents moved to Vienna when she was a toddler. She graduated from elementary school and high school here . At the age of 13, she began to give tutoring and , according to her statements, was largely self- sufficient from then on . After graduating from high school , she studied German , philology and psychology at the University of Vienna .

A little later she began studying the English language . After receiving her doctorate in 1927 she was awarded in 1931 as a teacher at the authority, main and secondary schools to work. She taught at various Viennese schools, most recently from 1933 (her first permanent position!) At the Jewish, private secondary school founded by Zwi Perez Chajes in Castellezgasse in Vienna Leopoldstadt (2nd district) , which is now in the same district at a new location as Zwi -Perez Chajes School continues. She had introduced herself there on the day her husband was buried: March 31, 1933.

Already as a child she was politically committed to social democracy , was a member of the socialist youth workers , then the socialist students, and in 1922 became a member of the Social Democratic Party of Austria (SDAP). There she met her future first husband.

Stella Herzig was first marriage since 1930 with the doctor Hans Klein, but 1933 unspecified reasons 33-year-old suicide committed. She lived with her husband in Vienna Wieden , Rainergasse 31, then, also as a widow, in Oberdöbling , Budinskygasse 10. Here the “middle school teacher” Stella Klein appeared in Lehmann's Vienna address book until 1938 . In 1939, after a long hesitation, she had to flee to Great Britain because of her Jewish faith and because of the threat from the National Socialists . Before that, she had succeeded in getting her younger brother out of the Vienna Gestapo headquarters on Morzinplatz with the help of a Nazi guard whom she had once brought to high school as a private student; she had previously obtained a UK visa for her brother .

Many other members of her family were murdered in extermination camps . She made her way in England first as a laborer and housemaid. She met her second husband among social democratic emigrants: in 1940 she married the physicist Moses Löw, b. 1898 or 1899. With his financial help, she was able to gain a foothold in her old profession again from 1941 in Stevenage , as a teacher at a school for boys who were difficult to educate. She was also politically active in her adopted British home and became a member of the Social Democratic Labor Party in 1942 .

In 1946, one year after the end of the war, Klein-Löw returned to Austria with her husband. In the same year she became a teacher at the girls' high school in Rahlgasse in Vienna's 6th district, Mariahilf . In 1950 she was promoted and until 1970 she was the director of a secondary school for girls in Floridsdorf (21st district).

Stella Klein-Löw was soon also instrumental in building up the post-war SPÖ. As a member of the party's central committee, but also as a member of party control, she soon made a name for herself. Their “political home” became the 2nd district of Vienna, Leopoldstadt , once known as “Mazzesinsel” among Jews . She belonged to the SPÖ district party executive.

In June 1959 she was elected to the National Council on the SPÖ list , in the legendary election in which the SPÖ received more votes (but not mandates) than the ÖVP for the first time in the Second Republic . She stayed in parliament until March 1970, almost eleven years, and saw the final years of the old-style grand coalition (until 1966) as a member of parliament as well as the sole ÖVP government of the Second Republic (1966-1970). When she retired in 1970 for reasons of age, the 13 years of government of her party friend Bruno Kreisky began .

Urn grave at the Simmering fire hall

As SPÖ education spokeswoman and deputy chairman of the Vienna Education Committee, she mainly dealt with educational issues. She acted as editor-in-chief of the party magazine Socialist Education . As a board member of the Austrian-Israeli Society, she tried to set reconciling accents after the Holocaust .

In 1970 Stella Klein-Löw retired. She died in Vienna in June 1986 at the age of 82, a few weeks after the death of her 87-year-old husband. Stella Klein-Löw's ashes were buried in an urn grave at the Simmering fire hall , where the ashes of her first husband were buried in 1933 and that of her second husband in 1986. This grave is one of the honorary dedicated or honorary custody grave sites of the City of Vienna. (She is listed as Stella Löw in the electronic grave site register of the Vienna municipal cemeteries.)

The Stella-Klein-Löw-Hof at the corner of Taborstraße 61 / Pfeffergasse

Honors

Works

  • The searching person. Verl. D. Austrian Federation of Trade Unions, Vienna 1961.
  • How marriages break. Verb. Wiener Volksbildung, Vienna 1979.
  • Memories. Youth and People, Vienna 1980.
  • People around me. Youth and People, Vienna 1982.
  • Bruno Kreisky . A portrait in words. With a text by Otto Bauer : Revolutionary detail work. Jungbrunnen publishing house, Vienna Munich 1983, ISBN 3-7026-5549-2 .
  • From vision to reality, from reality to vision. Consideration of over sixty years of activity in the socialist movement in Austria. Foreword by Herbert Moritz , afterword by Peter Pelinka , Verlag der Wiener Volksbuchhandlung, Vienna 1985, ISBN 3-900336-08-3 .

literature

  • Gerhard Benetka: Klein-Löw, Stella. 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. 379-380.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Petra Stuiber: Red fighter for a school suitable for children , series Heimat Große Töchter , part 14 in: Der Standard newspaper , Vienna, August 13, 2014, p. 6
  2. ↑ a b biography in the Austrian Biographical Lexicon
  3. ^ Search for grave sites on the website of the Vienna cemeteries
  4. ↑ www.friedhoefewien.at - Graves dedicated to honor in the fire hall Simmering cemetery (PDF 2016), accessed on March 7, 2018
personal data
SURNAME Little Low, Stella
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Austrian teacher and politician (SPÖ), member of the National Council
DATE OF BIRTH January 28, 1904
PLACE OF BIRTH Przemyśl , Galicia
DATE OF DEATH June 7, 1986
Place of death Vienna