Waltraud Riegler

Waltraud Riegler (born October 3, 1959 in Oberpullendorf ) worked from 1993 and from 1997 to 2005 managing director of the Evangelical Academy Vienna (EAW). In the 1980s and 1990s she was a major activist of the LGBT movement in Austria .

life and work

Waltraud Riegler worked for more than a decade in the EAW, partly with Ulrich Trinks and Johannes Dantine . As managing director, she continued the undogmatic and open course of the EAW.

Since the beginning of the 1980s she has been involved in the LGBT movement in Austria, primarily in the lesbian group at HOSI Vienna . She was a long-time delegate on the HOSI Vienna Board of Directors, finally also a "lesbian secretary" and acted as the editor of the 2nd, 6th, 9th and 12th (and last) Austrian lesbian newsletter . In 1988 it caused the so-called GEWISTA scandal , which raised a lot of dust in the press landscape. Riegler wanted to rent billboards in Vienna's trams for a fee from the city's advertising space company - with the text: "Lesbians are always and everywhere". GEWISTA refused the contract, referring to the ban on advertising for same-sex fornication and fornication with animals (Section 220 StGB).

Riegler worked on three Austrian lesbian meetings and was active in the first Austrian lesbian and gay forum in 1993 in Linz . In 1990 she initiated the first lesbian football match in Austria and was elected deputy chairwoman of HOSI Vienna. At that time, the chairman was the HOSI founder Reinhardt Brandstätter . In the following year, together with the HOSI Vienna lesbian group, she enforced the equal occupation of all board positions - with one man and one woman each, with equal rights - and was elected the first chairwoman of HOSI Vienna. She held this position for ten years. She initiated the major renovation of the HOSI center, invited numerous guest speakers and initiated visits from politicians - u. a. with Johanna Dohnal (1990), Franz Vranitzky (1992) and Caspar Eine (1998).

In 1995 she was elected vice-chairwoman of the Austrian Lesbian and Gay Forum . In the same year she was - alongside Gudrun Hauer , Kurt Krickler , Christian Michelides and Elisabeth Piesch - one of the main prosecutors at the International Human Rights Tribunal . On 10 October 1995 said Riegler before the Parliamentary deficit for the abolition of paragraphs 209, 220 and 221 of the Criminal Code , while in front of the Parliament one of her co-organized human chain for human rights was held. From 1996 she was present every year with HOSI Vienna at the Rainbow Parade.

The networking - at the national level with other discriminated and marginalized groups at the international level with other LGBT activists - was a particular concern Riegler. In 1993 she took on a board function in the Minority Year Initiative , which was institutionalized the following year as the Minorities Initiative . In 1989 she made significant organizational contributions to the ILGA World Conference in Vienna, in 1993 to the ILGA Eastern European Conference and in 1999 to the ILGA European Seminar. From 1987 to 1998 she was present at ILGA conferences all over Europe and represented her association there.

Award

• 2009: Federal Decoration of Honor for outstanding achievements in the areas of tolerance and human rights

Web links

• Waltraud Riegler. Ten years chairwoman of HOSI Vienna , accessed on February 16, 2014
• Stonewall in Vienna , Waltraud Riegler in an interview with Marco Schreuder , accessed on February 17, 2014

proof

1. ^ Federal Decoration of Honor for Waltraud Riegler , Homosexuelle Initiative, November 16, 2009