AUSTRIAN FEMINIST

Evening Post, Volume CIX, Issue 51, 1 March 1930, Page 19

AUSTRIAN FEMINIST

As an appreciation of Auguste Friekert's great pioneer work in-■ the struggle for equality of women with men in Austria during the nineteenth, century, the women of Austria recently erected a handsome monument —a statue of the lady herself in characteristic pose—in the Turkenschantzpark, on© of the loveliest of Vienna's public parks. Of white marble, the monument, the work of the famous sculptor, Professor Franz Seifert, stands out in, bold' relief against its verdant back-! ground, states an English exchange.' It is inscribed "To the Pioneer in the Fight for Women's Eights, Auguste Fickeri, 1533-1910. Her life was courageously and energetically dovoted to the service of high ideals." The Municipality of Vienna gave the site for the monument to a lady who occupies an honoured place in the esteem and affections of Austrian'men and •\yomcn. At a time when the idea of equal lights for bpth sexes was regarded by tho majority as absurd or Utopian, it required great courage for a school teacher to conic forwar. and advocate such an ideal. But her courage and foresight triumphed, and it was not long before an Austrian Women's Society was founded, which demanded, among other things, that -women should be admitted t-> the universities and high schools throughout the State; that there should be equal, direct universal suffrage for men and women. This becomes all the more remarkable when one recalls that even the men had not secured at this time full suffrage rights for themselves, and -hen taxpaying women had been forced to relinquish the suffrage rights they had previously enjoyed. This society, which included among its active members Frau Rosa Mayreder and Frau Marianne Hainisch, was instrumental also in establishing the first free legal advisory boards, and has been since its formation a/watchful defender of woman's rights in modern industry. To it must be attributed in large measure the fact that to-day in Austria- women enjoy identically the same rights as men.