Freda Meissner-Blau

Freda Meissner-Blau (11 March 1927 – 22 December 2015) was an Austrian politician, activist, and prominent figurehead in the Austrian environmental movement.

She was a founder and the federal spokesperson of the Austrian Green Party.

Freda Meissner was born in Dresden in 1927, the youngest of four children.

Her mother was from a wealthy family of industrialists.

Her father, Dr. Ferdinand Meissner Hohenmeiss, was an economist and journalist.

Until age three, Meissner grew up in Reichenberg (now Liberec), before her family moved to Linz, where Meissner attended school.

She grew up in a liberal, educated household and enjoyed nature, culture, and art.

The family moved to Vienna in 1938, where Ferdinand became editor of a newspaper that was critical of the Nazi movement.

He was deemed an enemy of the state for his outspoken opposition and he fled to the United Kingdom in 1939.

To avoid the Nazi reprisal of Sippenhaft (kin liability), Meissner's parents divorced and the family moved back to Liberec.

Meissner continued her education there, and then in Vienna and Dresden.

During this time many of Meissner's relatives and friends perished during the war, and

Meissner's own experiences witnessing the bombing of Dresden, galvanized her ambition to pursue progressive and activist causes.

Meissner returned to Vienna in 1947 and obtained a leaving certificate before going on to communication studies and journalism, working during her studies for the American occupation in Vienna.

She travelled to England that same year to visit her father, before completing nursing school and then finally moving to Frankfurt, Germany to study medicine at the Goethe University Frankfurt.

While studying there she met Georges de Pawloff who was working for the French occupation in West Germany.

In the early 1950s Meissner and her husband moved to Central Africa, in what was then the Belgian Congo, where they both worked for a Germany company operating there.

They married in 1953.

Their first child, Ted Oliver, was born there in 1954.

During their time there they witnessed the bloody independence struggle and the onset of the Congo Crisis – experiences that would form the foundation of Meissner's commitment to causes in the developing world.

She then underwent a career change and in the 1960s she moved to Paris and joined the social science department of UNESCO.

During her tenure there one of her jobs was to translate corporate documents relating to offers and proposals for the construction of nuclear power plants.

After this exposure she became increasingly interested in the subject, and formed strong opinions on the environmental and social dangers of nuclear power.

Subsequently, she became an activist in the anti-nuclear movement.

In 1962 she returned with her family to Vienna, where her husband worked for the International Atomic Energy Agency.

Meissner became general secretary of the newly formed Institute for Advanced Studies.

She and Georges gave birth to twins, Alexandra and Nicholas, in 1963.

Paul was a prominent figure in the trade union movement, and was editor of the Arbeiter-Zeitung (worker's newspaper) from 1967 to 1970.

In 1968 Meissner was again living in Paris, and participated in the movements surrounding the protests of 1968.

She identified herself with a number of progressive and social causes of the time, including women's rights, civil rights, environmentalism, democracy and antiestablishmentarianism.

She became estranged from Georges, and their marriage broke up in political disagreement.

In 1970 she remarried Paul Blau, with whom she had a long acquaintance and shared many ethical and social outlooks.

From 1970 to 1972 he worked as a press and cultural attaché in Paris.

During the 1970s the issue of nuclear power was at the forefront of environmental activism, and was a particularly contentious issue in Austrian politics.

In the late 1970s this issue came to a head with the planned construction of six nuclear power plants, the first of which was the Nuclear Power Facility at Zwentendorf.

In 1972 the couple returned to Vienna.

Meissner-Blau worked as the Bildungsreferentin (education secretary) for the industrial giant OMV where she took an active role holding seminars and running classes for the working class employees.

She came into contact with numerous figures in the union movement and leaders within the Socialist Party of Austria (SPÖ).

Opposition to the plant became increasingly vociferous as the plant neared completion in 1978.

Meissner-Blau became a prominent leader in the fight against the plant, appearing frequently in the media as a spokesperson for the opposition movement.