The Most Famous

SOCIAL ACTIVISTS from Austria

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This page contains a list of the greatest Austrian Social Activists. The pantheon dataset contains 840 Social Activists, 4 of which were born in Austria. This makes Austria the birth place of the 30th most number of Social Activists behind South Korea, and Cuba.

Top 6

The following people are considered by Pantheon to be the most legendary Austrian Social Activists of all time. This list of famous Austrian Social Activists is sorted by HPI (Historical Popularity Index), a metric that aggregates information on a biography’s online popularity.

Photo of Alfred Hermann Fried

1. Alfred Hermann Fried (1864 - 1921)

With an HPI of 67.31, Alfred Hermann Fried is the most famous Austrian Social Activist.  His biography has been translated into 53 different languages on wikipedia.

Alfred Hermann Fried (German pronunciation: [ˈʔalfʁeːt ˈhɛʁman ˈfʁiːt]; 11 November 1864 – 4 May 1921) was an Austrian Jewish pacifist, publicist, journalist, co-founder of the German peace movement, and winner (with Tobias Asser) of the Nobel Peace Prize in 1911. Fried was also a supporter of Esperanto. He is the author of an Esperanto textbook and an Esperanto-German and German-Esperanto dictionary, first published in 1903 and republished in 1905.

Photo of Bertha Pappenheim

2. Bertha Pappenheim (1859 - 1936)

With an HPI of 60.45, Bertha Pappenheim is the 2nd most famous Austrian Social Activist.  Her biography has been translated into 22 different languages.

Bertha Pappenheim (27 February 1859 – 28 May 1936) was an Austrian-Jewish feminist, a social pioneer, and the founder of the Jewish Women's Association (Jüdischer Frauenbund). Under the pseudonym Anna O., she was also one of Josef Breuer's best-documented patients because of Sigmund Freud's writing on Breuer's case.

Photo of Maria Altmann

3. Maria Altmann (1916 - 2011)

With an HPI of 56.24, Maria Altmann is the 3rd most famous Austrian Social Activist.  Her biography has been translated into 18 different languages.

Maria Altmann (née Maria Victoria Bloch, later Bloch-Bauer; February 18, 1916 – February 7, 2011) was an Austrian-American Jewish refugee from Austria, who fled her home country after it was annexed to the Nazi’s Third Reich. She is noted for her ultimately successful legal campaign to reclaim from the Government of Austria five family-owned paintings by the artist Gustav Klimt that were stolen by the Nazis during World War II.

Photo of Diana Budisavljević

4. Diana Budisavljević (1891 - 1978)

With an HPI of 56.08, Diana Budisavljević is the 4th most famous Austrian Social Activist.  Her biography has been translated into 20 different languages.

Diana Budisavljević (née Obexer; 15 January 1891 – 20 August 1978) was an Austrian humanitarian who led a major relief effort in Yugoslavia during World War II. From October 1941, on her initiative and involving many co-workers, she organized and provided assistance to mostly Serbian Orthodox women and children detained in the Ustaše camps in the Independent State of Croatia, a Nazi puppet state established in occupied Yugoslavia. The operation, known as "Action Diana Budisavljević", succeeded in saving around 10,000 children. After her story was better publicized in the 2000s and 2010s, she received substantial posthumous recognition.

Photo of Marianne Hainisch

5. Marianne Hainisch (1839 - 1936)

With an HPI of 47.94, Marianne Hainisch is the 5th most famous Austrian Social Activist.  Her biography has been translated into 17 different languages.

Marianne Hainisch, born Marianne Perger (25 March 1839 – 5 May 1936) was the founder and leader of the Austrian women's movement. She was also the mother of Michael Hainisch, the second President of Austria (1920–1928).

Photo of Barbara Gittings

6. Barbara Gittings (1932 - 2007)

With an HPI of 35.05, Barbara Gittings is the 6th most famous Austrian Social Activist.  Her biography has been translated into 15 different languages.

Barbara Gittings (July 31, 1932 – February 18, 2007) was an American activist for LGBT equality. She organized the New York chapter of the Daughters of Bilitis (DOB) from 1958 to 1963, edited the national DOB magazine The Ladder from 1963 to 1966, and worked closely with Frank Kameny in the 1960s on the first picket lines that brought attention to the ban on employment of gay people by the largest employer in the US at that time: the United States government. Her early experiences with trying to learn more about lesbianism fueled her lifetime work with libraries. In the 1970s, Gittings was most involved in the American Library Association, especially its gay caucus, the first such in a professional organization, in order to promote positive literature about homosexuality in libraries. She was a part of the movement to get the American Psychiatric Association to drop homosexuality as a mental illness in 1972. Her self-described life mission was to tear away the "shroud of invisibility" related to homosexuality, which had theretofore been associated with crime and mental illness. She was awarded American Library Association Honorary Membership, and the ALA named an annual award for the best gay or lesbian novel the Barbara Gittings Award. The Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD) also named an activist award for her. At her memorial service, Matt Foreman, the executive director of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force said, "What do we owe Barbara? Everything."

People

Pantheon has 6 people classified as Austrian social activists born between 1839 and 1932. Of these 6, none of them are still alive today. The most famous deceased Austrian social activists include Alfred Hermann Fried, Bertha Pappenheim, and Maria Altmann. As of April 2024, 2 new Austrian social activists have been added to Pantheon including Marianne Hainisch, and Barbara Gittings.

Deceased Austrian Social Activists

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Newly Added Austrian Social Activists (2024)

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Overlapping Lives

Which Social Activists were alive at the same time? This visualization shows the lifespans of the 6 most globally memorable Social Activists since 1700.