Helene Auer

Helene Auer was born on 20 April 1945 in Oberwaltersdorf, in the district of Baden in Lower Austria. Her parents were Helene and Alfred Auer. After primary and secondary school she attended a commercial school and went to work as a bookkeeper. She said later that her whole career had been strongly shaped by her family, and above all by her father, and that she began taking an interest in politics very early.

Auer started out in the women's movement of the Social Democratic Party of Austria (SPÖ). In 1971 she became the party's women's secretary for Lower Austria, and she later served as deputy chair of the SPÖ women in the state. In 1975 she was elected to the municipal council of Oberwaltersdorf, and she was deputy mayor from 1984 to 1988 and from 1994 to 1998.

On 1 December 1987 she became a member of the Lower Austrian Landtag. She was re-elected in 1988, 1993 and 1998 and served as deputy leader of the SPÖ group. In 1998 she succeeded Traude Votruba as state chair of the SPÖ women, and she was re-elected to that post in May 1999 with 97.5 percent of the vote.

In 1998 she was elected mayor of Oberwaltersdorf, the first woman to lead the town. Finding the two roles too much to combine, she left the Landtag on 30 September 2000. As mayor until 2008 she oversaw the creation of all day childcare, the renovation and expansion of the schools, the hiring of a municipal carer for older residents, a social centre with senior flats and a care unit, and a cultural venue with an events hall, a local history museum, a gallery, a recording studio and studios for artists. She also worked to revive the town centre and said the municipality remained on a sound financial footing despite the investment.

Auer lived in Oberwaltersdorf all her life. She was a long standing honorary member of the Musikverein Oberwaltersdorf, the town band, which played for her on her 80th birthday in 2025. Little else about her private life has been made public.

Helene Auer died in November 2026 at the age of 81. The Lower Austrian Landtag records the date of death as 1 November 2026; the regional newspaper NÖN, which published an obituary on 4 November, reported it as a Monday at the start of the month. The cause of death was not made public.

Landtag President and SPÖ women's chair Elvira Schmidt said Auer had brought her into women's politics at barely 19 and described her as a role model, a fighter and an incredible person. Oberwaltersdorf's deputy mayor Berndt Gössinger called her an important mentor, and the town's ÖVP mayor Natascha Matousek said she had been the first woman at the top and had brought much in Oberwaltersdorf to life with tireless effort, courage and energy. The funeral was scheduled for 18 November 2026 at 2 pm in the parish church of Oberwaltersdorf.

Auer was one of the leading women in Lower Austrian social democracy in the 1980s and 1990s and campaigned in particular for the compatibility of family and work and for gender quotas. In Oberwaltersdorf she is remembered as the first woman mayor and as the driving force behind much of the town's social and cultural infrastructure. She was an honorary citizen and holder of the town's ring of honour, and the Haus Helene keeps her name in the town.