Elisabeth Waldheim

Elisabeth Waldheim (née Ritschel) (born 13 April 1922 in Vienna) is the widow of the former UN Secretary-General and Austrian federal president Kurt Waldheim.

She was born as the eldest of three sisters to Wilhelm Ritschel and his wife Hildegard. His father was a military official in the imperial army. After the fall of the Habsburg empire, he became an entrepreneur. His daughter Elisabeth was named after the former Austrian empress Elisabeth and she even got her nickname "Sissy".

Elisabeth decided to study law at University of Vienna, where she first met Kurt Waldheim. On 19 August 1944, in the middle of the Second World War, they got married in Vienna. Their first daughter Lieselotte was born in 1945.

Elisabeth gave up her own job in order to support her husband's diplomatic and political career. He became Austrian minister of foreign affairs and general secretary of the United Nations Organisation. In 1986 he was elected federal president of Austria and she became Austria's first lady. After it was revealed that her husband had lied about his service as an officer in the SA-Reitercorps and his time as an ordnance officer in Saloniki, Greece, from 1942 to 1943, the couple were deemed personae non gratae by many countries and (with some exceptions, such as the visit to the Pope) there were hardly any state visits during his term of presidency.

The couple had three children: daughter Lieselotte Waldheim-Natural is working at the United Nations, daughter Christa Waldheim-Karas became an artist (she is married to Othmar Karas, Austrian member to the Euopean Parliament), and son Gerhard Waldheim is an investment banker.

Mrs Waldheim speaks German, English and French. [ Senta Ziegler: "Österreichs First Ladies". Wien. Ueberreuter 1999]

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