Leopoldine Kummer

1903, Vienna– 1969, Vienna

Leopoldine Kummer, known as Lisl, was one of the first social welfare assistants to work at the Vienna Youth Welfare Office from 1926 onwards. She was a co-founder and a member of the executive committee of its professional association. She also served as a district councillor for the Social Democratic Workers’ Party (SDAP) until it was banned in 1934. As a trade unionist, she represented the interests of those who had been dismissed from their posts as Social Democrats, such as Else Schüssel in 1937.

Lisl Kummer became part of a communist network of social workers who were friends and who hid a Jewish colleague and her husband, Else and Otto Schüssel, from March 1943 until liberation. They had to secretly procure food for them for over two years. Kummer was caught making unauthorised purchases in the countryside and was fined a large sum. The colleague was hidden in a garden shed in Inzersdorf and, using her false identity papers, was presumably also out and about in Favoriten.

After 1945, Lisl Kummer remained active in politics and the trade union movement, and continued to work at the Youth Welfare Office until 1962. In her private life, she lived with her friend and colleague, the social worker Dora Hostowsky, from the 1950s onwards. Both women were buried in the same family grave.