PETRA UNGER
Feminist academic. Cultural Mediator.
Women's history is often invisible in public space. We therefore need a feminist view of our cities. In her "Vienna Women* Walks", cultural mediator Petra Unger draws attention to the moving fates of women who have shaped the city and its districts in their own unique way. Petra has developed over 50 tours, each featuring a minimum of 5 to 8 biographies, her work covers around 300 to 350 women. Unger is an academic consultant for feminist education and politics. She is an expert in gender studies and feminist research. She specialises in recent approaches to queer feminist theory and postcolonial studies. Unger is the recipient of the Käthe Leichter Prize.
Petra Unger / © Maria Noisternig
“Every woman, no matter what else she does, should study history for a year. Every woman changes when she learns that she has a history.”
On the job / © Apollonia Theresa Bitzan
Vienna would be nothing without its women
Interview with Petra Unger
Is Vienna a good city for women? Has it been? And today? The situation of women depends strongly on politics and society as a whole. The (big) city has always been a promise of freedom, even if it has not always been fulfilled. There are always more opportunities in a big city to try out ways of life in anonymity and more opportunities for work and childcare. In the city, different people, classes and strata have always had to get along and diversity is always a possibility. Vienna is a good city for women on a very high level: it is located in one of the richest countries in the world, with high social security, strong social systems and three very strong women's movements. This is the main reason why Vienna became and still is a good city for women.
How do you prepare your tours? I stand on the shoulders of pioneers and ancestors e.g. of Emma Adler and other collectors of women's biographies such as Eva Geber and Ilse Korotin. I also build on the research findings of other scholars because I do not have sufficient research resources myself and, moreover, do not have formalised training in critical historical research work. I am self-taught in historical research and like to draw on theses and dissertations or publications by recognised historians. This places me at the interface of science, urban research and popular education.
Why do you concentrate on the 19th century? Most of Vienna's buildings date back to this period and our ideas of gender, which we are still working on today, originate from the 19th and early 20th centuries. In my opinion, in order to be able to break them down and go new ways, we need this historical, socio-political and women's biographical knowledge.
Is there an ‘evergreen’ of the women's walks? My ‘evergreen’ is the introductory walk "Women's Traces - From Parliament to Judenplatz". Here, basic information on women's history and the history of women's movements is interspersed with love stories and original quotations. That was the first one. Two walks in autumn will focus on the history of Red Vienna, and some will be dedicated to women's history in Favoriten. Possibly I will organise one or two more walks of my own.
What is your responsibility and your power as a cultural mediator? To do justice to women and their life stories. But also to do justice to the walkers by formulating in a comprehensible, differentiated and politically sensitive way and to carefully handle my power of definition, which is granted to me at times during a walk. My strength and desire to continue developing and designing women's walks comes from the recognition and enthusiasm of the numerous and very diverse walkers and the wonderful feminist books.
Interview by Astrid Kuffner, 2019 / © madamewien.at
Petra Unger / © Maria Noisternig
“Saying what is changes the world.”
”Saying what is, and what was, changes the world.”
