Elisabeth Gehrer
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Elisabeth Gehrer (born May 11, 1942) is a Conservative Austrian politician. From 1995 until January 2007 Gehrer was Federal Minister of Education, Science and Culture, at first in grand coalition governments headed by Franz Vranitzky and Viktor Klima (both SPÖ), and, since 2000, in Wolfgang Schüssel's coalition government. Since 1999 she has also been vice party chairperson of the Austrian People's Party (ÖVP).
Gehrer was born in Vienna but brought up and educated in Innsbruck. She became a primary school teacher in 1961 and continued teaching in small country schools until 1966.
In 1964 she married Fritz Gehrer, moved to Bregenz, Vorarlberg and became a homemaker. The couple has three grown-up sons.
Elisabeth Gehrer started her political career in 1980 as a regional politician in Bregenz. She remained in Vorarlberg in various political positions until her appointment as Federal Minister in 1995.
As Minister, Gehrer has been responsible for a number of rather unpopular and controversial measures. In 2001 the government's attempts at achieving a balanced budget led to the introduction of study fees at state universities (which had been abolished in the early 1970s by a Social Democratic government under Bruno Kreisky), in spite of Gehrer's earlier promise that this was not going to happen. Starting in September 2003, the number of lessons per week to be held in Austrian classrooms was generally reduced by two. The Austrian school system being very much a centralized affair, this was a nationwide reduction, affecting both state and private schools. Gehrer's critics see the bad results of the 2003 PISA study—a general decline in knowledge and skills among Austria's schoolchildren—as a direct consequence of her politics.
Also in 2003, Gehrer publicly mused on what it really is that makes life worth living, insinuating that the young generation were too hedonistic "rushing from party to party" rather than settling down, getting married and having children—a dictum which, some claim, shows that she is hopelessly out of touch with reality.
Gehrer announced her decision to step down in the wake of the Austrian legislative election, 2006 and was succeeded on January 11, 2007 by Claudia Schmied and Johannes Hahn.
A giraffe at Schönbrunn born in 2002 is called "Liesl" after the Minister.
