Elisabeth Waldheim

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

She was born as the oldest 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 entrepreneur. His daughter Elisabeth was named after the former Austrian empress Elisabeth and she even got her nickname "Sisi".

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 was deemed personae non gratae by many countries and (with some exceptions as the visit at the pope) there were hardly any state visits during his term of presidency.

Mrs Waldheim speaks German, English and French. ^[1]