Gudrun Kugler


Gudrun Veronika Kugler, née Lang, also known as Kugler-Lang is a Roman Catholic theologian and jurist. Kugler teaches theology and is active in the pro-life movement and works against social discrimination and Persecution of Christians in Europe and worldwide. In 2015 she was elected to the Viennese municipal council for the ÖVP due to the high amount of preference votes received. In October 2017 she was unexpectedly elected as leading ÖVP candidate in her electoral district to the National Council with an increase in votes of over 9 %.

Political and business activities

Kugler holds master's degrees in law and women's studies and a doctorate in International Law. In 1999 she earned her Master’s of Theological Studies on Marriage and the Family.
From 2001 to 2004 she worked in Brussels as the first director of the World Youth Alliance-Europe representing 1.5 million young people from 100 countries at the EU and UN.
In January 2005, she and her husband founded Kairos-Consulting a company based in Vienna which focuses on charitable initiatives.
In April 2010, Kugler was elected a member of the Advisory Panel of the Fundamental Rights Platform, for a period of two years.
In 2005 Kugler ran as an independent candidate for the Austrian People's Party at the Vienna municipal elections and earned the most votes after the top candidate Johannes Hahn. In this context, abortion advocates and pro-life activists accused each other of fundamentalism.
In October 2015 she was elected to the Viennese council thanks to a highly successful preferential vote turnout, which put her with 1.652 preference votes on top of the ÖVP candidate list.
In October 2017 she stunned political observers when in the legislative elections her electoral district Vienna North, a traditional social-democratic stronghold, returned the highest increase in votes with more than +9 %. As the top candidate for this district, Kugler won a direct seat in the National Council. She also received the second-most preference votes of all regional ÖVP-candidates in Vienna.

Christian activities

Together with other Christian intellectuals Kugler founded "Europe for Christ!", an initiative to encourage Christians to be aware of their responsibilities in the political forum. She also established the Observatory on Intolerance and Discrimination against Christians in Europe, www.intoleranceagainstchristians.eu.
Kugler attended the first meeting of the OSCE Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights on "intolerance and discrimination against Christians" as a representative of the Documentation Centre.
Kugler has stated that "intolerance against Christians by negative stereotyping and discrimination by denial of rights are on the rise".
Since 2008 Kugler has taught as an adjunct professor at the International Theological Institute in Vienna, Austria. She founded and ran the youth academy of the Dr Karl-Kummer Institute. In 2010, she and Denis Borel edited the book "Entdeckung der Freundschaft" in honor of the 65th Birthday of Cardinal Christoph Schönborn.

Awards

Kugler received the Leopold Kunschak Prize for her dissertation, and the prize of the foundation "Ja zum Leben" for her work in Brussels.

Publications