Liese Prokop, 65; Austrian politician, Olympic medalist
Liese Prokop, 65, Austria’s first female interior minister and earlier an Olympic medalist in the pentathlon, died Sunday of a ruptured aorta, the country’s Interior Ministry announced.
Prokop, who was appointed in 2004 to oversee Austria’s police and overall security, died while being rushed to a hospital in St. Poelten, Austria, after complaining of chest pains and then collapsing.
She placed second in the pentathlon at the 1968 Summer Olympics in Mexico City, broke the world record in the event the following year and set a national record in the shot put that stood until 1999. The women’s pentathlon was replaced by the heptathlon in the Olympic program in 1984.
Prokop spent 23 years in regional politics before joining Chancellor Wolfgang Schuessel’s Cabinet. Before taking over the Interior Ministry, she was deputy governor of Lower Austria province, the most populous in the nation of 8 million.
Born March 27, 1941, in Vienna, Prokop began her political career in 1969 as a delegate to the regional assembly of Lower Austria.
A member of Schuessel’s center-right Austrian People’s Party, she won admiration from across the political spectrum for her ability to listen to and connect with ordinary citizens while pressing for a crackdown on street crime.
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