The World Hails Melanie Berger-Volle, 1921-2026

Mélanie Berger was born into a Jewish family in the Leopoldstadt area of Vienna. After completing her secondary education, she learned the corset-making trade as part of her dressmaking apprenticeship. She says she developed a political mindset from the age of 13. Politically socialized within the labour movement, she participated in illegal activities during the Austro-fascist era from the age of 15. During her schooling, she joined the Socialist Revolutionary Party of Austria (RSÖ). Members of this banned party met on a nudist beach in Lobau. She recounts in an interview that it was there, naked, that she began her first political discussions. Shortly afterward, she joined the internationalist and anti-Stalinist organization, the Revolutionary Communists of Austria (RKÖ).

• Chevalier de la Légion d’honneur
• Chevalier de l’ordre national du Mérite
• Commandeur de l’ordre des Palmes académiques
• Médaille des évadés
• Croix du combattant volontaire de la guerre 1939-1945
• Croix du combattant volontaire de la Résistance
• Croix du combattant
• Médaille de la déportation pour faits de Résistance
• Médaille d’or de l’ordre du Mérite d’Autriche (2015)

On 12 July 2013, Mélanie Berger-Volle was appointed to the rank of knight in the national order of the Legion of Honour, as an “interned resistance fighter; 72 years of service”.^[10]

On 13 November 2002, Mélanie Berger-Volle was appointed to the rank of Knight in the National Order of Merit, as “member of the committee of the National Federation of Deportees and Internees, Resistance Fighters and Patriots; 40 years of professional, associative and civil and military service activities”.^[11]

From 24 December 2025, she was also a Commander of the Order of Academic Palms.^[12]