Scandal in the State

Unbelievable: Shooting Event Featuring a Rendi-Wagner Doll

A Rendi-Wagner doll on the lap of a Strache effigy(Bild: Gemeindeblatt Kennelbach)

The municipal newsletter of the Vorarlberg town of Kennelbach published photos of a shooting event held by law enforcement officers in 2023 that are truly shocking. Part of the “surprise course” included a scantily clad dummy bearing the likeness of Pamela Rendi-Wagner, then-chairwoman of the SPÖ.

In late April 2023, 211 recreational shooters, including several law enforcement officers, traveled to Kennelbach to participate in a shooting event. The event’s theme was “Ibiza—As It Really Was.”

The backdrop consisted of dummies modeled after figures from Austrian politics, including a scantily clad doll bearing the likeness of the then-SPÖ chairwoman Pamela Rendi-Wagner. The event, held in Kennelbach’s Schindlersaal, remained largely hidden from the public at the time.

Although the mannequins were not shot at, there has nevertheless been a huge outcry after photos of the event were published in the latest issue of the Kennelbach municipal newsletter—more than three years after the fact.

Women’s Spokesperson Demands Answers
“A woman is depicted in a degrading manner as a scantily clad doll—and this at an international shooting event for law enforcement officers. Those responsible should seriously question their own role and their view of humanity. And so should those participants who saw this, said nothing against it, and simply went along with it,” says Manuela Auer, the SPÖ women’s spokesperson for Vorarlberg, expressing her shock.

Those responsible should seriously question their own role and their view of humanity.

SPÖ-Frauensprecherin Manuela Auer

“Didn’t anyone there really question this?”
The fact that the municipality of Kennelbach published the images three years later “in a sort of lighthearted account of the experience” and that the organizer subsequently justified it as a joke only makes matters worse, according to Auer: “I really do wonder what the mayor and those in charge at the municipality were thinking?”

The photos are apparently three years old, “and now they’re suddenly being published?” Auer asks: “A woman is being degraded in a repulsive way at a shooting competition—and instead of calling the organizers to account, they publish the photos in the town newsletter, thereby even glorifying the abhorrent scene. Didn’t anyone there really question this?” the Social Democrat asks, stunned.

Auer now wants to know exactly how the publication came about and what consequences the municipality intends to draw from this. “Simply moving on to the agenda would send the completely wrong signal.”