Barbara Rosenkranz (née Schörghofer;[1] born 20 June 1958 in Salzburg) is an Austrian politician for the Freedom Party of Austria.

She resigned as member of the National Council on 9 April 2008, and the following day she was appointed to the cabinet of the state as Minister of Building Law and Animal Protection.

The Kronen Zeitung, the largest newspaper of Austria, supported her candidacy in articles written by its publisher Hans Dichand.

She is critical of feminism,[10] and in her book MenschInnen, she argues that gender mainstreaming attempts to create sexless human beings.

[6] In 1995, Rosenkranz brought a defamation case against the publicist Hans-Henning Scharsach for referring to her as an example of a "Kellernazi", that is, a closet sympathizer of National Socialist beliefs.

This decision was criticized by the European Court of Human Rights; however, as a violation of freedom of speech,[17] as they considered it a matter of opinion, and that Rosenkranz's attitude towards the Nazi past was thoroughly ambiguous.

Key points in this ruling were that she had never distanced herself from her husband's activities in the extreme right and that, in the past had been a vocal public opponent of the Verbotsgesetz 1947 law banning Holocaust denial.

[20] As this answer was criticised as being "evasive", she later stated in an interview with Die Presse, that there is no doubt that terrible crimes were committed during the Nazi regime.

[21] Historian Lothar Höbelt, head of the supporting committee for Rosenkranz, criticized the media for a "manipulating campaign" against her and argued that some of these statements were several years old or taken out of context.