Biography
Conceived at Praia da Marinha, Quinta d’el Rey, Lagoa, Algarve, Portugal.
Born on 11 March 1981 at Hospital Particular in Lisbon, Portugal, the only child of Sylvia Wallinger and the third child of Manuel dos Santos Lourenço.
Half-siblings: Frederico Lourenço, born 8 May 1963 in Lisbon, and Catarina Lourenço, born 9 July 1965 in Lisbon.
First home: Praceta Olegário Mariano, Estefânia, Lisbon, until 24 July 1981.
First journey to Austria with her parents, where she met her mother’s family.
Residence at Peter-Mayr-Straße 25, Innsbruck; followed by a stay in Vienna at the home of Dr Heinz and Heidi Zwerina, Festgasse, 1160 Vienna. Return to Innsbruck and onward journey to Lisbon on 13 October 1981.
13 October 1981 – 14 July 1982: Outeiro de São Julião, Oeiras, Linha de Cascais, near Lisbon.
July – December 1982: Living alone with her mother in Vienna, at Burggasse 100 A, 1070 Vienna, in the home of Dr Eva Ptak.
20 December 1982: Return to Innsbruck and reunion with her father at her mother’s family home, Sternwartestraße 23a, Innsbruck, where she lived until October 1985. From June 1983 onwards, Leonora spent the summer, Christmas, and school holidays with her parents at her father’s home in Sintra, Portugal, and at the home of their American friend Robert Sherwood in Lagoa, Algarve.
At the end of October 1985, at the age of four, she flew alone for the first time from Lisbon to Zurich. From then onwards, she regularly travelled this route alone in both directions whenever her mother’s work made it necessary.
1983–1986: Attended Dr Bielowski’s children’s group in Innsbruck.
Moved to the house at Peter-Mayr-Straße 25 with her mother, where her father also stayed during his visits.
31 October 1986: Death of her paternal grandmother, Alice dos Santos Lourenço.
1986–1987: Attended the municipal kindergarten in Hötting-West.
1987–1990: Attended Fischerstraße primary school and the municipal after-school centre in Zollerstraße.
Following the death of her great-grandmother Monica Calvi-Gugglberger, the family moved to Salvatorgasse 4 in Hall. Leonora attended the fourth year of primary school in Hall-Schönegg.
She began taking on regular paid work in childcare and domestic assistance.
She became the first unbaptised pupil in the history of the Catholic private secondary school run by the Franciscans in Hall.
In addition to her regular journeys to and from Portugal to visit and travel with her father:
1991–1992: First journey to Asia, travelling to Sri Lanka with her mother and great-aunt.
Easter 1992: Journey to Rome with a group from the Focolare Movement.
16 January 1992: Death of her maternal grandmother. That summer, Leonora travelled to Java and Bali with her mother.
29 April 1993: Death of her maternal grandfather while Leonora was travelling in Greece with her mother and friends.
Summer 1993: Travelled across the United States with her mother and visited her maternal great-uncle and great-aunt in Golden, Colorado.
Her lifelong enthusiasm for the Beatles began after visiting Beatles memorial sites in San Francisco.
She attended a Paul and Linda McCartney concert in Vienna. At the age of twelve, Leonora became a strict vegetarian and remained so until the onset of her illness at the age of twenty.
Summer 1994: Travelled to Ischia with her mother and several friends and climbed Mount Vesuvius.
Three-week language and work placement in Bognor Regis, England.
At Lake Attersee, she obtained her sailing licence.
1995: Her parents separated.
Travelled through China with her mother, a friend, and a Chinese friend of her mother; learned several Chinese characters. This was followed by a journey through Norway with her mother, marking the beginning of her great enthusiasm for the Nordic countries.
1996: Travelled to the French Riviera with a group of fellow pupils. Their bus was attacked and the pupils, including Leonora, were robbed.
That summer, Leonora independently organised a journey to Golden, Colorado, to visit her great-uncle and great-aunt. There she took on her first regular paid employment, working as a waitress in their Austrian restaurant.
Leonora passed the entrance examination for a partly scholarship-funded year abroad at Methodist Ladies’ College in Melbourne, Australia, where she lived with her host family, Dr Barnett and family.
1997: Successfully attended school in Melbourne, where teaching was conducted without conventional textbooks or exercise books and learning was entirely computer-based.
She formed many friendships with Latin American and Asian students attending the EF language school.
Her mother visited her for seven weeks during the summer of 1997, and they travelled through Australia together. In December, Leonora concluded her stay with a journey through Tasmania.
After returning to Austria, she resumed her secondary education in Hall without difficulty during the 1997/98 school year.
Summer 1998: Together with several fellow pupils, Leonora travelled to Brazil. She initially spent a month working with a project supporting street children in São Paulo. Afterwards, she travelled thousands of kilometres alone by bus to Curitiba, where she spent the second month of her summer holiday participating in an initiative by landless workers directed against large landowners.
Alongside her eighth and final year at secondary school, she completed placements at the University Clinic for Psychosomatic Medicine in Innsbruck and with the Psychiatric Social Service in Hall. She also began keeping night vigils at the bedsides of terminally ill patients at the hospital in Natters.
June 1999: Completed her Matura at the Franciscan secondary school in Hall.
Second journey to Australia to visit her host family in Melbourne and Betty Gründmandl, an exile from Hall who continued to encourage Leonora in her research into her family history. She also visited Dr Bandhauer in Sydney.
This was followed by her last journey to Portugal together with her mother and her mother’s partner.
She undertook paid care work at the Stiftsgarten residential home for older people in Hall.
Leonora moved out of her family home and returned to Innsbruck, living at Peter-Mayr-Straße 25, and began studying medicine.
She completed her examinations in remarkably short succession, including anatomy and dissection, physics, chemistry, and physiology, while continuing to work with terminally ill patients at the University Hospital in Innsbruck and in Natters.
February 2000: Travelled to Sweden and worked at a centre for young people in supported care in Lidköping. The first symptoms of pain began during this period.
Easter 2000: Worked at Hall Hospital as an auxiliary nurse in the surgical department.
June 2000: Travelled to Dublin with her mother, followed by a journey to Amsterdam with a friend and, as every summer, a visit to her father in Portugal.
Soon after her return, while her Australian host family was visiting, Leonora was diagnosed with acute myeloid leukaemia on 20 September 2000.
Her father travelled from Portugal to be with her, and her parents reconciled at her bedside.
In June 2001, Leonora was still able to complete the written biology examination required as part of her medical studies. Following an unsuccessful bone marrow transplant, she died on 27 September 2001 in the intensive care unit of Innsbruck University Hospital, with her mother by her side.