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Margarete Kollisch (born December 9, 1893, in Vienna; died October 11, 1979, in Staten Island, New York City) was an Austrian writer and poet who fled from the Nazis and continued her artistic creation in the United States.

Biography

Kollisch was born Margarete Moller in Vienna, Austria as the daughter of the lawyer Ignaz Moller (1859–1937) and Hermine Moller née Bunzl-Federn (1870–1928). She attended a girls' school in Vienna and then studied philology at the University of Vienna. In 1917, she earned her teaching degree. During World War I, she worked as a nurse, earning a silver medal from the Red Cross. She also worked as a journalist and translator for the French Embassy in Vienna.

In 1923, she married architect Otto Kollisch, and the couple had three children: Steve, Peter, and Eva. After their youngest son, Peter, was born in 1928 the family moved to Baden near Vienna. When the Nazis annexed Austria, the family prepared to leave the country. In 1939, their children fled Austria on a Kindertransport to England. Otto Kollisch immigrated to the United States via England, and Margarete immigrated via the Netherlands, arriving in the U.S. in October 1939. Their three children joined them in 1940, and the family settled in the Staten Island borough of New York City. Margarete Kollisch worked as a massage therapist and gave private language instruction for most of the remainder of her life. Her youngest daughter, Eva Kollisch, has become a noted author as well and a professor for German, Comparative Literature, and Women's Studies at the Sarah Lawrence College. Eva Kollisch went to great lengths to review and preserve her mother's work.

Creative writing career

Kollisch published many works in German, Austrian, and U.S.-American newspapers and journals throughout her life. After immigrating to the United States, Kollisch became part of a circle of writers in exile alongside Mimi Grossberg and others. She published the first anthology of her poetry, Wege und Einkehr (Paths and Retreats), in 1960 A second collection of poetry, Unverlorene Zeit (Unlost Time), followed in 1971. Her work was considered to fall into late romantic poetry, following Rilke and other German-language romantic poets. She also published work in the Austrian journal Literatur und Kritik alongside Mimi Grossberg, Maria Berl Lee, and Rose Ausländer. She was accepted into the Austrian PEN-Club in 1978. A third collection of Kollisch's poetry, Rückblendung, was published posthumously in 1981.

References

1. Burghardt, Lydia and Dianne Ritchey Oummia. "Biographical note." Guide to the Papers of Margarete Kollisch. New York: Leo Baeck Institute, 2007.
2. "Masseuse to Serve Women as Part of Health Program"The Bulletin Jewish Community Center of Staten Island. October 10, 1941.
3. Burghardt, Lydia and Dianne Ritchey Oummia. "Biographical note." Guide to the Papers of Margarete Kollisch. New York: Leo Baeck Institute, 2007.
4. Kollisch, Eva. "Eva Kollisch." Voices of Feminism Oral History Project. Kate Weigand, Interviewer. Northampton, MA: Sophia Smith Collection, Smith College, 2004.
5. Niers, Gert. Arrived at Last: An Immigrant Narrative. AuthorHouse, 2014.
6. "Vollendung der spätromantischen Lyrik." New York Staatszeitung June 21/22, 1975.
7. "Abschied von Margarete Kollisch." Aufbau October 19, 1979
8. "Vollendung der spätromantischen Lyrik." New York Staatszeitung June 21/22, 1975.
9. "Wie wir hoeren." Aufbau. November 3, 1978.
10. "Wie wir hoeren." Aufbau. March 31, 1978.

External links

• Margarete Kollisch Collection, AR 25058 Archival Collection at the Leo Baeck Institute, New York

• Margarete Kollisch Papers at the University at Albany, State University of New York.

• 1893 births
• 1979 deaths
• Writers from Vienna
• Yiddish-language poets
• American people of Austrian-Jewish descent
• Jewish Austrian writers
• Austrian women poets
• Jewish poets
• University of Vienna alumni
• 20th-century poets
• 20th-century American women writers
• 20th-century Austrian women writers
• Jewish emigrants from Austria after the Anschluss to the United States
• Jewish women writers