Kollisch, Margarete

Margarete Moller was born on December 9, 1893 in Vienna, the daughter of the lawyer Ignaz and Hermine (née Bunzl-Federn) Moller. Margarete had a younger brother, Leopold. She attended the Mädchenlyzeum Schwarzwald in Vienna before studying philology at the University of Vienna. During World War I she worked as a nurse, for which she earned a silver Red Cross medal. Following the war she worked as a secretary and translator for the French Embassy in Vienna, and in 1917 she received her teaching certificate.

In 1923 Margarete Moller married the architect Otto Kollisch. They had three children: Stefan (later Steve), Peter, and Eva. In 1939 the family began to leave Austria. The children left first on a Kindertransport to England in July 1939, while Otto Kollisch emigrated to the United States via England in August 1939 and Margarete Kollisch travelled via Holland, arriving in the U.S. in October 1939. The children followed their parents to America in April 1940, when the family was reunited and settled in Staten Island. To support her family, Margarete Kollisch worked first as secretary to an antiquarian, then as a licensed massage therapist, a profession she would remain in for the next twenty-five years. She also gave private instruction in German and French.

Margarete Kollisch is most well-known for her poetry and prose; some of her poems were published in German and Austrian newspapers and journals, but it was not until 1960 that her first anthology, Wege und Einkehr, appeared. This work was followed in 1971 by Unverlorene Zeit and by Rückblendung, published posthumously in 1981, largely through the efforts of her daughter. Margarete Kollisch gave poetry readings for radio programs in New York and Vienna as well as for the Austrian Institute and Austrian Forum. In 1969 her work earned her a medal for foreign poetry from York College (CUNY). Margarete Kollisch died on October 11, 1979.