Collection
Renate Welsh Collection
Works:
- Manuscripts (radio manuscripts, short texts, children's texts, unpublished novel fragments)
- Notes
- Extensive preparatory work for the novel Das Lufthaus
Correspondence:
- Children's letters
- Letters (private and professional)
Collectibles:
- Reception documents
- Interviews
- Works by other authors
- University publications
- Writing workshop material
Crypto Collection Gritzner:
- Letters from Max Carl Gritzner and Maximilian Gritzner (1843-1870)
- Manuscript Max Carl Gritzner Mein Exil
- Max Carl Gritzner Flüchtlingsleben (hardback edition 1867)
- Die Constitution: Tagblatt für Demokratie und Volksbelehrung 1848 (hardback)
Biography
Renate Welsh (née Redtenbacher) was born in Vienna in 1937 and grew up in Bad Aussee and Vienna. The early deaths of her mother and her beloved grandfather a few years later were major life-changing events. She spent the last years of the war with her stepmother's family in Bad Aussee, while her father, Norbert Redtenbacher, remained in Vienna as a doctor. After the war, she attended primary and secondary school in Vienna. In 1953/54, Welsh was an exchange student in Portland, Oregon, where she obtained a high school diploma, and in 1955 she graduated from high school in Vienna. From 1955 to 1957 she studied English, Spanish, and political science at the University of Vienna but did not graduate. She worked as a translator for the British Council in Vienna from 1957 to 1959 and as a freelance translator from 1962. Her translations into German include works by Judith Kerr and James A. Michener.
After an accident with long-term consequences, Renate Welsh began writing children's stories and has worked as a freelance writer since 1975. She initially wrote children's and young people's books (including Das Vamperl 1979, Johanna 1979) and radio plays. In the 1990s she began to write for an adult audience with the novels Constanze Mozart – Eine unbedeutende Frau and Das Lufthaus. For the author herself, the distinction between children's and adult literature does not play a major role—in her texts she tries to give a voice to those who have none. Her social commitment is also evident in her extensive (literary) educational work in schools and in the numerous writing workshops she has organized over the years with people with disabilities, the homeless, and addicts, among others. In recent years, Renate Welsh has increasingly written autobiographical texts. In 2019 she published Kieselsteine. Geschichten einer Kindheit, a collection of short stories, and in 2022 Ich ohne Worte, an impressive account of her stroke and the associated loss and recovery of speech.
Renate Welsh has received numerous awards for her prolific work, including the Austrian State Prize for Children's and Youth Literature, the German Youth Literature Prize, the City of Vienna Prize for Literature, and the Theodor-Kramer Prize. Since 2006 she has been president of IG Autorinnen Autoren. Renate Welsh lives in Vienna and Hilzmannsdorf (Lower Austria).