page_title: Margaret Diesendorf
section_title: Australia
hierarchical_section_title: Margaret Diesendorf / Life / Australia
caption_attribution_description: English: Dr Walter Diesendorf, engineer, and Dr Margaret Diesendorf (nee Mate), poet. Both are Austrian-born Australians who made significant contributions to Australian life, industry , education.
context_page_description: Margaret Diesendorf née Máté, was an Australian linguist, poet, editor, translator and educationist. Born in Vienna, Austria, Diesendorf migrated to Australia in 1939. She published two books of poetry, made numerous translations of other people's works, and with Grace Perry, edited Poetry Australia.
context_section_description: In September 1938, determined that her "linguistic brilliance should not serve Aryan totalitarianism", Margaretha Máté fled Austria, crossing the Swiss border at Buchs, and finding shelter with friends of her admirer, the Jewish engineer, Dr Walter Diesendorf, who was soon to sail for Australia, and who obtained her a visa to join him.
  She sailed from Antwerp on the German cargo ship MV Leuna in March 1939 in continual fear of exposure. She attracted the attention of Australian immigration authorities by departing the ship early, at Adelaide, due to a war scare and travelling to Melbourne by train, and in May 1939 was reunited with Walter Diesendorf in Sydney, where Walter had found employment with the Sydney County Council as an electrical engineer. In mid-1939 Máté  found a position teaching languages at Sydney Church of England Girls Grammar School, Moss Vale, where her vivacious nature and dedication, which included protecting her class from a savage bull, endeared her to both staff and students. However, she remained at SCEGGS only briefly, as she left to marry Walter Diesendorf in 1940.
  The Diesendorfs lived for a time at Rose Bay, where Margaret taught at the Convent of the Sacred Heart and at Ascham School. In 1946, with their young sons Mark and John, the family purchased a home in Eastwood, where Margaret was to live for more than forty years. From 1946 onwards Margaret Diesendorf made contributions to the letters columns of the Sydney Morning Herald on feminist and social issues which earned her the title of "the Conscience of New South Wales". Among her projects were successful campaigns to increase Australian research into poliomyelitis and to stop the use of X-ray machines in shoe shops.
  Throughout the 1950 and 60s, while teaching part-time, Diesendorf had numerous involvements in education, among them addressing the Wyndham Enquiry into public education. She was active in the Teachers Federation and the Federation of Parents and Citizens, and was the leading speaker at meetings throughout New South Wales in a campaign against Wyndham's recommendation to adopt solely comprehensive high schools, and in favour of the retention of selective high schools for talented students. She advocated the teaching of languages to young children, and presented Moliere's one-act plays, with ten-year-old actors, in the local church hall. She was elected to the committee of the Sydney University Arts Association, was editorial secretary of the Sydney University English Association and urged for the establishment of a chair in Australian Literature.
caption: Margaret Diesendorf and her husband, the engineer Walter Diesendorf, in Sydney, (1940s)
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