[3] This was the beginning of the first of her many communications with writers, artists and philosophers which were ultimately to comprise an archive of letters, including her responses, always duplicated with carbon paper.

[2] Máté attended the University of Vienna, where at the age of twenty-three, she was the youngest-ever recipient of a PhD for her thesis Die Dichtungssprache des Expressionismus (The Literary Language of Expressionism).

In September 1938, determined that her "linguistic brilliance should not serve Aryan totalitarianism",[5] 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.

[6][7] 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.

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".

[10][11] 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.

[5] In 1960 she accompanied her husband Walter Diesendorf on a business trip to Europe for the Snowy Mountains Authority, and was reunited with her mother and stepfather after twenty two years separation.

A double issue was published in 1964[12] as a bilingual edition containing 24 poems by 16 leading Australian poets with facing translations to French by Dautheuil and Diesendorf.

Editions Seghers (Paris) published, in their Autour du Monde series, L'Enfant Au Cacatoès (Child with a Cockatoo), poems of Australian poet Rosemary Dobson with facing translations by Dautheuil and Diesendorf.

[5] In 1970 Diesendorf accompanied her husband Walter to America where he undertook a half sabbatical as visiting professor at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in New York.

[22] In 1993, Diesendorf, not well, had a happy weekend with her children, grandchildren and friends, attending a Spring Festival in Bowral, where her poetry was read and she was the toast of the party.

[1] "There is much about light that we don't understand: the way it gathers in a man suddenly to shine with the brightness of ten thousand watts from his eyes.... Margaret Diesendorf arrived in Australia at a time of cultural insularity.

She left to the nation her archive of poetry, prose and letters which include her correspondence with Robert Graves, A.D. Hope, Gwen Harwood, Lloyd Rees, Rosemary Dobson, Grace Perry, D.J.

In 1981 the first major book of her collected poems in English was published by Edwards and Shaw, Sydney, with the assistance of the Literature Board of the Australia Council.

It is characteristic of Diesendorf that another substantial volume, published ten years later at the age of 69 by Phoenix Press, Holding the Golden Apple, comprised love poems.

In one short poem she touches on the love of her dying husband, her childhood poverty and the death of her baby brother, transforming each image with the radiance of light into something beautiful.

The book Light is divided into two sections, the first of which, titled On Canvas, contains a number of poems which are direct responses to art works, both European and Australian.

Among those which are the subject for her pen are Modigliani's Portrait of Jeanne Hebuterne, Vincent van Gogh's Church at Auvers, Gustav Klimt's The Kiss, Salvador Dalí's La Beigneuse, Brett Whiteley's Soup Kitchen, and Lloyd Rees's The Pinnacle, Mt Wellington.

[19] Her later book, Holding the Golden Apple, dedicated to Robert Graves, is described as a collection of poems "that have sprung wholly and directly from personal and vicarious encounters with love".