He repeatedly participated in conferences organised by the University of Wrocław and supported students and doctoral students of his Alma Mater coming to Vienna on scholarships. Staff of the Faculty of Letters have often visited Vienna as participants in symposia initiated by the Faculty, usually organised in cooperation with Polish scientific and cultural institutions in the Austrian capital.
For his scholarly and translation work he has been awarded, among others, the medal for services to Polish culture (1989), the Witkiewicz Prize of the International Theatre Institute (1989), the Polonicum Prize for outstanding achievements in popularising Polish language and literature abroad (2011). Witkiewicz Prize of the International Theatre Institute (1989), the Polonicum Prize for outstanding achievements in popularising Polish language and literature abroad (2011), the Knight’s Cross of the Order of Merit of the Republic of Poland (2013), the ‘Bene merito’ Medal of Honour (2019), the Józef Maksymilian Ossoliński Medal for merits in popularising Polish literature (2021). He is a Knight of the Austrian Cross of Honour for Services to Science and the Arts (2020). He has received several awards for outstanding achievements in literary translation (1988, 1992, 2004). He holds honorary doctorates from Drohobych Pedagogical University (2014) and Ivan Franko University in Lviv (2016).
DHC for prof. Alois Woldan [PHOTO]
Alois Woldan (born 1954 in Linz) – professor emeritus at the University of Vienna, eminent historian of Central European literature, translator of Polish literature. From 1973 to 1978 he studied theology, Slavic studies and comparative literature at the University of Innsbruck, where he obtained his PhD in 1982. In 1984 he began working as a lecturer at the Institute of German Studies at the University of Wrocław. The stay in the capital of Lower Silesia provided an opportunity to establish contacts with numerous writers, literary critics and translators. After leaving Poland in 1986, he began lecturing at the Institute of Slavic Studies at the University of Salzburg, where he intensively researched and popularised contemporary Polish literature, and where he habilitated in 1995 with a dissertation entitled Mit Austrii w literaturze polskiej (The Myth of Austria in Polish Literature). In 2005, he joined the Institute of Slavic Studies at the University of Vienna; his lectures and seminars were devoted, among others, to the works of Tadeusz Różewicz, Zbigniew Herbert, Andrzej Stasiuk and Olga Tokarczuk. He devoted a great deal of attention to the Polish historical novel, especially the works of Henryk Sienkiewicz, and to literary images of the Polish-Ukrainian and Polish-German borderlands.
