The program with translations from Dutch of the ‘most traditional’ Austrian publishing house Residenz was inaugurated in 1995 with Annegret Böttner’s translation of the novel De wijde blik [The Wide View] by Willem Jan Otten which was widely talked about in the Netherlands.

In Der weite Blick Otten tells the story of Lex and his wife Susanne, who turns blind after a fall, as a story of glances, images, perspectives and mix-ups. The book was well received in the German-speaking world. ‘A small masterpiece’, wrote the Frankfurter Rundschau (19.10.1995), a delight for readers who appreciate a thought-through portrayal of a life between the poles of the perceivable and the invisible.

An ‘exciting’ (Brockschmidt, 1996) book, found Rolf Brockschmidt in Der Tagesspiegel. Willem Jan Otten befitted the ‘ambitious literary program’ (Residenz, 2021a) of the renowned publishing house Residenz. But the book, which was nominated for the prestigious AKO-literary award in the Netherlands in 1993, was not well received by everyone. A little too ‘laboured’ Martina Knoben judges Van Ottens debut novel in the Süddeutsche Zeitung (Knoben, 1996). According to her there is too much ‘visible framework’ and ‘to little substance’, a view that Werner Thuswaldner agreed with in the Salzburger Nachrichten. He too found it to be too ‘engineered’ (Thuswaldner, 1995).

Otten’s second novel Uns fehlt nichts [We Lack Nothing] (1996) to some extent suffered a comparable fate. Uns fehlt nichts is the story of young doctor Justus who lets his antecessor, out of whose shadow he had not been able to step out of, die without intervening. This novel was found to be too harsh. In Der Standard Ingeborg Sperl questioned the severity and calvinistic values by which Otten judges and decides:

Apparently, people in the German-speaking world had the necessary perseverance for Otten’s essayistic fiction. In any case, Otten’s second book did not see a second edition in Austria either. The rights for both Der weite Blick as well as Uns fehlt nichts were sold to the publishing house Fischer, that published the translations in 1997 respectively 1999 as paperbacks.

In 1998, two years after the book was awarded the ‘Gouden-Uil’ in Flanders and one year after the publication of the first and to date (2021) only English novel by Guido van Heulendonk (The Eve, 1997), Residenz published a translation of Van Heulendonks Paarden zijn ook varkens. The translation was done by Ulrike Vogl (Dutch department of the University of Vienna) and was lauded by Christian Holzmann as ‘congenial’ (Holzmann, 1999). Pferde sind auch Schweine tells the story of Eduard Bottelaer who is tasked by his lover Helena to collect objects from the city she left a task that at the end becomes an obsession.

The book is more than a ‘romance novel in artistic circles’, wrote the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (Poiss, 1999). Although the reviewer of the Viennese paper Der Falter did not find Pferde sind auch Schweine ‘funny’ at all (Quirchmair, 1999), Thomas Poiss from the Frankfurter Allgemeine contradicted by saying that the book impresses with ‘analytical wit’ and ‘rich, systematical detail’ (Poiss, 1999). Other critics agreed: ‘virtuosic and simultaneously laconic’ wrote Philipp Schmolke in Junge Welt (Schmolke, 1999), a book for ‘real literary gourmets’ found the reviewer in d’Letzeburger Land (m.r., 1999).

In the Salzburger Nachrichten Anthon Thuswalder announced that the ‘cheerful tragedy of an unlucky character’ by Van Heulendonk would be followed by more translations of his works (Thuswaldner, 1999), but apparently this also belonged to the realm of lost illusions of Eduard Bottelaer. Pferde sind auch Schweine is the only translated title by Guido van Heulendonk to have been published not only by Residenz but also in the German-speaking world.

From 2003 on the wind of change swept through Residenz. During that time the publishing house decided to focus more on young German-speaking authors again and with regard to translations shifted towards central- and eastern-European authors.

The literature from the Netherlands and Flanders thus slipped under the radar for a while. This, however, did not apply for the new program for children’s and youth literature called Nilpferd that the director of Residenz Herbert Bitsche established in 2003. Within this framework Hexenfee a picture book by Brigitte Minne and Carl Cneut was published in 2017. Interestingly enough, the book was picked up by Bohem Press based in Münster ten years later and was retranslated by Ralf Erdorf, who had previously worked for Picus. (#Picus) Residenz’ children’s and youth literature program was very successful on the German-speaking market but despite that was sold to the Viennese publishing house G&G in 2015, that had become the biggest publisher of children’s and youth literature in Austria in the meantime. (Residenz, 2021b)