AustLit

George Reinisch was born in Vienna of Jewish background. He was taken from Vienna at the age of thirteen months to live in Shanghai, China, where he learned English, later emigrating to Australia with his parents. His work Shanghai Haven provides an important historical record of China's role in providing a refuge for European Jewry fleeing the Holocaust. The poems in this work were written in his youth. He gained his education at Melbourne Boys' High School, the University of Melbourne and the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology, where he studied Geology in 1958. He worked with the Victorian Department of Mines until retirement because of illness.

Reinisch was a member of the Victorian branch of the Fellowship of Australian Writers (FAW). In later life he also wrote plays, travelogues and various humorous works. Reinisch also published history books, including A Survey of Israel (1971) and South Australia's Exemplary History : A Dedication to Her First 150 Years (1986).