Die alte Johanna

13-year-old Johanna comes to a small village in Lower Austria full of hope for an education. But once there, she has to work on a farm, unpaid and under catastrophic conditions. Johanna shares the fate of many illegitimate girls in 1930s Austria, which is marked by poverty, political unrest and the rise of National Socialism. Decades later, Johanna has to realise that she can no longer live alone in the house where she raised her eight children and where her husband died. Despite the eternal shortage of money, despite the prejudices against the "red riffraff" at the lower end of the village, she managed to find her own way and keep her family together. But now the time has come when she, who has always given, must also learn to take. Renate Welsh tells a sensitive and moving story about Johanna's life and links it to the fate of an entire generation. With "Old Johanna" she has succeeded in creating a grandiose sequel to her classic book for young people, which sums up the life of a remarkably strong and courageous woman.