Billinger, Richard (St Marienkirchen nr. Schärding, 1893-1965, Linz, Austria), a country-bred Austrian, originally intended for the priesthood, studied philosophy at Innsbruck, Kiel, and Vienna and then settled as a writer, first in Munich, later by Lake Starnberg. Though for a time politically suspect (Nachtwache is said to have been partly written while he was under arrest in 1935), his novels and other works were sufficiently close to the soil (see Heimatkunst) to be published freely under the National Socialist regime. His more important works of fiction are a novel of childhood Die Asche des Fegefeuers (1931), the comic Austrian rural novel Das Schutzengelhaus (1934), and the tragic Lehen aus Gottes Hand (1935) and Das verschenkte Leben (1937). But he was best known as the author of numerous plays beginning with Das Perchtenspiel, produced by Max Reinhardt at the 1928 Salzburger Festspiele; other notable works are Raunacht (1931), Rosse (1931, as an opera with music by Winfried Zillig, a pupil of Schönberg, in 1935), and Die Hexe von Passau (1935, as an opera with music by Otmar Gerster, 1941). He continued to write throughout the 1950s, but none of his later plays could match the success achieved by Raunacht in a production by Jürgen Fehling which won Billinger the Kleist Prize in 1932, and eventually public interest began to wane. He was influenced by the rich tradition of Austrian popular drama and appears to have become increasingly preoccupied with the conflicting demands of his Christian heritage and his pagan perception of the forces of nature. This concern also informs some of his poetry, which includes the collection Sichel am Himmel (1931).

Gesammelte Werke (12 vols.) appeared 1955-60 and Gesammelte Werke aus dem Nachlaß (9 vols.), ed. W. Bortenschlager, 1979-85.