The Modern Novel

Biography

Though little known in the English-speaking world, Ingeborg Bachmann is recognised as one of the leading Austrian writers of the twentieth century. She is perhaps best known for her poetry but has written short stories, criticism, radio plays, opera librettos and a novel, Malina (Malina), which was turned into an opera by Otto Brusatti. But, beyond her writing, she was also famous in Austria and Germany as a personality – a woman poet who succeeded in traditionally male circles, an iconoclast, fragile but tough, avant-garde yet accessible. Her horrible death – she accidentally set fire to herself in her apartment in Rome and died after several weeks of suffering – only further contributed to her legend.

She was born in Klagenfurt, in Southern Austria in 1926. Her father was a teacher. After her education was interrupted at the end of the war, she went to the University of Vienna and produced a thesis on Martin Heidegger. She lived first in Vienna but then moved to Italy, living in Ischia, Naples and Rome. She has also lived in Munich, Berlin and Zurich. She lived for some time with the composer Hans Werner Henze (best known for his Requiem, used in the film 2001: A Space Odyssey) and later with the writer Max Frisch.

She first came to public attention with her collection of poetry Die gestundete Zeit (Borrowed Time) and the famous opening line of the poem Alle Tage – Der Krieg wird nicht mehr erklärt, sondern fortgesetzt – War is no longer declared but continued. War becomes a key theme in her writing and she sees it as a proxy for the relationship between the sexes. Another key theme of her writing is the traditional reality/fantasy dichotomy. From poetry she moved to radio plays to essays and, finally, to prose fiction. In prose fiction, she concentrated on short stories and only completed one novel, though fragments of two others have appeared. It seems that, at the time of her death in 1973, she was contemplating a cycle of novels linking contemporary Austria and Germany with the Nazi period, to be called Todesarten (Kinds of Death). Fortunately she was able to leave us complete her masterpiece – Malina (Malina).

Books about Ingeborg Bachmann

Hapkemeyer, Andreas: Ingeborg Bachmann, Bilder aus ihrem Leben : mit Texten aus ihrem Werk (in German)
Höller, Hans: Ingeborg Bachmann (in German)

Other links

Ingeborg Bachmann
Ingeborg Bachmann
Ingeborg Bachmann (1926-1973)
Remembering Ingeborg Bachmann (1926-1973)
Reading Ingeborg Bachmann
An introductory comparison of the intentions of Marianne Fritz and Ingeborg Bachmann
Ingeborg Bachmann (in German)
Ingeborg Bachmann (in German)
Ingeborg Bachmann Forum (in German)
Ingeborg Bachmann / Biographie (in German)
Bachmann, Ingeborg Pseudonym: Ruth Keller (in German)
Spottlust einer Dichterin (in German)