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Ingeborg Bachmann (biography) |
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Born on 25 June 1926 in Klagenfurt, in the Austrian province of Carinthia, Ingeborg Bachmann died in a fire in her apartment in Rome on 17 October 1973. She gained a doctorate in philosophy in 1950, and began her poetic career with Gruppe 47, a post-war group of poets including Max Frisch, Heinrich Böll, Uwe Johnson and Günter Grass. Gruppe 47 upheld the view that 'a new world cannot be built without a new language.' Ingeborg Bachmann enjoyed immediate public acclaim when her first poems were published, including the celebrated Borrowed Time. From 1961 onwards, she published a range of prose works (The Thirtieth Year, Malina, Three Paths to the Lake) while at the same time continuing to write poetry. She was a totally committed writer, and a passionate defender of womanhood, taking a firm stance against the oppressive nature of modern life, and the oppression of women in particular. She was a close associate of Paul Celan, and – like him – spent many years questioning the possibility of the continued existence of literature in a post-Holocaust world.
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