Synopses & Reviews
Ingeborg Bachmann (1926-1973) is recognized as one of post-war German literatures most important novelists, poets, and playwrights. Influenced by Hans Weigel and the legendary literary circle Gruppe 47, Bachmann gained international renown for her poems, short stories, and novels, and won numerous awards for her work. Sadly, her life ended abruptly in October of 1973 when a lit cigarette burned down her apartment causing Bachmann to suffer severe burns that would eventually prove fatal. The author was only forty-seven, and her tragic death left what could have been a long and lustrous writing career regretfully stunted.
Nearly twenty years after her death, during an estate sale in Vienna, fifteen episodes of the popular Viennese radio drama The Radio Family were discovered. Remarkably, they happened to be written by Ingeborg Bachmann herself, who had been a writer on the show just after she graduated university. The Radio Family was a popular radio soap opera broadcast in the American sector of occupied Vienna in the 1950s. The program focused on a middle-class Viennese family and their everyday life. Topics ranged from birthday parties and holiday plans to profiteering and currency fraud in the commercial sector, and Austrians involvement in the Nazi past. All fifteen scripts have now been compiled and masterfully translated, revealing an early and significant piece of Bachmanns body of work, while simultaneously offering a rare glimpse into Viennas quotidian history.
Review
"The most intelligent and important woman writer our land has produced this century."
Synopsis
Ingeborg Bachmann was at the beginning of her writing career when she became a member of the script team of three in 1951. The fifteen scripts she contributed were thought lost until they turned up in the literary estate of one of the other writers, Jörg Mauthe, in the 90s. They provide a fascinating and often amusing picture of the way Austria saw itselfor, perhaps, wanted to see itselfin the early 50s. In situations ranging from birthdays parties, holiday plans to Christmas shopping and a visit to the theatre, they reaffirm middle-class Viennese
Gemütlichkeit, despite the occasional difficulty of making ends meet. Other more serious topics are touched on, from the problems of displaced persons, profiteering and currency fraud in the commercial sector, the appreciation of modern art and even, briefly, Austrians involvement in the Nazi period.
At this period Bachmann was establishing herself as a major German poet, but she also wrote radio plays. The episodes she contributed to The Radio Family that have now been brought to light, especially her portrayal of an average family, extend our knowledge of her development at an important formative stage.
About the Author
Ingeborg Bachmanns works include Darkness Spoken: The Collected Poems of Ingeborg Bachmann, and Malina, among many others.Mike Mitchell has worked as a literary translator since 1995. His translations include Peter Handkes Till Day You do Part or A Question of Light, Max Frischs An Answer from the Silence, and Thomas Lehrs September, all published by Seagull Books.
Table of Contents
Episode 1: Lending Money | Guido
Episode 4: Birthday | Wolferl, Liesl
Episode 9: Holiday Plans
Episode 10: Lumbago
Episode 15: Back to School
Episode 18: Horoscope
Episode 20: The D. P.
Episode 21: Archduke Guido
Episode 24: The Tedious Dr. Panigl
Episode 29: The Last Sunday before Christmas
Episode 32: The Florianis Go to the Theatre
Episode 41: A Birthday Surprise: A Child is Coming from Holland
Episode 45: Psychology in Purkersdorf
Episode 54: The Art Exhibition
Episode 63: Puppet Show II
Afterword
Joseph McVeigh
Appendix A: Those Involved
Appendix B: List of Episodes
Appendix C: Notes on the Typescripts