Ingeborg Bachmann

25 years after Ingeborg Bachmann's death, Sigrid Weigel presents the first complete examination of her work, drawing not only upon the resources of her literary estate but also following traces that Bachmann's letters have left in the works of others. A multitude of details combine to form a picture of Ingeborg Bachmann that overturns the clichés of biographical interpretation to reveal an intellectual author interested in and influenced by, for example, Jewish thinkers such as Gershom Scholem and by Walter Benjamin's philosophy of art and history.

Sigrid Weigel persuasively demonstrates how dialogue became a central aspect of Bachmann's poetics, how the writer integrated subtle musical structures as well as pictorial motives into her work – and how that work became an intricate network of the manifold, thinly-veiled enthusiasms of an ardent reader, viewer and listener.