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War Diary

With Letters from Jack Hamesh to Ingeborg Bachmann
Edited and Afterword by Hans Höller
Suhrkamp | Insel
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English world rights (Seagull), France (Actes Sud), Italy (Adelphi), Poland (Czarne), Denmark (Grif), Czech Republic (Pulchra), Turkey (Ketebe), Ukraine (Osnovy), Israel (Hakkibutz Hameuchad – Sifriyat Poalim)

Previously published in the respective language / territory; rights available again: Spanish world rights (Akal)

Domestic Rights Sales: German Audiobook (Audiobuch)


War Diary / Kriegstagebuch
With Letters from Jack Hamesh to Ingeborg Bachmann
Edited and Afterword by Hans Höller
»I’ve taken a chair out to the garden and am reading. I’ve resolved to keep on reading if the bombs come.«
The present volume for the first time compiles the war diary Ingeborg Bachmann kept from late summer 1944 to June 1945, as well as the surviving letters from Jack Hamesh – a unique document of dialogue between the children of the victims and the perpetrators.


»This is the most beautiful summer of my life, and even if I live to be a hundred – this spring and summer will remain the most beautiful. Everybody keeps saying that peace isn’t noticeably different from what came...
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The present volume for the first time compiles the war diary Ingeborg Bachmann kept from late summer 1944 to June 1945, as well as the surviving letters from Jack Hamesh – a unique document of dialogue between the children of the victims and the perpetrators.


»This is the most beautiful summer of my life, and even if I live to be a hundred – this spring and summer will remain the most beautiful. Everybody keeps saying that peace isn’t noticeably different from what came before, but as far as I’m concerned it’s peace, peace!« The eighteen-year-old Ingeborg Bachmann recorded these sentiments in 1945, directly after the end of the war. Her words resonate with the revul-sion she felt for the National Socialist ideology, with her sense of relief at the end of Nazi rule. And there is an additional reason for the note of euphoria: the diarist has fallen in love with Jack Hamesh, an occupying British soldier. A Jew who escaped from Vienna in 1938, he begins by questioning the young woman as to membership in the German girls’ organization Bund deutscher Mädel; they soon become intimate friends. All the same, Hamesh emigrated to what was then Palestine in the spring of 1946.

»... the most intelligent and important woman writer our land has produced this century.« Thomas Bernhard

»A minor sensation that will make literary history. Thanks to the excellent critical commentary, we gain a sense of a period in history and in Bachmann’s life that reached deep into her later work. […] What makes these diary entries so special is […] the detail of the resistance described, the exhilaration of unexpected peace, the joy of freedom.« DIE ZEIT

»If this diary tells us anything, it is about her thirst for knowledge and her strong literary ambition – this is the real driving force.« Helmut Böttiger, Süddeutsche Zeitung

»[T]he feelings and thoughts of a sensitive young woman, her dreams and visions of the future, together with the hopes and fears of a Holocaust survivor, make for a moving record of the immediate post-war years.« WDR5 »There are very moving passages in what the young Bachmann entrusts to her diary. Passages that speak of a twofold liberation: freedom from a regime that did not accept her and against which she rebelled, and a personal, inner freedom from the constraints of family, from narrowness of the mind.« Neue Westfälische

»[T]hese letters are related to the greatest German-language woman writer and are worthy of publication for that reason alone. They convey the deeply disruptive effect on a young man being brutally torn away from his home, his childhood, his family, his culture. He is all alone with this trauma, and despite his brief encounter with Ingeborg Bachmann, he remains alone with it. […] The young Ingeborg Bachmann’s diary, despite its slim volume, is indispensable reading for anyone who loves this author. In it we meet a young woman who feels as if she has woken from a nightmare and is gradually beginning to understand what life and freedom can hold in store.« Tages-Anzeiger

»A real find, full of early literary promise, and deeply moving.« Nürnberger Zeitung

»... the most intelligent and important woman writer our land has produced this century.« Thomas Bernhard

»A minor sensation that will make literary history. Thanks to the excellent critical commentary, we gain a sense of a period in history and in Bachmann’s life that reached deep into her later work. […] What makes these diary entries so special is […] the detail of the resistance described, the exhilaration of unexpected peace, the joy of freedom.« DIE...
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2010, 107 pages
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Persons

Ingeborg Bachmann was born on June 25, 1926 in Klagenfurt. She began to write when she was at school. She studied Philosophy in Innsbruck, Graz and eventually in Vienna, where she met, among others, Hans Weigel. In 1949 Bachmann wrote her dissertation entitled »The Critical Reception of the Existential Philosophy of Martin Heidegger«. She subsequently started working for the Allied radio station Rot-Weiss-Rot. Her friendship with Paul Celan majorly influenced her thought. Ingeborg Bachmann is considered one of the most important German-language poets and writes of the 20th century. She died in Rome on October 17, 1973 .
 

Ingeborg Bachmann was born on June 25, 1926 in Klagenfurt. She began to write when she was at school. She studied Philosophy in Innsbruck, Graz...


OTHER PUBLICATIONS

»Senza casa«
Year of Publication: 2024
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Autobiographical essays, a ›war diary‹ and previously unpublished autobiographical material, along with the ›Neapolitan Diary‹ from Bachmann’s heady days as a freelance writer. Gathered together for the first time in this new volume of the Salzburger Bachmann Edition, these texts offer new insights into the life of this remarkable author. Questioning and correcting stereotypical images of...
»We Didn’t Do Well.«
Year of Publication: 2022
Ingeborg Bachmann, Max FrischYear of Publication: 2022

Spring 1958: Ingeborg Bachmann – celebrated poet, winner of Literary Prize of Gruppe 47 and cover star of Der Spiegel – is broadcasting the radio play Der gute Gott von...

Rights sold to:

English world rights (Seagull), Italy (Feltrinelli)

Domestic Rights Sales: German Audiobook (speak low)

Invocation of Ursa Major
Year of Publication: 2022
Ingeborg BachmannYear of Publication: 2022

The verses in Ingeborg Bachmann’s second collection of poetry, Invocation of Ursa Major (1956), caused a sensation when they were published and soon became canonised: they were immensely...

Rights sold to:

Italy (Adelphi)

The Thirtieth Year
Year of Publication: 2020
Ingeborg BachmannYear of Publication: 2020

In 1956, at 30 years of age, Ingeborg Bachman began with the first drafts for the book, which is now to published in the Salzburger Bachmann Edition. It would take five years until all seven stories had been submitted to Piper Verlag ready for publication in the spring of 1961 and the first volume could be published in July that same year.


Of the writing phase the...

»Write down everything that is true«
Year of Publication: 2018

The hitherto unpublished and unknown correspondence between Ingeborg Bachmann and Hans Magnus Enzensberger allows one to relive how, after the Second World War, two of the most prominent writers in the German language chose to depict and regard the world, literature and the publishing industry, but also how they wished to present and be regarded themselves.


One was...

Male Oscuro
Year of Publication: 2017
Ingeborg BachmannYear of Publication: 2017

Ingeborg Bachmann’s dream notes, correspondence drafts and records from the time of her illness are of great literary interest as the primary elements of the subsequent Todesarten-texts. In addition, these writings are apt to further our knowledge about her illness and the phenomenon of illness itself. They are outrageous, courageous in their analytic approach, defeated...

The Book Goldmann
Year of Publication: 2017
Ingeborg BachmannYear of Publication: 2017

The Book Goldmann is the name Ingeborg Bachmann gave to her great narrative project, which she cherished until the end. This edition renders the previously only fragmentarily...

Rights sold to:

Turkey (Can)
 

The Radio Familiy
Year of Publication: 2011
Ingeborg BachmannYear of Publication: 2011
In autumn of the year 1952, a »chain-smoking mermaid with angel’s hair who more whispered than spoke« entered the radio play department of the American occupied forces Rot-Weiß-Rot...
Rights sold to:

English world rights (Seagull), Turkey (Can)

Herzzeit
Year of Publication: 2008
Ingeborg Bachmann, Paul CelanYear of Publication: 2008
»Books of this stature appear only every few decades.« Deutschlandradio


The correspondence from the period 1948-61 – a last letter penned by Celan...
Rights sold to:

English world rights (Seagull), Portuguese rights (Antígona), Chinese simplex rights (China Renmin UP), Russia (Ad marginem), France (Seuil), Italy (Nottetempo), Netherlands (Meulenhoff), Denmark (Vandkunsten), Sweden (Ellerströms), Japan (Seidosha), Poland (A5), Czech Republic (Pulchra), Romania (Art), Turkey (Kirmizi Kedi), Ukraine (Knihy XXI), Georgia (Ibis)

Previously published in the respective language / territory; rights available again: Spanish world rights (Fondo Cultura), Croatia (OceanMore)

Malina
Year of Publication: 1971
Ingeborg BachmannYear of Publication: 1971

»In Malina, originally published in German in 1971, Ingeborg Bachmann invites the reader into a world stretched to the very limits of language. An unnamed narrator, a writer...

Rights sold to:

USA & Canada (New Directions), UK & Commonwealth (Penguin), Russia (AST), Brazilian Portuguese rights (Estaçao Liberdade), Portuguese rights (Antígona), France (Seuil), Italy (Adelphi), Netherlands (Koppernik), Denmark (Grif), Sweden (Ellerströms), Korea (Minumsa), Japan (Chikuma Shobo), Poland (A5, Polish audio book: Mala Litera), Hungary (Jelenkor), Romania (Humanitas), Serbia (Kontrast), Turkey (Yapi Kredi), Greece (Potlatch), Ukraine (Klasyka), Georgia (Karchkhadze Publishing)

Previously published in the respective language / territory; rights available again: Spanish world rights (Akal), Catalan rights (Edicions 62), Norway (Bokvennen), Finland (Weilin & Göös), Czech Republic (Mlada fronta), Slovakia (Slovensky Spisovatel), Bulgaria (Na Otetschestwenia Front), Lithuania (Lithuanian Writers Union), Slovenia (Pomuska Zalozba), Macedonia (Tri), Israel (Hakibutz Hameuchad / Sifriat Poalim)

Domestic Rights Sales: German Book Club (BĂĽchergilde Gutenberg), German Audiobook (DAV), German Radio Play (HR2)

Deferred Time
Year of Publication: 1953
Ingeborg BachmannYear of Publication: 1953

For the young Ingeborg Bachmann and her generation, the great hope after the war soon proved deceptive. The themes in Bachmann's first volume of poetry, Deferred Time (1953), are representative of the experience that defines writing after 1945: Departure and farewell, guilt and memory. In the dramatic gestures and memorable images of her poetic language, this experience found a...


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News
27.01.2020
January 27 marks the Memorial Day for the Victims of National Socialism in Germany and the International Day of Remembrance of the Victims of the Holocaust.