Ingeborg Bachmann’s Vienna 1946-1953

In the autumn of 1945 the nineteen-year-old Ingeborg Bachmann sets off on the journey that she would later describe as her »longest«, from provincial Kärnten, via Innsbruck and Graz to Vienna.

She begins her studies in philosophy and finds work with the American occupation radio station Rot-Weiß-Rot, publishes her first poems and stories and quickly joins the circle around Hans Weigel at the Café Raimund, where she meets Paul Celan, Ilse Aichinger, Milo Dor, and others. The city, badly damaged from the war and under US occupation, now becomes a new »home on the border: between East and West, between a huge past and a huge future.« With erudition and attention to detail, Joseph McVeigh limns Ingeborg Bachmann’s development as a young writer in the intellectual and cultural milieu of post-war Vienna up to her breakthrough at the Gruppe 47 reading in May 1953 and her prolonged absence from Vienna.