»talking across borders«

Ingeborg Bachmann was in contact with central figures of German-language literature. Her correspondence with Marie Luise Kaschnitz, Hilde Domin and Nelly Sachs, which is now made public for the first time, provides an impressive insight into the living conditions, literary work, poetics and political commitment of female writers after 1945. Different relationships develop between the pen pals across generations and borders: Bachmann’s friendship with Marie Luise Kaschnitz, which began in Rome, the pragmatic collaboration with Hilde Domin, and the lyrical conversation with Nelly Sachs. What the correspondences have in common is above all the question of how to continue living and writing after the Shoah. The additional commentary explains the letters against the background of contemporary history and the literary world and from the present attempts to bring the works of these authors into conversation with one another.