Ilse Aichinger

Ilse Aichinger (1 November 1921 – 11 November 2016) was an Austrian Jewish writer known for her accounts of her persecution by the Nazis because of her Jewish ancestry. She wrote poems, short stories and radio plays, and won multiple European literary prizes. As her mother's family was assimilated, the children were raised Catholic. Aichinger spent her childhood in Linz and, after her parents divorced, she moved to Vienna with her mother and sister, attending a Catholic secondary school. After the Anschluss in 1938, her family was subjected to Nazi persecution. As a "half-Jew" she was not allowed to continue her studies and became a slave labourer in a button factory. During World War II, Aichinger was able to hide her mother in her assigned room, in front of the Hotel Metropol, the Viennese Gestapo headquarters. But many relatives from her mother's side, among them her grandmother Gisela, of whom she was particularly fond, were sent to the Maly Trostenets extermination camp near Minsk, and murdered.

Career In 1945, after the end of the war, Aichinger began to study medicine at the University of Vienna, while writing in her spare time. In her first publication, (The Fourth Gate), she wrote about her experience under Nazism. In 1947, she and her mother Berta were able to travel to London and visit Aichinger's twin Helga and her daughter Ruth. The visit was the inspiration for a short story, "Dover". The story is written backwards, beginning with the end of the biography of the unnamed woman, and ending with her early childhood.

In 1949, Aichinger became a reader for publishing houses in Vienna and Frankfurt, and worked with Inge Scholl to found an Institute of Creative Writing in Ulm, Germany.

In 1951, Aichinger was invited to join the writers' group Gruppe 47, a group which aimed to spread democratic ideas in post-war Austria. She read her story "Spiegelgeschichte" aloud at a meeting of the group, and leading group members such as Hans Werner Richter were impressed with the unusual narrative construction. The following year, she won the group's prize for best text, becoming the first female recipient. In 1956, she joined the Academy of Arts, Berlin. She was also a guest lecturer at the German Institute at the University of Vienna, teaching on literature and psychoanalysis. The similarity to Kafka's work has been frequently commented on, however other critics state that Aichinger's work goes beyond Kafka's in her emphasis on the emotional side of human suffering.

Aichinger died on 11 November 2016, aged 95.

Personal life Aichinger met the poet and radio play author Günter Eich through the Group 47 and they were married in 1953; they had a son (1954–1998), and in 1958 a daughter, Mirjam. Spiegelgeschichte (short prose, 1949) "Plätze und Strassen" (short story, 1954). "Squares and Streets" Kleist, Moos, Fasane (short prose, 1987). Kleist, Moss, Pheasants, trans. Geoff Wilkes (Königshausen & Neumann, 2020) Film und Verhängnis. Blitzlichter auf ein Leben (autobiography, 2001). Film and Fate: Camera Flashes Illuminating a Life, trans. Geoff Wilkes (Königshausen & Neumann, 2018) Unglaubwürdige Reisen (short prose, 2005). Improbable Journeys, trans. Geoff Wilkes (Königshausen & Neumann, 2019) Subtexte (essay, 2006)

Poems

Verschenkter Rat (1978). Squandered Advice, trans. Steph Morris (Seagull Books, 2022)

Radio plays

Knöpfe (first broadcast, 1953; published 1961). Buttons Zu keiner Stunde. Szenen und Dialoge (1957). At No Time, trans. Steph Morris (2023) Gare Maritime (1974)

German-language compilations

Wo ich wohne. Erzählungen, Gedichte, Dialoge, ed. Klaus Wagenbach (1963). Where I Live

English-language compilations Ilse Aichinger [Stories, Dialogues, Poems]. Trans. J. C. Alldridge (1969) Selected Poetry and Prose. Ed. and translated by Allen H. Chappel. With an introduction by Lawrence L. Langer (Logbridge-Rhodes, Durango, Colorado, 1983) Bad Words: Selected Short Prose, trans. Uljana Wolf and Christian Hawkey (Seagull Books, 2019). Includes selections from Eliza Eliza, the entirety of Schlechte Wörter, and three additional selections ("The Jouet Sisters", "My Language and I", and "Snow"). After Me and Other Stories, trans. Anne Posten (New Directions, 2027)

Translated stories in anthologies or journals

"The Young Lieutenant", trans. J. C. Alldridge in Mundus Artium I (1967)

Awards and honours Group 47 Literature Prize (1952) Immermann-Preis (1955), for Der Gefesselte Literaturpreis der Stadt Bremen (1955), for Der Gefesselte Großer Literaturpreis der Bayerischen Akademie der Schönen Künste (1961, 1991)