Efforts are made in Klagenfurt and at the ORF when it comes to the Ingeborg Bachmann competition. When it was announced on Wednesday which authors would compete this time to win the Bachmann Prize, which is endowed with 25,000 euros, the mayor of the city, Christian Schneider, described the competition as a jewel that was well received beyond Austria’s borders. The ORF state director Karin Bernhard seconded and spoke of a cultural event.
This is of course the way it should be in the media advertising gallop. Nevertheless, the resilience of reading in Klagenfurt is really worthy of all honor. This is the 47th time that the competition is taking place, the “competition” as the locals call it. How often has the death knell been rung for him!
“Abolish Klagenfurt!” was the popular saying after a weaker vintage. Then it seemed for a while that the ORF was a bit tired, the whole thing is quite expensive with a five-day runtime and many hours of live transmission. And the pandemic was, on the one hand, a small catastrophe like everywhere else, but on the other hand, it released reserves to carry out the competition now, despite all the corona adversities: exclusively digitally, then with the participants who read at home and the jury in the ORF studio in Klagenfurt, finally, like last year, with the readings in the garden.
The 47th Bachmann reading is now the first to take place with everyone in the studio, just like before the pandemic. “A summer like back then”, the ORF state director tried to use a Peter Kurzeck formulation, and indeed: where is the summer nicer than at Lake Wörthersee? There are also smaller innovations, that’s how it is every year. This time there are two new jury members, one of whom is quite glamorous: the writer and cultural scientist Mithu Sanyal, who replaces Vea Kaiser. The Swiss literary scholar Thomas Strässle, in turn, replaces Michael Wiedenstein. Among the authors, there are some who are already more established, such as Deniz Utlu, Anna Gien or Robert Strasser. The poet Yevgeniy Breyger, who was born in Kharkiv in 1989 and who came to Germany with his family in 1999, is already the most popular.
Gerrit Bartels regularly observes the Bachmann competition and is very excited about the new juror Mithu Sanyal this year
I have been working in the news industry for over 10 years now and I have worked for some of the biggest news websites in the world. My focus has always been on entertainment news, but I also cover a range of other topics. I am currently an author at Global happenings and I love writing about all things pop-culture related.
