Ingeborg-Bachmann competition begins: crisis, anniversary, end

Of course, it is again a festival for German-language literature when the Ingeborg Bachmann Wettles reading in Klagenfurt is opened this Wednesday evening. For three whole days nothing but literary texts, texts, texts, fourteen in number, and, no less important: the discussions about the texts that the jury leads after the readings.

All this live by 3sat, passionate, enthusiastic or malicious on social media, commented on literary criticism in the connected radio houses and newspaper feudetons.

The Klagenfurt speech on the literature, which is held at the opening, is the reason for a critical consideration, this year maybe even more than usual: it comes from the German-Iranian writer Nava Ebrahimi, born in Tehran in 1978, who won the competition in 2021. “Three days in May” is the title of this speech. This indicates that Ebrahimi wrote her a long time ago; But maybe she has updated her speech under the impression of the events of the past few weeks.

However, the folklore of the Ingeborg Bachmann competition also includes that it is either happy to be dead or questioned, not least in literary criticism. Or he is at least in a crisis, for at least twenty years. So far, the competition has put it away somewhat loosely. This alone speaks that it takes place this year for the 49th time.

Mayor reception fails

In the past few days, however, a message has caused a certain unrest. Because the city of Klagenfurt, which is actually very proud of this competition, despite the Iron Man or the appearance of the Kastelruther Spatzen on Saturday, the city of Klagenfurt announced that the traditional reception of its mayor on Thursday in Maria Loreto. The reason for this is the tense financial situation of the city, as it was said a week ago in a “broadcast” of the Klagenfurt Senate. An alarm sign? The beginning of the end?

To calm down, it was also announced that the next year was to be declared the Ingeborg Bachmann anniversary year. Because on June 25, 2026, the writer would have been a hundred years old, which in turn did not happen by accident with the 50-year anniversary edition of the competition, among others by Marcel Reich-Ranicki, co-founded competition.

For a year, the city of Klagenfurt will surely hold through when the betting read is co-financing, and the Ingeborg-Bachmann-Haus in Henselstrasse will also open these days (on Friday!), In the presence of Bachmann’s brother Heinz. But then was it, as was repeated in recent years?

What happens to 3sat

The question is having around Lake Wörthersee. Especially since 3sat is under savings and success pressure as a transmission transmitter. In the course of the planned reforms of public service broadcasting, 3sat was seriously presented, so there was talk of a (albeit completely unrealistic) fusion with Arte, which did not occur for good reasons. 3Sat continues to run as before, and yet you don’t know what exactly is coming to the station.

What does that mean for the Ingeborg Bachmann competition? The crisis as an eternal opportunity, far from Romantasy and Tikok literature, far from bestseller literature? In 2020, Helga Schubert won the price and then caused a stir, came to bestsellers, also because she was a long-profile author.

At Nava Ebrahimi, although a not entirely unknown author with her “sixteen words” with her novel of success, it was different after her victory in 2021. For the subsequent Bachmann Prize winners Ana Marwan, Valeria Gordeev and Tijan Sila, the literary superstard’s cathedral is also far away.

But this does not speak against her literature, but is only the expression of an enormously changed attention economy, against which even the competitive character of the Bachmann reading is difficult.