Ilse Aichinger

Ilse Aichinger (born 1 November 1921) is an Austrian writer noted for her accounts of her persecution by the Nazis because of her Jewish ancestry.

Life and career

Aichinger was born in 1921 in Vienna, along with her twin sister, de, to a doctor, her mother Berta of Jewish ethnicity, and a teacher, Ludwig. As her mother's family was assimilated, Ilse was raised a Catholic. She spent her childhood in Linz and, after her parents divorced, she moved to Vienna with her mother and sister. 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. Her sister Helga escaped from Nazism in July 1939 through a Kindertransport to England where she eventually gave birth to the prospective English artist Ruth Rix. Ilse Aichinger was able during the war to hide her mother in her assigned room, right in front of the Hotel Metropol, the Viennese Gestapo headquarter. But many relatives from her mother side, among them her beloved grandmother Gisela, were forcefully "resettled" to the est, in the Maly Trostenets extermination camp, near Minsk, and killed.

In 1945, after the war, Aichinger began to study medicine, working as a writer on the side. In her first publication, "Das vierte Tor" (The Fourth Gate), she wrote of her own experience under Nazism.

After studying for five semesters, Aichinger interrupted her studies in medicine again in 1948 in order to finish her only novel, Die größere Hoffnung (The Greater Hope, translated as Herod's Children).

Aichinger was invited in 1951 to join the writer's group Gruppe 47 where she met the poet and radio play author Günter Eich. She won the group's literary prize in 1952 for her short story "Spiegelgeschichte". Aichinger and Eich married in 1953; they had a son de (1954–1998), and in 1958 a daughter, Mirjam.

In 1955, Aichinger was awarded the Immermann-Preis by the city of Düsseldorf and in 1956, she joined the Akademie der Künste of Berlin. In 1957, Aichinger won the Literaturpreis der Stadt Bremen. In 1963, Aichinger moved to Großgmain, near Salzburg. In 1971, she was awarded the Nelly Sachs Prize.

Reviewing a 1957 volume of her short works in translation, The Bound Man and Other Stories, Anthony Boucher described Aichinger as "a sort of concise Kafka," praising the title story, "Der gefesselte Mann", for its "narrative use of multi-valued symbolism."

She was honored with the German international literary Petrarca-Preis in 1982. After 1985 Aichinger increasingly retreated from public life. In 1987, she received the Europalia Literature Prize, and in 1961 and 1991, she was awarded the Großer Literaturpreis der Bayerischen Akademie der Schönen Künste. Other honors included the Austrian State Prize for European Literature in 1995 and the 2000 Joseph-Breitbach-Preis, which she received along with W. G. Sebald and Markus Werner.

Awards

• Immermann-Preis (1955)
• Großer Literaturpreis der Bayerischen Akademie der Schönen Künste (1961, 1991)
• Anton Wildgans Prize (1968)
• Nelly Sachs Prize (1971)
• Roswitha Prize (1975)
• Petrarca-Preis (1982)
• Grand Austrian State Prize (1995)
• Austrian State Prize for European Literature (1995)

Works

• 1945: "Das vierte Tor", essay
• 1948: Die größere Hoffnung, novel
• 1949: "Spiegelgeschichte", short story
• 1953: Der Gefesselte, short stories
• 1953: Knöpfe (1953), radio play, adapted to stage play in 1957
• 1957: Zu keiner Stunde. Szenen und Dialoge (At no hour. Scenes and dialogues), dramatised in 1996 at the Volkstheater, Vienna
• 1963: Wo ich wohne, short stories
• 1965: Eliza, Eliza, short stories
• 1969: Auckland, radio plays
• 1970: Nachricht vom Tag, short stories
• 1976: Schlechte Wörter, short stories, radio play Gare maritime
• 1978: Verschenkter Rat, poems
• 1978: Meine Sprache und ich, short stories
• 1996: Kleist, Moos, Fasane, collection of short works
• 2001: Film und Verhängnis. Blitzlichter auf ein Leben (Film and fate. Flashlights on a life), autobiography
• 2005: Unglaubwürdige Reisen, short stories
• 2006: Subtexte, essay

Translations

• The Bound Man and Other Stories. Translated by Eric Mosbacher. Secker & Warburg, London 1955
• Selected Stories and Dialogs. Ed. by James C. Alldridge. Pergamon Press, Oxford, New York 1966
• Selected Poetry and Prose. Ed. and translated by Allen H. Chappel. With an introduction by Lawrence L. Langer. Logbridge-Rhodes, Durango, Colorado 1983

Analysis

• A Spatial Reading of Ilse Aichinger's Novel 'Die größere Hoffnung' by Gail Wiltshire, Königshausen & Neumann, Würzburg 2015 (German) ISBN 978-3826057076

External links

• Ilse Aichinger at the Internet Book List
• "Aichinger, Ilse" International Who's Who. Accessed September 1, 2006. (subscription required)
• Ilse Aichinger at perlentaucher.de – das Kulturmagazin (German)