Ingeborg Bachmann (1926-1973) was a major poet from Austria and one of the most important German-language poets of the 20th century. She studied philosophy, psychology, and law at the universities of Innsbruck, Graz, and Vienna. In 1950, she received her PhD from the University of Vienna where she wrote a thesis on Martin Heidegger.
She was employed at Radio Rot-Weiß-Rot and was part of a group of writers called Gruppe 47, which included Paul Celan. Besides her poetry, she is known for her 1971 novel Malina, which Rachel Kushner called, in the introduction, “the truest portrait of female consciousness since Sappho.”
Bachmann switched from writing primarily poetry to primarily prose around 1956, and even stated publicly that she no longer wished to write poems. Eventually she became better known for her prose than for her poetry. After her break-up with her
