Ilse Aichinger

Aichinger, Ilse (Vienna, 1921- ), grew up in Linz and Vienna, where she completed her grammar-school education. Throughout the years of National Socialist rule she suffered the trauma of persecution, which began when her Jewish mother was deprived of her medical practice and family home. After the war she took up medicine, which she abandoned after five semesters, anxious to complete her first (and only) novel, Die größere Hoffnung (1948). In 1951 she joined Gruppe 47, whose prize she won for Rede unter dem Galgen (1952; as Der Gefesselte, 1953), the first of the shorter works characteristic of her prose. Before turning to full-time writing, she worked for a spell in the editorial section of the S. Fischer Verlag, then at the Volkshochschule für Gestaltung in Ulm, collaborating with Inge Scholl, the sister of Hans and Sophie Scholl, whose sacrifice as members of the student resistance (see Resistance Movements, 2, ‘Weiße Rose’) had imbued her with hope and admiration. Through Gruppe 47 she met Günter Eich whom she married in 1953; in 1963 the family moved to Großgmain nr. Salzburg, where she remained until 1984, when she moved for five years to Frankfurt before settling in Vienna. After Eich's death in 1972 she devoted herself to the first publication of his collected works (1973) of which she is co-editor. One of the radio plays (see Hörspiel) in this edition, Der letzte Tag, is their joint work, but she herself has also notably contributed to the genre with plays and dialogues (Dialoge); these and her poetry show the same distinct temper of her style of writing.

In Die größere Hoffnung, a symbolic representation of Aichinger's own ordeal and frustrated hope to emigrate, a Jewish girl, victim of an air raid, reconstructs her life from beyond the grave, now cherishing the ‘greater hope’ for a humane world to which the title alludes. In Nach der weißen Rose, first published in the collection Kleist, Moos, Fasane (1987), Ilse Aichinger speaks of her resolve to avoid the danger of ‘terrible simplification’ when referring to the sufferings of the past. Her remarkable novel is a first unique expression of this, but in her future work she aims at a direct correspondence between her perception of reality and her use of language, between the trauma of her nights and pervasive scepticism, and her detachment from familiar literary devices, models or trends like Kahlschlag and, for the most part, concrete poetry (see Konkrete Poesie). In the title-story of the collection Meine Sprache und ich (1968) she highlights her use of ‘foreign words’ (Fremdwörter), a pointed comment on the literal (and negative) function of her language to convey her sense of alienation. In the short poem ‘Gebirgsrand’, contained in her collection of poetry Verschenkter Rat (1978), she intimates that she would be lost without her dreams, her ‘hunters’ (Jäger); her dream visions and poetry were to her, as she has repeatedly stated, a very real means of self-preservation. The words ‘Jäger’ and ‘jagen’ are an unambiguous reminder of the haunting fear (Angst) she endured in her fight for survival when young and a pointer to the desolate existential fear expressed in a diary entry of 1977: ‘Schreiben ist sterben lernen’ (Writing teaches one to die). Equally deliberate is her avoidance of coherent narratives. In commenting that she was not indiscriminate like life (‘Ich bin nicht wahllos wie das Leben’), she underlines her purposeful structural procedure (in the title-story of schlechte wörter, 1976). In the works of such diverse writers as Stifter, James Joyce, and Joseph Conrad, she perceives the same underlying sense of fear and anonymity from which her own art proceeds (in the collection of 1987). Wolfgang Hildesheimer was among the first to recognize, with reference to her story Der Querbalken (in the collection Eliza, Eliza, 1965), the modernity of her style. Other collections include Der Gefesselte (1953, as Unter dem Galgen, 1952), Nachricht vom Tag (1970), and Wo ich wohne (1963, which also contains dialogues and poetry); the radio plays include Knöpfe (1953; as a stage play 1957), Besuch im Pfarrhaus (1961, with 3 dialogues), Nachmittag in Ostende (1968), Auckland (1969, 4 plays), Die Schwestern Jouet (1961, also a story), and Gare Maritime (1976, in schlechte wörter).

The recipient of numerous prestigious Austrian and German prizes, Ilse Aichinger is recognized as one of Austria's outstanding contemporary writers, whose individual response to 20th c. concerns has lost none of its urgent topicality. Editions of her works include the extensive Werkausgabe (8 vols.) by R. Reichensperger, published in 1991.

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