Ingeborg Bachmann: Too Free and Too Clever for Her Time

On the centenary of her birth, Ingeborg Bachmann is remembered as a precursor to today's heterofatalists. The Austrian poet and author, known for her elegant style, lived primarily in Rome, where she was photographed on the Spanish Steps in the early 1970s. Her childhood home at Henselstraße 26 in Klagenfurt, where she stood as a schoolgirl in 1933, is now a museum. A new documentary by Regina Schilling features a scene where Bachmann, visibly marked by life, responds to a male reporter's question about why men are incurably ill with a knowing smile: "They are, don't you know?" The article suggests that instead of focusing on her suffering, one should revisit her immortal works.