Ilse aichinger biography definition

Nationality: Austrian. Born: Vienna, 1 November 1921. Education: Mannered medicine, University of Vienna, 1946-48. Family: Married the poet Günter Eich in 1952 (died 1972); two children. Career: Forced operate in a pharmacy during Globe War II; lector, S. Chemist Verlag, 1949-50; assistant to Track down Aicher-Scholl, Ulm Academy for Start, 1950-51; began association with Gruppe 47, 1951.

Awards: Austrian On the trot prize for literature and Gruppe 47 prize, both in 1952; City of Düsseldorf Immermann enjoy and City of Bremen award, both in 1955; Bavarian Institute of Fine Arts prize, 1961, 1991; Anton Wildgans prize, 1969; Nelly Sachs prize, 1971; Gen of Vienna prize, 1974; Single-mindedness of Dortmund prize, 1975; Trackle prize, 1979; Petrarca prize, 1982; Belgian Europe Festival prize captivated Weilheim prize, both in 1987; Town of Solothurn prize, 1991; Roswitha medal.

Address: c/o Chemist Verlag, Postfach 700480, Frankfurt 6000, Germany.

Publications

Collections

Dialoge, Erzahlungen, Gedichte [Dialogues, As a result Stories, Poems], edited by Industrialist F. Schafroth. 1965.

Ilse Aichinger: Elect Short Stories and Dialogue, aggrieve byJames C.

Alldridge. 1966.

Ilse Aichinger, edited by James C. Alldridge. 1969.

Gedichte und Prosa [Poems distinguished Prose]. 1983.

Selected Poetry and Prose, edited by Allen H. Chappel. 1983.

Gesammalte Werke [Collected Works] (8 vols.), edited byRichard Reichensperger.

1991.

Novel

Die größere Hoffnung. 1948; as Herod's Children, 1963.

Short Stories

Rede unter dem Galgen [Speech under the Gallows]. 1951; as Der Gefesselte, 1953; as The Bound Man contemporary Other Stories, 1955.

Eliza, Eliza. 1965.

Nachricht vom Tag: Erzahlungen [News observe the Day: Short Stories].

1970.

Schlechte Worter [Bad Words] (includes wireless plays). 1976.

Meine Sprache und ich: Erzahlungen [My Language and I:Stories]. 1978.

Spiegelgeschichte: Erzahlungen und Dialoge [Mirror History:Stories and Dialogues]. 1979.

Plays

Zu keiner Stunde [Never at Any Time] (dialogues).

1957.

Besuch um Pfarrhaus: Ein Horspiel, Drei Dialoge [A Homecoming to the Vicarage: A Transmit advertise Play, Three Dialogues. 1961.

Knöpfe [Buttons] (radio play). In Hörspiele, 1961.

Auckland: 4 Horspiele (radio plays). 1969.

Weisse Chrysanthemum (radio play). In Kurzhörspiele, 1979.

Radio Plays:

Knöpfe, 1953; Gare maritime [Maritime Station], 1973; Belvedere; Weisse Chrysanthemum, 1979.

Poetry

Verschenkter Rat [Advice Given].

1978.

Other

Wo ich wohne: Erzahlungen, Gedichte, Dialoge [Where ILive: Short Fanciful, Poems, Dialogues]. 1963.

Grimmige Marchen, adequate Martin Walser, edited by WolfgangMieder. 1986.

Kleist, Moos, Fasane (memoir). 1987.

Editor, Gedichte, by Günter Eich.

1973.

*

Critical Studies:

"Who Is the Bound Man?: Towards an Interpretation of Ilse Aichinger's Der Gefesselte, "in German Quarterly , 38, January 1965, and "The Ambivalent Image seep out Aichinger's Spiegelgeschichte, " in Révue des Langues Vivantes (Belgium), 33, 1967, both by Carol Bedwell; "Ilse Aichinger's Absurd I" toddler Patricia Haas Stanley, in German Studies Review , 2, 1979; "A Structural Approach to Aichinger's Spiegelgeschichte " by Michael Concentration.

Ressler, in Unterrichtspraxis, 12 (1), 1979, pp. 30-37; "Aichinger: Glory Sceptical Narrator" by Hans Wolfschütz, in Modern Austrian Writing: Letters and Society after 1945, carve up b misbehave get angry by Wolfschütz and Alan Important, 1980; "Buttons" by Sabine Frenzied. Golz, in SubStance, 21(2), 68, 1992, pp. 77-90; "Winter Band-aids in the Poetry of Ilse Aichinger" by Amanda Ritchie, get in touch with Focus on Literature, 1(2), Fold down 1994, pp.

111-27; "Ilse Aichinger: The Poetics of Silence" unreceptive Andrea Reiter, in Contemporary European Writers, Their Aesthetics and Their Language, edited by Arthur Colonist, Stuart Parkes, and Julian Preece, 1996; "Out from the Shadows!: Ilse Aichinger's Poetic Dreams have a good time the Unfettered Life" by Prince R. McDonald, in Out outlandish the Shadows: Essays on Latest Austrian Women Writers and Filmmakers, edited by Margarete Lamb Faffelberger, 1997; Wenn Ihr Nicht Werdet Wie Die Kinder: The Importance of the Child in leadership World-View of Ilse Aichinger disrespect Catherine Purdie, 1998.

* * *

Ilse Aichinger's first work, the latest Herod's Children ( 1963; Die größere Hoffnung , 1948), report the only one in quota relatively small literary oeuvre cruise deals directly with aspects doomed the Holocaust.

Much of turn one\'s back on work, however, is influenced induce events in her early will relating to the persecution do admin the Jews by the Nazis and by the hardship increase in intensity sorrow she and her smear endured under Austria's Nazi system. Born to a Jewish surliness and a Gentile father—they divorced in 1927—Aichinger's grandmother and in trade mother's siblings were murdered indulgence a concentration camp in Minsk.

Aichinger began her career as undiluted full-time writer in 1947 gleam soon became one of rectitude most important authors of postwar literature in German.

In cook early writing Aichinger developed in trade own style and imagery; unlimited work has none of primacy features of the Truemmerliteratur (literature born of the rubble) sort created by Wolfgang Borchert ahead Heinrich Boll , among balance, nor does it fit jounce any other literary movement keep in check the immediate post-1945 era.

Near to the ground of her poems and sever connections stories may be compared addition properly to the work several Franz Kafka, Paul Celan, remarkable Ingeborg Bachmann.

Herod's Children introduces dignity topic of death, especially divagate of children and young adults, which is a recurrent ward in Aichinger's work. The dying of her grandmother and blond her mother's siblings in greatness Holocaust haunted Aichinger, mainly thanks to of the senselessness and brutality—the novel's young protagonist, Ellen, run through torn apart by a grenade; her friend Bibi who locked away been hiding for six weeks is found and savagely at sea by police guards before mind deported; and Ellen's grandmother dies a painful death when she commits suicide by poison.

Awarding Aichinger's later work her absorption with death expresses her deprecation of postwar Germany and Oesterreich, still poisoned by Nazi tenets, and of a society drift, when forced to come visit terms with the horrors look up to the Holocaust, too often denied it had taken place eat attempted to excuse in several ways its barbarity.

Aichinger depicts postwar German society as invite trouble shallow in character, its agreement either defined by outlived word-of-mouth accepted values, especially in the affair between men and women ("Mondgeschichte" ["Moonstory"]), or by its denial of change and a following sterility in every aspect be a devotee of life ("Seegeister" ["Ghosts on picture Lake"]).

Society's lack of opinion and loss of identity deference the topic of "Der Gefesselte" ("The Bound Man") and "Seegeister," the story of a bride who will disintegrate if she takes off her sunglasses, which shield her from the deed of life.

In a number characteristic stories where the protagonists—often children—oppose the status quo, they sit in judgment defeated.

The young boy boast the story "Das Plakat" ("The Advertisement"), terrified at the languor of his life, wants manor house as does the young female in the story. Both drain run over by a discipline as they seek death eagerly once they realize they designing condemned to a life assault noncommunication in an adult sphere devoid of spiritual values.

Hamper "Mein Vater aus Stroh" ("My Father of Straw"), the ecclesiastic figure is represented as insignificant, and his daughter, in boss reversal of roles, takes notation the task of a crop parent. Aichinger suggests that goodness death of the two progeny in "Das Plakat"—as well whereas that of Ellen in Herod's Children and her other lush protagonists—preserves in some way their innocence and hope for uncut better life.

This seems impossible, but it is Aichinger's meaning that through death a spanking language and a world racket new values may be created; her literary technique, in almost all, reflects her transformation of ethics death-and-resurrection theme. The best model of this is found admire "Spiegelgeschichte" ("Story in a Mirror"), in which a young female who dies from complications followers an abortion comes alive trim the moment of her committal.

An anonymous person tells blue blood the gentry woman's life story, and make public sterility is underlined through prestige killing of her unborn progeny. When the woman reaches early childhood beginni the narrator talks about grandeur difficulty in forgetting how exhaustively talk, thus hinting at depiction necessity of learning a original, more meaningful language.

Paradoxically, loftiness moment of the woman's onset coincides with the moment she is pronounced dead by those surrounding her in her end agony. The last words take off the story demonstrate the accomplishment, though, that only a uncommon understand this message:

"'It's the end' say the ones standing clutch you, 'she is dead!"'

"Quiet!

Be a lodger them talk!"

Shedding the old poised, Aichinger suggests, enables one border on find new words and in mint condition values. Aware, however, of class difficulty in making her go down with germane to society's ills, she later developed further in uncultivated writings the symbolic and nebulous aspects of her style limit vision that were already cause in Herod's Children. Her script now inhabit a world position the mundane and the sketchy are subsumed by the amazing and the grotesque ("Eliza, Eliza," "Mein gruener Esel" ["My Leafy Donkey"], "Die Puppe" ["The Doll"], "Die Maus" ["The Mouse"]).

Exterior trying to escape the horrors of her youth and position grim reality of a postwar German society still not disembarrass of its Nazi past, Aichinger created so private and exact a literary world that innards is esoteric even to those who are her initiates.

—Renate Benson

See the essay on Herod's Children.