Bachmann Prize: Literature seeks superstar

Provocative and misery show of the writer in one: Rainald Goetz broke his forehead in 1983 during the live broadcast of his reading with a blade of Shaver. (Photo: ORF)

Wine cramps, death rattles and bloody faces: Literature can become quite violent. At least throughout the summer competing for the prize Ingeborg Bachmann in Klagenfurt. Therefore, one would like to call mocking competition "German literature is looking for the next superstar". The seven-member jury reads texts from 14 authors in front of the camera and discusses them immediately afterwards. If possible in protest mode, so that the public expectation.

Literature as a circus? Like a fashion show? Like raw slam poetry, with praise or malice, blessings or humiliation? Since its first edition in 1977, the Bachmann Prize has the reputation of establishing or destroying literary careers. In the first year, the president of the jury, Marcel Reich-Ranicki, complained about Karin Struck's text that it was not literature, but "a crime", after which the author melted in tears and left Klagenfurt prematurely. It is therefore not surprising that most authors are extremely nervous. In 1993, Christina Günther, who should have been the first to read, did not appear at the Arena. After a night of insomnia, she had fallen asleep at seven in the morning and had gone unnoticed.

"With my blood my brain is about to run out"

However, if you notice as an author, the attention throughout the German-speaking area is certain. Some examples: Nora Gomringer, Sten Nadolny (he read in 1980 of his best-seller later "The discovery of slowness"), Franzobel, Hermann Burger, Tilman Rammstedt, Georg Klein, Terézia Mora. Meanwhile, Mora is next to the winners Wolfgang Hilbig and Sybille Lewitscharoff Bachmann, who then received the Büchner Prize, the most important literary prize in the German-speaking world. But it does not even have to be the main price to stay in the long run. Unforgettable, for example, the appearance of Rainald Goetz, who scratched his forehead in 1983 while thrillingly reading his angry text with a razor blade. The blood flows into the manuscript's nose: "With my blood, it's the escape of my brain because it's a torture in my head," they say at one point – the text was a unique account of the cultural industry.

Goetz's performance represented three typical characteristics of the first twenty years of the Bachmann Prize: the textual vehemence, the provocative performances and the difficult debates of the jury, as well as the torment that the authors felt while reading. The agony is not completely self-inflicted. Because the authors are invited, because the jurors bring from their country the talents that they have chosen, each one of them reading unpublished texts. Until 1997, the competition maintained a risky experimentation style: the jury heard the texts only when reading. Since then, jurors have received the texts one week in advance. A scandal like in 1991, when juror Roberto Cazzola left the arena in protest, will hardly happen anymore. Cazzola was so angry with the nightmarish text "Babyficker" of the Basel author, Urs Allemann, that he was infatuated with the discussion.

"If you do not have the guts, you want to become an accountant"

Since the 1997 reform, the Bachmann Award is not so high. Controversial remains the format nonetheless. This has to do with the case of literary criticism in particular: "To the profession of criticism belongs courage, especially courage to the error. If you do not have the guts to become a bookkeeper or tax advisor, "said Marcel Reich-Ranicki, who viewed the review as" necessarily individual "and therefore had a witty quarrel with fellow lawyer Adolf Muschg. Muschg insisted that you first have to understand a text before you can criticize it. Another Swiss juror, Iso Camartin, held the risky task of the critic as follows: "The chance of embarrbadment is much greater for the jurors than for the candidates."

The reading contest is named after After Ingeborg Bachmann. This even though the author was already dead in 1973, four years before the first edition, and had a distant relationship to his hometown Klagenfurt. The organizers chose as a model the "Group 47" meetings, which significantly influenced post-war German literature and the public discussion of it. Ingeborg Bachmann began her literary career in the 1950s and also won the group award – with fragile and penetrating readings of her poems.

Three Swiss Swiss at the Reading Competition

Two Swiss jurors, three Swiss women: Anna Bischofberger, born in 1990 in Rorschach, published her novels and narrative volumes under the name of Anna Stern. More recently, his highly acclaimed volume of novels appeared "When the heavens appear". Bischofberger intertwines in many texts his scientific work with subtle literary means. Its main activity is the research of antibiotic resistance at ETH. She was invited by Zurich literary critic and juror Hildegard Elisabeth Keller.

Anna Bischofberger (Photo: Michel Canonica)

Martina Clavadetscher, who lives in Brunnen and Lucerne, was also invited by Keller. Clavadetscher has been working since 2009 as a writer, playwright and radio columnist. In the 2013/2014 season, she was a house writer at the Lucerne Theater. Her novel "Knochenlieder" was nominated for the Swiss Book Award in 2017. In this film, she accurately tells an apocalyptic with a regime of terror – formally recognizable as an original version of Versopus in three parts, which combines mythical elements virtuosos with such end-of-genre stories.

The Swiss-German poetess Nora Gomringer, who herself won the Bachmann Prize in 2015, has corollary Corinna T. Guest Sievers. Sievers lives on Lake Zurich, practices orthodontics in Zurich and specializes in conbad facial malformations. In 1997, she wrote her dissertation on the predictability of beauty in Los Angeles and Kiel. In her most recent novel, The Half Life of Love, she ruthlessly dissects her characters, who are trapped in masochistic basic patterns. One of the three winners of the Bachmann Prize of more than 25,000 euros or one of the special awards will be released Sunday. (hak)

Corinna T. Sievers (Picture: Stefan Baumgartner)