Natascha Gangl-Ingeborg-Bachmann Prize: Literature against “End-time fascism”

“The truth is reasonable for people,” is perhaps the most famous quote from the poet Ingeborg Bachmann, who would have celebrated her 99th birthday this year. The truth is that her birthplace of Klagenfurt is broke. City policy, especially Mayor Christian Scheider (former tennis teacher by Jörg Haider), has not been able to agree on a budget for the current year, with existential consequences for the free scene. Theater groups such as Vada, the association to stimulate the dramatic appetite, live from hand to mouth and the help of the state government. “Art is the puma of poverty,” wrote the poet Georg Timber-Trattnig, who died much too early, here in Carinthia many still known as the bass player of the band Naked Lunch. But not all artists fight, many are now lacking strength. And some of them feel like the canary birds of society; Similar to the mining, they have to go into the shaft in their cages, into the dark – and first suffocate.

Here in Klagenfurt, the clearing of culture is currently taking place with such a force that has washed in the Wörthersee, said the spokesman for the Bachmann Prize jury Klaus Kastberger on Wednesday in his speech at the beginning of this year’s 49th days of German-language literature. He was firmly convinced that in the literature, ie “in rooms, where alternative worlds shone”, where problem areas are marked and related and ultimately always working on a peaceful coexistence, there is an opportunity for a better world.

Kastberger is known for his plain language: “We must not miss the chances of such opportunities, not by right -wing and anti -cultural politics, not from devastating conditions in the world and also not for reasons of cost.” Because, as to be expected, the deletions have not stopped before the “competition”. The Literature Course Klagenfurt, called “bunny course” by many, was discontinued. He was once the cadre of the literary business, bestselling authors such as Bov Bjerg and Angela Lehner emerged from this. The city clerk scholarship and the traditional mayor reception on the Maria Loretto peninsula were canceled on the evening of the second reading day. But as Gert Jonke, the first Bachmann laureate in 1977, wrote, the most colorful carpets are made in the desert.

The most important thing in advance: The 2025 vintage of the Bachmann competition was the strongest in a long time. The opening speech by the German-Iranian writer Nava Ebrahimi, Bachmann award winner in 2021, did not primarily deal with literature, but with the “end-time fascism” of our day: “Almost every day, it seems to shift borders. Limits of what can be said, limits of what is feasible. Almost every day we dismantle, we lower our ethical standards, we get used to new suffering. «

From the ancient suffering that does not want to pass, from the crimes of the last days of the war in the border area of ​​Styria, the great winning text of Natascha Gangl, in which it combines language, identity and war crimes in the border area between Austria, Hungary and Slovenia. A wake-up call already the first sentence: “Wou g’heastn you hi?” With some sound shift, this is no longer understood as a Styrian greeting, not as: “Where do you belong?”, But as “Where do you hear?”-From “Wine-In-Wiu-Sdn-Do” becomes: “Where are the Jews there?” You are murdered. Those who were covered with a bit. With earth. The fact that people have still moved. ”According to the jury, this text leads to an incredible living in the language, go directly into the brain and heart.

In addition to the 25,000 euros in prize money, the 7,000 euros are added from the audience award. When asked about this, said Natascha Gangl: “‘Ziegt Ma the Schlappen.” The free scene of the Carinthian state capital also won: Martina Mosebach-knight from the small Klagenfurter Ritter-Verlag may hardly believe that her author was awarded twice.

Boris Schumantzky, in German writers in German, receives the Deutschlandfunk Prize, which was endowed with 12,500 euros, with a story that would have to be printed here in the »ND«. The narrator, who lives in German exile, wants to see his elderly mother, who is now almost blind. Before the trip, however, he practices suicide, only in the event that he may already be arrested at the airport. “Last week I taught myself to swallow tablets without water, practiced vitamin D. It may be that I have no water on hand if I have to take pentobarbital. I fly two more hours, then the passport control, and when they let me through, I am in the apartment an hour later where mom doesn’t expect me. She often gave me to understand that I shouldn’t come, not even for her funeral. “

The writer Tara Meister, who grew up in Carinthia, was the “Carinthian Summer Festival writer: in”. The two -month scholarship on Lake Ossiacher, which was awarded for the first time, is endowed with 3,000 euros. Tara Meister read the text »Wakashu or«, perhaps the best reading performance in the competition: sensual, poetic, perhaps the female counter-draft to Josef Winkler, the Klagenfurt Büchner award winner (»Das Wilde Kärnten«), for example in the description of a slaughter: »On the hooks on the way home, the sow and was born. “I touch his lips, try to explain the difference between touching and touching.”

Nora Osagiobar, whose introductory video already aroused a little expectations, received the price of the electricity group Kelag, which was endowed with 10,000 euros. In the clip, the author hikes through the world in Pyjama and says of herself: “Since I wrote a novel, I have had fewer feelings of guilt.” In her text “Daughter Issues”, the first-person narrator develops a new reality TV format to offer fathers to stop contact with her daughter for a million euros. In his eulogy, juror Thomas Strässle, who nominated the author for the Bachmann Prize, says nothing in history initially indicates that the daughter is the disgust and not the father. Addiction problems, relationship problems and a problematic relationship between father and daughter. The father is characterized by gentle on. The text has everything that a rousing story needs, says Strässle.

The 3sat price worth 7,500 euros goes to Almut Tina Schmidt. At the invitation of Brigitte Schwens-Harrant, the German author, who lives in Vienna, read the text “Almost a story” about the residents of a multi-party house from the perspective of a first-person narrator exhausted.

Unfortunately, the two East German contributions: Laura Laabs, whose childhood history plays in the immediateism period, have definitely earned a prize this year. A minor girl’s pack only plays on the abandoned barracks area of ​​the wax regiment “Feliks Dzierzynski” and then throws stones from the bridge to the cars of the Wessis-an extremely successful contribution to domestic communication. In the end, the adult first-person narrator finds herself at the Reich Germans. What a story! Laura Laabs, you can say that much, may be politically unreliable as a writer, but in any case she is a great narrator. More of it!

An important text this year was also Sophie Sumburane’s “Sicker mine blue”, the history of rape. Because her K.-O. drops have been administered, the narrator can no longer remember, but her body. Juror Laura de Weck was very impressed that this text was like a “chronicle of the loss”: “You learn how a young woman loses everything through abuse, her joy of life, her body feeling, her lust and then also her friendships.” Juror Thomas Strässle spoke of an impressive text – “Linguistically very good, slim, simply with a very good opening.” The award ceremony was disregarded, may be due to the fact that Sophie Sumburanen performed directly to Natascha Gangl on Thursday. It will also be more to hear and read from her.

All readings and texts are available online at https://bachmannpreis.orf.at
Karsten Krampitz won the audience award in the Bachmann competition in 2009 and was the city clerk in Klagenfurt the following year. In September, the novel “Society with limited hope” appears in the Hamburg edition Nautilus.

“Since I wrote a novel, I have had less feelings of guilt.”

Nora Osagiobare