Interview with Insa Wilke on the Anniversary of the Ingeborg Bachmann Prize  “It’s a game with a serious element to it.”

25 June 2026 marks what would have been the 100th birthday of the writer and poet Ingeborg Bachmann, who was born in Klagenfurt, Austria. Three days later, on 28 June, the Ingeborg Bachmann Prize will be awarded for the 50th time. How does former jury spokesperson Insa Wilke view the competition, and what place does Bachmann occupy in contemporary literature?

In 1976, three years after the death of Ingeborg Bachmann, the city of Klagenfurt founded a literary prize in honour of the writer. The prize has been awarded annually since 1977 during the Festival of German-Language Literature and is considered one of the most prestigious literary awards in the German-speaking world. During a three-day reading event, authors pre-selected by a seven-member jury present previously unpublished prose or excerpts from longer works in 30-minute readings. Journalist Marit Borcherding spoke with literary critic Insa Wilke about the prize – traditionally awarded in June – and about Bachmann’s literary legacy.

Insa Wilke, you became a member of the jury at the Festival of German-Language Literature in Klagenfurt in 2018 and served as its spokesperson from 2021 to 2023. After returning to the city every summer for six years, how do you view Klagenfurt’s significance as the home of the competition and as a place closely associated with Ingeborg Bachmann’s life and work?
It’s a small miracle that the city has managed to host the “competition”, as it is called, for 50 years. Even though there was a noticeable downturn in attendance after the pandemic and lockdowns, when fewer colleagues travelled there and financial conditions became more difficult for everyone, I’m convinced that this continuity will pay off.

We need places like this and ritualised, recurring events that everyone can count on. We also need encounters with the Klagenfurt audience and visitors; this is what creates its charm. Paradoxically, this is the only way changes are possible. Klagenfurt has repeatedly brought new literary trends to light before they were widely recognised. For example, Tomer Gardi did a reading there. His aesthetic approach was initially misunderstood, but his presence made it visible – and that made a difference.

But your question was probably directed more at the link to Ingeborg Bachmann. An implicit mandate might be to do things differently from the literary scene in Vienna that Bachmann experienced as a very young woman. That scene did offer her visibility, but in return it demanded a kind of subordination.

We could now turn the tables: Klagenfurt benefits from being associated with Bachmann’s fame and prestige and, in return, ensures that today’s writers and their work are treated with respect. That would be a vision. Respectful treatment does not mean that criticism is not allowed. But it must be clear who the central figures are: those who produce the true centre of the Festival of German-Language Literature, and this centre is the text itself – and its audience, the readers.

The aura of the place lies precisely in the paradox: the blue lake and the brown past, the enthusiastic audience and the political present, tradition and the attempt to break with it. From the aura of the place to the radiance of the writer Ingeborg Bachmann. Even at the age of around 30, she was considered a “leading poetic voice of her generation”. Does her literary work and legacy still resonate today in the competition – where mostly younger authors compete against each other?
Rarely. Helga Schubert was one of the few to refer explicitly to Ingeborg Bachmann, and she was already 80 years old at the time. It would actually be strange if the competition focused too much on history. Fortunately, it doesn’t. Literature is alive. It should ask its own questions and find its own forms if it is to be taken seriously. But Bachmann’s name is still important, if only because it creates a feeling of ambivalence – and that ambivalence reflects the competition itself. It’s not just about aesthetics, it’s also about competition, media attention, politics. This applies both to the engagement with the life and work of Ingeborg Bachmann and to the Klagenfurt literary contest.

As an organiser of literary events and a literary critic, you know many young authors. Do they still engage with Ingeborg Bachmann today? Is she a point of reference in contemporary literature?
I recently moderated an event on Ingeborg Bachmann at the Haus für Poesie in Berlin. The hall was packed, and there were a lot of young people in the audience. So, her work and her persona do seem to attract interest from the younger generation. But I don’t think there is evidence of this in literature.

Quotations from Bachmann rarely appear as opening epigraphs in contemporary books, even though she could easily be quoted today, especially from her speeches. Her poetry is very much rooted in the postwar period, and there is this ambivalence that makes her particularly interesting: this perhaps not always fully conscious preoccupation with guilt. I think we are currently entering a period in which her texts can be re-interpreted in this sense. They reflect our present situation. It is not exactly agreeable to acknowledge this.

You were actively involved in shaping the event for several years and can now view the Festival of German-Language Literature from the outside: would you agree that the competition and its prizes are among the most important in the German-speaking literary world, and that it has always been a key platform for new and emerging literary voices?
Yes, definitely. But the problems of the attention economy also affect this competition. In the literary world, the competition is important, and the debates between the different institutions over the “correct” interpretation are also part of a democratic process. But it is no longer a central cultural event that everyone considers compulsory. Public discourse has become fragmented; there are many different platforms, events and ways to experience literature. Because of this, it is more difficult for everyone to find a common cultural reference point.

Ingeborg Bachmann gave a reading at a meeting of the Gruppe 47 in 1952 and won its prize in 1953. This marked her literary breakthrough. In terms of format, there are parallels between the meetings of the Gruppe 47 and the Bachmann competition. In both cases, authors read aloud previously unpublished prose, and in both events this public reading is followed by critical, sometimes harsh jury debates. Authors are not allowed to join in the discussions. Overall, it’s a procedure that some participants find hard to endure. Why is this open, public and now media-driven format still valuable today?
A key difference from those earlier meetings is that, in the case of the Gruppe 47, it was fellow writers who took part in the discussions. Today, the jury consists mainly of critics or scholars. I think this is a good thing. But whether or not authors are the better readers is another matter.

Criticism of the rules is as much a part of the competition as the blue lake, the setting. Everyone who goes there knows what they’re signing up for. And most people can handle it. In my experience, it’s the jury that sits in the hot seat, because there is an audience and a wider public; everyone listens to the text and can form their own opinion. The jury, by contrast, gets tangled up in arguments – while everyone watches on. It’s a game, but as in all games, there is a serious element to it. Authors can’t apply to take part in the Bachmann competition themselves; they have to nominated by the individual jury members. Each member usually nominates two candidates, so that in the end 14 writers compete against each other. Explain how you go about finding candidates – how did you proceed and what criteria did you use to make your selection?
I review the applications that have been submitted and, at the same time, I actively search for interesting voices that I then invite to apply. The criteria depend on the context of the competition – which topics feel relevant, which perspectives and writing styles I want to introduce. In the end, what decides is whether the text grabs me linguistically. This never happens through the subject matter, always through the linguistic form. It also depends on whether the text works in Klagenfurt’s format, because excerpts from a novel don’t always work well when read in such a limited time slot.

If you look back on the competitions you were involved in as a jury member and spokesperson, are there any favourite literary moments, perhaps ones that only became significant afterwards?
Those were always the moments when I discovered texts I wanted to present. And there is particular joy when another member of the jury shares my impression – when I’m no longer alone with my reading.

Finally, let’s look into the crystal ball. Assuming funding is secured, will the “competition” in Klagenfurt still exist on Ingeborg Bachmann’s 110th birthday and, if so, why?
I very much hope so. As I’ve already said, we need places and traditions like these to be able to change. And we need places for collective engagement that are focused on a shared subject.
 

June 2026