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 hometown of Klagenfurt is bankrupt. City politicians, especially Mayor Christian Scheider (former tennis coach to Jörg Haider), have been unable to agree on a budget for the current year, with existential consequences for the independent scene. Theater groups like Vada, the Association for the Stimulation of the Dramatic Appetite, survive from hand to mouth and on aid from the state government. "Art is the puma of poverty," wrote the much too young poet Georg Timber-Trattnig, still known to many here in Carinthia as the bassist of the band Naked Lunch. Not all artists are struggling, though; many now lack the strength. And some of them feel like society's canaries; similar to the miners, they have to go first in their cages down the shaft, into the darkness – and suffocate first.

Here in Klagenfurt, the cultural devastation is currently taking place with such force that it was a real eye-opener in Lake Wörthersee, said Klaus Kastberger, spokesman for the Bachmann Prize jury, in his remarks at the opening of this year's 49th German Literature Festival on Wednesday. He firmly believes that in literature, "in spaces where alternative worlds are illuminated," where problem areas are identified and interrelated, and where, ultimately, peaceful coexistence is always being strived for, there lies a chance for a better world.

Kastberger is known for his straightforward language: "We must not allow such opportunities to be taken away from us, not by right-wing and anti-cultural politics, not by devastating conditions in the world, and not even for financial reasons." As expected, the cuts did not stop at the "competition." The Klagenfurt Literature Course, affectionately called the "Bunny Course" by many, was discontinued. It was once the literary hotbed of leadership, producing bestselling authors such as Bov Bjerg and Angela Lehner. The City Writer's Scholarship was canceled, as was the traditional mayor's reception on the Maria Loretto peninsula on the evening of the second reading day. But as Gert Jonke, the first Bachmann Prize winner in 1977, wrote, it is precisely in the desert that the most colorful carpets are woven.

First things first: The 2025 Bachmann Competition class was the strongest in a long time. The opening speech by the German-Iranian writer Nava Ebrahimi, the 2021 Bachmann Prize winner, initially focused not primarily on literature, but on the "end-time fascism" of our time: "Almost daily, it seems, boundaries are shifting. The boundaries of what can be said, the boundaries of what is possible. Almost daily, we diminish humanity, lower our ethical standards, and become accustomed to new suffering."

Natascha Gangl's magnificent winning text is about the old suffering that refuses to go away, about the crimes of the last days of the war in the Styrian border region, in which she connects language, identity, and war crimes in the border region between Austria, Hungary, and Slovenia. The very first sentence is a wake-up call: "WOU G'HEASTN Du HI?" With a slight shift in sound, this is no longer understood as a Styrian greeting, not as "Where do you belong?", but as "Where do you hear?" – "WEIN-INTA-WIU-SDN-DO" becomes: "Where are the Jews there?" They were murdered. Those who "were a little covered up. With earth. So that people were still moving." According to the jury, this text about death, in its dialect, brings the language to life incredibly, going straight to the brain and heart.

In addition to the €25,000 prize money, there's also the €7,000 Audience Award. When asked about this, Natascha Gangl said, "Take your slippers off." The independent publishing scene in Carinthia's capital also won: Martina Mosebach-Ritter from the small Klagenfurt-based Ritter publishing house can hardly believe her luck that her author has won two awards.

Boris Schumantzky, a Russian author writing in German, receives the Deutschlandfunk Prize, endowed with 12,500 euros, for a story that should be reprinted here in the "nd." The narrator, living in exile in Germany, wants to go home and see his elderly mother, who is now almost blind, one last time. Before the trip, however, he practices suicide, just in case he might be arrested at the airport. "Last week I taught myself to swallow pills without water, practiced with vitamin D. I might not have any water on hand if I have to take pentobarbital. I have a two-hour flight, then passport control, and if they let me through, an hour later I'm at my apartment, where Mom isn't expecting me. She's often made it clear to me that I'm not allowed to come, not even to her funeral."

Tara Meister, a writer who grew up in Carinthia, was chosen as the "Carinthian Summer Festival Writer." The two-month scholarship at Lake Ossiach, awarded for the first time, is endowed with €3,000. Tara Meister read the text "Wakashu oder," perhaps the best reading performance in the competition: sensual, poetic, perhaps the female counterpart to Josef Winkler , the Klagenfurt Büchner Prize winner ("Das wilde Kärnten"), for example, in the description of a slaughter that had taken place: "The pigs hung on the hooks on the way home and bled to death." And yet there is a completely different, tender tone: "I feel his lips, trying to explain the difference between touching and feeling."

The €10,000 prize from the electricity company Kelag went to Nora Osagiobare, whose introductory video had already raised some expectations. In the clip, the author wanders the world in her pajamas and says of herself: "Since I wrote a novel, I have felt less guilty." In her text "Daughter Issues," the first-person narrator develops a new reality TV format in which fathers are offered the opportunity to cut off contact with their daughters for one million euros. In his laudatory speech, juror Thomas Strässle, who nominated the author for the Bachmann Prize, said that at first glance, nothing in the story suggests that the daughter is the one who is the loser and not the father. Addiction problems, relationship problems, and a problematic relationship between father and daughter. The father is characterized by his gentleness. The text has everything a gripping narrative needs, says Strässle.

The 3sat Prize, worth €7,500, 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 an apartment building from the perspective of a life-weary first-person narrator.

Unfortunately, the two East German entries this year were left empty-handed, but their content and delivery were pleasantly surprising. Laura Laabs, whose childhood story takes place in the immediate post-reunification period, would definitely have deserved a prize. A gang of underage girls first plays on the abandoned barracks of the "Feliks Dzierzynski" guard regiment and then throws stones at the cars of West Germans from the bridge – an extremely successful contribution to inner-German understanding. At the end, the adult first-person narrator finds herself among the Germans of the Reich. What a story! Laura Laabs, one can say that much, may be politically unreliable as a writer, but she is certainly a great storyteller. More of this!

Another important text this year was Sophie Sumburane's "Sickergrubenblau," the story of a rape. Because she was administered knockout drops, the narrator can no longer remember, but her body can. Juror Laura de Weck was very impressed by how this text was like a "chronicle of loss": "You learn how a young woman loses everything through abuse: her joy in life, her body image, her desire, and then her friendships too." Juror Thomas Strässle spoke of an impressive text—"very well written, streamlined, simple, with a very good opening scene that doesn't get lost." The fact that this text was also overlooked for the award may be due to the fact that Sophie Sumburane read directly after Natascha Gangl on Thursday. We will also hear and read more from her.

All readings and texts are available online at https://bachmannpreis.orf.at. Karsten Krampitz won the Audience Award at the Bachmann Competition in 2009 and was named Klagenfurt's Writer-in-Residence the following year. His novel "Society with Limited Hope" will be published by Hamburg's Edition Nautilus in September.

"Since I wrote a novel, I feel less guilty."

Nora Osagiobare