Ingeborg Bachmann Centre for Austrian Literature (IBC)

Austria’s contribution to modern German-language literature has been both rich and varied, embracing major novelists (Kafka, Musil), dramatists (Schnitzler, Bernhard), as well as poets (Rilke, Celan) of international repute.

The Ingeborg Bachmann Centre, established at the then Institute of Germanic Studies in 2002 with the support of Erste Bank, the Österreichische Nationalbank, the Austrian Cultural Forum, and the Österreich Kooperation, explores this contribution by means of its writers-in-residence programme and by organising lectures, seminars, workshops and reading groups.

The outcome of an innovative form of cross-institutional cooperation, this exciting academic initiative concentrates on twentieth-century Austrian literature, focusing above all on developments from 1945 onwards, and takes as its figurehead Ingeborg Bachmann , whose poem ‘Abschied von England’ encapsulates the challenge presented by other cultures and the difficulties of comprehending them.

All our events are open to anyone interested.

We are indebted to the Austrian Cultural Forum in London and the Bithell Bequest Fund (University of London) for their continued sponsorship.

Ingeborg Bachmann Centre for Austrian Literature (IBC)