Ingeborg Bachmann as Radio Scriptwriter
2002; Wiley; Volume: 75; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês
10.2307/3072682
ISSN1756-1183
Autores Tópico(s)Literature and Cultural Memory
ResumoWhen the radio network of the American occupation forces in Austria, Sender RotWei(beta)-Rot (RWR), broadcast the radio play Ein Geschaft Traumen on February 28, 1952, its author, Ingeborg Bachmann, a young scriptwriter and editor for the station, was still essentially unknown to the Viennese listening public.1 Although her debut as the author of a radio play drew mixed reviews-the Arbeiter Zeitung found particularly annoying her Versuch, moderner zu sein als die Gegenwart2--she soon achieved some recognition at the station as the translator and adaptor of Thomas Wolfe's Mannerhouse, whose world premier was broadcast on March 4, 1952, less than a week after the premier of her own piece. For Bachmann scholarship, these two premiers, along with two other pieces she reworked for radio while at RWR, constitute virtually the whole of her creative work at the station.3 That she might have had further creative responsibilities as a salaried employee of the Script Department has elicited scant attention from scholars who have typically portrayed the period as something of a prelude or period of apprenticeship leading to her breakthrough as a writer in 195354.(4) Little has been recorded of her work for the station as a scriptwriter and editor, only that she worked there mit dem Rotstift.5 Such a paucity of material may be due in large part to Bachmann's own reticence to discuss such details. For example, when asked in a 1953 interview with Bayrischer Rundfunk what type of work she did for the station, she responded obliquely: Es werden dort verschiedene Dinge gemacht, Horspielbearbeitungen vor allem, dann the Lektoratsgutachten.6 Certainly, one cannot fault the young author for concealing that the part of her work that she found incommensurate with the image of a poetess she wished to project. Nevertheless, a considerable portion of Bachmann's responsibilities in the Script Department consisted in producing both ideas and scripts for the station's light entertainment programming. She devoted considerable energies to the task for almost two years, until personal, professional and economic factors led her to seek a new beginning outside Austria in 1953. The recent rediscovery of a number of these scripts now enables scholars to look behind this wall of silence at an entirely new type of writing within Bachmann's creative production: namely the popular radio drama, or radio soap opera.7 While space does not permit us to examine here each of the fourteen extant scripts written entirely or in part by Bachmann between early 1952 and the summer of 1953, this article endeavors to present an introduction to these new texts and their origins in the cultural initiatives of the American occupation forces in Austria in the late 1940s and early 1950s and within the context of Bachmann's early development as a writer. As was the case with many other young Austrian writers in the early postwar period, Bachmann was unable to support herself solely through her writing and thus relied on her employment at RWR to provide the material basis for her existence. In contrast to the situation in Germany, where a new generation of writers around the Gruppe 47 could take advantage of a burgeoning Kulturindustrie, the situation in Austria after the war was for younger writers anything but promising, as Bachmann herself describes: Wir waren alle Mitte zwanzig, notorisch geldlos, notorisch hoffnungslos, zukunftslos, kleine Angestellte oder Hilfsarbeiter, einige schon freie Schriftsteller, das hei(beta)t soviel wie abenteuerliche Existenzen, von denen niemand recht wu(beta)te, wovon sie lebten, von Gangen aufs Versatzamt jedenfalls am oftesten.8 When Gruppe 47 founder Hans Werner Richter gave a talk before young writers and artists in Vienna's Art Club in April of 1952, he quickly became aware of the economic concerns facing young Austrian artists and took special note of the vehemence with which they decried their plight: Man spricht vom Geld, von den Honoraren and die Frage der Existenz scheint hier rein materieller Natur. …
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