The lively letters from Ingeborg Bachmann to Hermann Kesten, which can be read for the first time in a yearbook from the Munich literary archive Monacensia, testify to the previously little-documented friendship between the fellow writers.
“When are you coming to Munich?!? I would recommend visiting here, but not staying. I find almost everything and almost everything depressing.” Ingeborg Bachmann wrote these dark sentences on October 16, 1957 in the Munich Biederstein guesthouse; they were addressed to fellow writer Hermann Kesten and his wife Toni. The two live in Rome – a city that Bachmann undoubtedly prefers.