»Schreib alles was wahr ist auf«

The One: a poetess and cover girl of Der Spiegel in 1954. The Other: the "angry young man," a networker and puppet master in the literary scene, whose poetry career begins in 1957. Ingeborg Bachmann (born 1926) and Hans Magnus Enzensberger (born 1929) meet in October 1955 at the meeting of Group 47 in Tübingen. After a subsequent encounter at a discussion panel on literary criticism in Wuppertal in October 1957, the first (letter) contact occurs on November 27, 1957: the initiative comes from Enzensberger. This initiates a correspondence, of which a total of 130 pieces have been preserved: 53 from Bachmann, 77 from Enzensberger. The last letters date back to 1972, a year before Ingeborg Bachmann's death, and discuss technical questions regarding weapons in Enzensberger's film biography Durruti. The two emblematic figures, who...