The love affair between Ingeborg Bachmann and Paul Celan was as unlikely as it was brief, spanning two months in Vienna and a shorter rekindling 10 years later.
She was the daughter of a Nazi party member, he the only son of parents who died in the Holocaust.
On 17 October 1959, Celan sent Bachmann a copy of a merciless review of Death Fugue, which he perceived to be antisemitic.
“I cannot write, I am already crippled when I write the date or put the paper in the typewriter.”