Ingrid Bachér


Ingrid Bachér is a German writer, a former member of the Gruppe 47 and former president of the PEN Germany.

Biography

Ingrid Bachér is a great-granddaughter of Theodor Storm. During her childhood she lived in Berlin, before moving to Lübeck during the last years of Second World War at her grandparent's house. After having studied at the College of Music and Theatre, she started working as a journalist from 1949 on.
During the 1950s she travelled to Finland, Central and South America and started writing travelogues and other prose. From 1958 onwards, she had been one of the few female members of the Gruppe 47, the most important German writers' group.
From 1960 until 1967 she lived in Rome, first as a scholar of the Villa Massimo and then as a journalist. She then went to live in München, Krefeld and finally moved to Düsseldorf. She has been married to the artist Ulrich Erben since 1966 and is a mother of three children.
She has also been a member of the Union of German Authors since 1971. From 1982 until 1996 she had been a member of the German PEN Centre, whose president she was shortly from 1995 until 1996, when she resigned from the presidency following the debate over the union of the West and East German PEN centres.
Ingrid Bachér has been writing books for young people, travelogues, and novels, as well as radio and television plays for the public broadcasting institutions such as the ZDF or the SWF.

Prizes