Johanna Sebauer won two awards at this year’s Bachmann competition with her highly comical text “Gurkerl“: the 3sat Prize (7,000 euros) and the BKS Bank Audience Award, endowed with 7,000 euros plus a 6,000 euro city writing scholarship in Klagenfurt, Austria.
In her satire, Johanna Sebauer describes how a small, random thing (a drop of cucumber water gets into the eye) develops into a major social scandal and outrage. “Johanna Sebauer proves with her text that literature can be entertaining and funny and still be meaningful. It is about the pickle season. It is about escalation mechanisms in the media. It is also literally about ‘the pickle’ as a subject“, says Austrian literature professor and this year’s jury chairman, Klaus Kastberger. In his laudatory speech, he added: “You have all heard the bravura with which this slippery something and the sour water that surrounds it blows through the text, and how this “Gurkerl” has become established even today. We haven’t heard a word as often as “Gurkerl” today.”
The 48. Tagen der deutschsprachigen Literatur [48th Days of German-Language Literature] took place in Klagenfurt from June 26 to 30, 2024. The Ingeborg Bachmann Prize itself, endowed with 25,000 euros, was won by Bosnian-born Tijan Sila from Kaiserslautern.
In her other life, Johanna Sebauer works in science communication at the HBI and regularly hosts the institute’s podcast, the BredowCast.