Ilse Aichinger (1921–2016) was born in Linz, Austria. Her mother was a Jewish doctor and her father a Christian teacher. Aichinger and her twin sister were persecuted during the Second World War: Aichinger was forced into manual labor in a button factory while her sister escaped on the Kindertransport. Aichinger hid their mother in her room at the Hotel Metropol—also used as the Gestapo Headquarters in Vienna—for the duration of the war. All three women survived; their other family members perished. Aichinger studied medicine in Vienna, but she abandoned her studies to become a writer. She wrote poetry, radio plays, film criticism, short stories, and one novel. Aichinger won numerous awards including the Nelly Sachs Prize; she rejected the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany.