Ingeborg Bachmann and Paul Celan. For a long time, their love was a great secret; now it is documented. The correspondence between Ingeborg Bachmann and Paul Celan, two of the most significant German-speaking poets, is a moving testament to two people who loved and hurt each other, who needed one another yet could not live together. For almost twenty years, they fought in their letters for each other's love and friendship, with silence prevailing at times, but the correspondence was always resumed, until it ultimately broke off in 1961.