Her father was a chemist , who managed to avoid persecution during the Second World War by working in strategically important industrial production. However, many of his relatives became victims of the Holocaust. Her mother, with whom she had a strained relationship, was from a formerly prosperous Vienna family. As a child, Elfriede attended a Roman Catholic convent school in Vienna.
Her mother planned a career for her as a musical " Wunderkind ". She was instructed in piano, organ, guitar, violin, viola , and recorder from an early age.
Later, she went on to study at the Vienna Conservatory , where she graduated with an organist diploma; during this time, she tried to meet her mother's high expectations, while coping with her psychologically ill father.
However, she had to discontinue her studies due to an anxiety disorder , which resulted in self-isolation at her parents' house for a year. During this time, she began serious literary work as a form of therapy. After a year, she began to feel comfortable leaving the house, often with her mother. She made her literary debut with Lisas Schatten Lisa's Shadow in , and received her first literary prize in During the s, she became active politically, read a great deal, and "spent an enormous amount of time watching television".
I was 27; he was I knew enough men. Sexuality was, strangely, the only area where I emancipated myself early on. Our marriage takes place in two cities. It's a kind of Tale of Two Cities in the Dickensian sense.
