He was also on the jury of the German Television Crime Festival and wrote a short crime novel inspired by his stay. The crime fiction scholarship, endowed with 4,000 euros, was awarded for the 14th time in 2024.

His Totenfrau trilogy, which was on the bestseller lists for months and has been translated into 16 languages, was also made into a film by Netflix and ORF. According to Dr. Hendrik Schmehl, Head of Cultural Affairs, Aichner has a special talent for combining crime fiction, radio plays, theater, film and television. This is certainly also due to the fact that he not only works as an author, but also as a photographer.

Susanne Lewalter, Director of the Villa Clementine House of Literature, is looking forward to the collaboration. According to Lewalter, Aichner's style is characterized by short and concise sentences that challenge the reader's imagination and draw them into a maelstrom of their own imagination.

About Bernhard Aichner
Bernhard Aichner, born in 1972, lives in Innsbruck. After studying German, Aichner worked as a press photographer, while at the same time publishing stories in literary magazines. His first collection of stories "Babalon" was published in 2000 and his first crime novel "Die Schöne und der Tod" in 2010. Aichner has received numerous prizes and scholarships for his work, including the Austrian State Scholarship for Literature, the Burgdorf Crime Fiction Prize 2014, the Crime Cologne Award 2015, the Friedrich Glauser Prize and, most recently, the Graz Crime Fiction Prize. In addition to novels, Aichner also writes radio plays and plays. The Times describes his work as "original, powerful and captivating". Aichner is co-initiator of the Innsbruck festival "Krimifest Tirol".