Friedrich Dürrenmatt
January 5, 1921 – December 14, 1990
Friedrich Dürrenmatt was born in 1921 in Stalden in Emmental, which became part of the political municipality of Konolfingen in 1933. He was the first child of Reinhold (1881-1965) and Hulda Dürrenmatt (1886-1975), née Zimmermann. His father was a reformed pastor in the village, his grandfather Ulrich Dürrenmatt was a politician and poet. His mother, the daughter of a farmer, was a housewife. His sister Verena (‘Vroni’; † 2018) was born in 1924. In October 1935, the family moved to Bern, where his father became a pastor at the Deaconess House. At this time, the global economic crisis was also making itself felt in Switzerland and the middle classes were becoming poorer.
Friedrich Dürrenmatt first attended the Freie Gymnasium Bern (until 1937) and later the Humboldtianum, where he graduated in 1941. He was not a particularly good pupil (overall grade: ‘barely adequate’) and described his time at school as the ‘worst time’ of his life. He changed schools because he didn't like the way he was taught, because he had poor grades and because his behaviour offended the teachers. From May to September 1941, Dürrenmatt was first an active and then a passive member of a Fröntler association and campaigned for the admission of extreme National Socialists. In his memoirs, he mentioned that he only did this to distance himself from his father.
Religious motifs such as guilt, forgiveness and responsibility also repeatedly play a role in his works. While still in Konolfingen, he began to paint and draw, a passion that would remain with him for the rest of his life. He later illustrated some of his own works, produced sketches and in some cases entire stage sets. His pictures were exhibited in Neuchâtel in 1976 and 1985 and in Zurich in 1978.
He actually wanted to train as a painter, but from 1941 he studied philosophy, natural sciences and German language and literature at the University of Bern, and in 1942/43 at the University of Zurich. In Bern, he lived with his parents in an attic, which he decorated with large murals that were later whitewashed over and only discovered, uncovered and restored in the early 1990s (see Dürrenmatt attic). As a budding student, Dürrenmatt wrote to his father in 1941: The start of his studies in Bern changed Dürrenmatt's social contacts: ‘Whereas I had previously been a loner, I became more sociable. I socialised with other students, but also with acquaintances from my grammar school days, with friends with whom I discussed things in a small cellar pub in the old town and afterwards often in my painted attic room.’ In 1942, he met the Valais art student Christiane Zufferey (1920-2011), who was studying at the Zurich School of Arts and Crafts and became his first girlfriend. In the summer of 1944, he completed his auxiliary service (Swiss army) in Interlaken. In 1946, he ended his relationship with Christiane Zufferey, who went to Paris to continue her studies as a painter. In the same year, he also finished his studies without even starting his planned dissertation on Søren Kierkegaard, determined to become a writer.
On 12 October 1946, he married the actress Lotti Geissler (1919-1983). The church wedding was performed by his father Reinhold. The couple initially lived in Basel, where their son Peter was born in 1947. In 1948, the family moved to the municipality of Ligerz on Lake Biel, where they initially lived in their mother-in-law's house in the hamlet of Schernelz, and from 1949 in the hamlet of Festi.
In 1950, she wrote the crime novel Der Richter und sein Henker (The Judge and his Executioner) with overt references to neighbouring localities such as Lamboing. He appeared as ‘Friedrich’ in its film adaptation in 1975.
Max Frisch had received the manuscript of Dürrenmatt's first stage work Es steht geschrieben from theatre publisher Kurt Reiss and, after reading it, initiated contact with Dürrenmatt in a letter. The comedy, based on the Anabaptist kingdom of Münster, premiered at the Schauspielhaus Zurich in April 1947 and caused a theatre scandal. After it failed to meet with the hoped-for approval, the author withdrew it the following year. His second play, Der Blinde, followed in 1948; this drama also received little attention. In 1949, his third play, the comedy Romulus the Great, was staged in place of The Tower of Babel, which the author had not finished and destroyed.
The first years as a freelance writer were financially difficult for Dürrenmatt and his family of five - daughter Barbara was born in 1949 and daughter Ruth in 1951. Then the financial situation gradually improved, especially thanks to radio play commissions from German radio stations: ‘The West German radio stations were our patrons at the time. The directors and dramaturges behaved in the same way. Without them, it was impossible to make a living as a writer,’ Dürrenmatt summarised. It was also at this time that Arche Verlag became his regular publisher. His two crime novels (Der Richter und sein Henker and Der Verdacht) were first published as serialised stories in the Schweizerischer Beobachter from 1950.
In 1952, Dürrenmatt bought a house in the small, romantic valley of Vallon de l'Ermitage in Pertuis du Sault above Neuchâtel. Here, in the French-speaking part of Switzerland, the Dürrenmatt family found their permanent home. In 1965, he had a second villa built, which he initially used as a place of work and later also as a home. From this location, with a view of Lake Neuchâtel and the Swiss Alps, Dürrenmatt wrote his internationally successful novels and plays, painted and drew until his death in 1990.
In 1950, he wrote the comedy The Marriage of Mr Mississippi, which was his first major success on the German stage in 1952, having previously been rejected by the Swiss theatre.
He achieved worldwide fame in 1956 with his tragicomedy The Visit of the Old Lady; the outstanding success of this work also established his financial independence. The play was premièred at the Schauspielhaus Zurich with Therese Giehse in the leading role and directed by Oskar Wälterlin.
Dürrenmatt spent 1957 and 1959 at the Grandhotel Waldhaus in Vulpera. Here, a spa doctor tried to find the right insulin for Dürrenmatt, who was suffering from diabetes, and this special place and a bench from which he could look down on the Hotel Waldhaus had an inspiring effect on him: ‘On these repetitive walks, during which I walked more than I walked, I thought of “The Physicists” and “The Meteor”, although I wouldn't know which of the two came to mind first (...).’
The failure of the ‘musical comedy’ Frank the Fifth (1960) was followed in 1962 by the second worldwide success with The Physicists, premiered at the Schauspielhaus Zurich. Therese Giehse again played the leading female role, directed by Kurt Horwitz.
The radio play Hercules and the Stable of Augias (1963), which was adapted into a theatre play, was again not well received by audiences. With Der Meteor, his most personal play, he celebrated his third and last international success as a playwright in 1966. He had written the leading role of Wolfgang Schwitter for Leonard Steckel and the play was directed by Leopold Lindtberg, who was the theatre's director in 1966. The stage design was realised by Teo Otto, as he had done for The Visit of the Old Lady and The Physicists.
All pictures, rehearsal and performance: Comet Photo, picture archive of ETH Zurich, 1966 and 1967.
In the 1960s, Dürrenmatt was at the height of his public success with his theatre works. Dürrenmatt also achieved great fame with his screenplay for the Heinz Rühmann film Es geschah am hellichten Tag (1958), which he also modelled his novel Das Versprechen on. The film is still regarded today as one of the greatest German crime films.
From 1967, he also devoted himself to practical theatre work, first at theatres in Basel, then after a heart attack in October 1969 at the Neue Schauspiel AG in Zurich, and finally in Düsseldorf. Two of his world premieres took place there, Portrait of a Planet and Titus Andronicus. He staged several spectacular revivals of his own plays, including Der Meteor (1964/1965) in Vienna in 1978.
Dürrenmatt took a stand on international politics as a socially critical author in essays, lectures and speeches, for example with Sätze aus Amerika (1970), the press text Ich stelle mich hinter Israel (1973) and a lecture on Albert Einstein's 100th birthday at the ETH Zurich (1979). In February 1987, he took part in the peace conference convened by Mikhail Gorbachev in Moscow and gave a speech that was later published under the title ‘Kant's Hope’. In 1990, he gave a speech on Václav Havel (entitled ‘Switzerland - a prison’). Because of his statements, Dürrenmatt was spied on by the federal police for fifty years, which he also addressed in his speech on Havel.Dürrenmatt scrutinised the world at the time, which was on the verge of implosion. He processed these themes critically and reinterpreted them. Above all, he created paintings, drawings and caricatures. Albrecht Dürer, Hieronymus Bosch, Pieter Bruegel, Giovanni Battista Piranesi, Francisco de Goya and his friend Varlin were sources of inspiration for the painter Dürrenmatt. He reinterpreted themes from mythology and religion. He did not sell his paintings and rarely exhibited them. He said: His wife Lotti died on 16 January 1983. Dürrenmatt found himself in a personal and professional crisis. A few months later, he agreed to take part in a documentary film by director Charlotte Kerr. This professional encounter was love at first sight. The couple married the following year. Thus, at the age of 64, Dürrenmatt experienced a new artistic upswing and continued his monumental work Stoffe, which he had begun 20 years earlier. These fabrics form an autobiography that mixes memories, fiction and philosophical reflections. The result is a literary mosaic that cannot be pigeonholed. In December 1990, Friedrich Dürrenmatt died of heart failure in Neuchâtel at the age of 69. Charlotte Kerr wrote about her memories of their time together in her book The Woman in the Red Coat.
Dürrenmatt produced new versions of most of his works for the 29-volume edition, which was published in 1980 by Arche Verlag as a hardback edition and by Diogenes Verlag as a paperback. During this time, he intensively explored his own working methods and the characters and places he created, culminating in the two volumes Labyrinth. Stoffe I-III (1981) and Turmbau. Fabrics IV-IX (1990). From typescripts, a continuation of the material was published posthumously in 1992 under the title Gedankenfuge. In 2021, the material was republished in a five-volume edition, which is also freely available online.
Friedrich Dürrenmatt bequeathed his literary estate to the Swiss Confederation, which in turn created the Swiss Literary Archives (SLA) as a department of the Swiss National Library in Bern in 1991.