Swiss literature scene

The Swiss Art and Culture Scene
Intro

From classic to contemporary works: Swiss people love to read. This country has created a literary tradition that has evolved in all four national languages. However, there is no such thing as "one" Swiss literature, because the authors in the various cultural areas each work in their own languages.

In the era of the two world wars, there were some attempts to consolidate the idea of a "national literature". But ultimately, language has more influence over literature than national frontiers. Consequently, literature in German-speaking Switzerland is closely interrelated with the literature of the entire German-speaking world, and the same is true of Switzerland's literature in French and Italian.

Swiss literature in German

The classic figures of Swiss literature in German include Jeremias Gotthelf (1797-1854), a pastor in Lützelflüh, who wrote about the life of farmers in the Emmental, and the novelist Gottfried Keller (1819-1890). Keller opposed the idea of independent Swiss literature and regarded himself as a creator of German literary works. The third member of the classic trio was Conrad Ferdinand Meyer (1825-1898), who made his name with historic novellas and other writings.

The most famous figure in German-language Swiss literature is definitely Heidi, the heroine of the children's books by Johanna Spyri (1827-1901). The two Heidi novels are among the most popular children's books of all time, everywhere in the world. The story of Heidi has been translated into about 50 languages.

Another important Swiss author was Robert Walser (1878-1956), who grew up in Biel/Bienne. His works include numerous short prose pieces as well as novels such as Der Gehülfe (The Assistant) and Geschwister Tanner (The Tanners). Although he was highly regarded by authors such as Hermann Hesse, Kurt Tucholsky, Robert Musil and Franz Kafka, Walser remained unknown to the public at large during his lifetime. Nowadays, he ranks as one of the most important German-language authors of the 20th century.

Meinrad Inglin (1893-1971), born in Schwyz, became known as an author of realistic novels which were acclaimed on account of their cryptic presentation. His novel Schweizerspiegel (Swiss Mirror) published in 1938 was a successful, critical representation of Switzerland in the first world war, when he was an officer in the border service.

The German author Hermann Hesse (1877-1962) who wrote Siddartha, Narziss and Goldmund (Death and the Lover), Steppenwolf and The Glass Bead Game, took Swiss citizenship in 1923.
Another German writer who spent long periods living in Switzerland was Thomas Mann (1885-1955). His novel The Magic Mountain was a memorial to the Graubünden spa resort of Davos. After several years of exile in the USA, Mann also spent the last years of his life in Switzerland.

The most renowned figures in German-language Swiss literature in the second half of the 20th century were Max Frisch (1911-1991) with works such as Homo Faber, Biedermann und die Brandstifter (The Firebugs) and I'm Not Stiller, and Friedrich Dürrenmatt (1921-1990), who mainly achieved worldwide fame as a dramatist with plays such as The Physicists and The Visit. In 1989, Dürrenmatt also bequeathed his literary estate to the Swiss Confederation in his will. The gift was subject to the condition that a Swiss Literature Archive should be set up. This archive was eventually opened in the Swiss National Library in 1991.

Names such as Adolf Muschg, Thomas Hürlimann, Peter Bichsel, Franz Hohler, Paul Nizon, Urs Widmer and Hugo Loetscher are also widely known.

Other renowned contemporary authors include Maja Beutler, Ruth Schweikert, Zoë Jenny, Lukas Bärfuss, Christian Kracht, Lürg Laederach, Milena Moser, Erica Pedretti, Peter Stamm, Martin Suter, Peter Weber and Markus Werner.

Among the new stars in the literary firmament are Joël Dicker, Aude Seigne, Mireille Zindel, Nadj Abonji, Dorothee Elmiger, Rolf Lappert, Catalin Dorian Florescu, Ilma Rakusa, Jnes Steiner, Ralph Dutli and Jonas Lüscher, to name but a few.

Swiss literature in French

Several major 18th- and 19th-century French language authors came from Switzerland. Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778), the most famous among them, was born and grew up in Geneva.
Germaine de Stael (1766-1817) spent the years of her youth in Paris but was originally a member of the Necker family of Geneva; after she was exiled by Napoleon, she settled at Coppet on Lake Geneva in Switzerland. Benjamin Constant (1767-1830), an author with close ties to Mme de Stael, was born in Lausanne. One of the more recent Swiss authors writing in French was Charles Ferdinand Ramuz (1878-1947), whose novels depict the lives of farmers and mountain-dwellers. Like many Swiss writers and artists, Blaise Cendrars (1887-1961) of La Chaux-de-Fonds sought the distant big-city life and eventually settled in Paris. His works (including L’or, or Gold, and The Fabulous Story of General Johann August Suter) have a firmly established place in French literature. Yet his Swiss origins are often forgotten. Jacques Chessex (1934-2009) also went on to make his name in France, where he won the Prix Goncourt in 1973. In Switzerland, one of his last works hit the headlines: Un Juif pour l’exemple, or A Jew Must Die. Renowned Swiss authors writing in French in the 20th century also include Maurice Chappaz (1916-2009). Agota Kristof became known well beyond this country's borders. Born in 1935, Kristof came in 1956 as a political refugee from Hungary to Switzerland, where she had to learn a new language. She studied in Neuchâtel, where she still lives today. In 2008, Kristof received the Austrian State Prize for European Literature. Nowadays, S. Corinna Bille, Nicolas Bouvier, Jacques Chessex, Anne Cuneo, Jeanne Hersch, Alice Rivaz and Yvette Z’Graggen number among the better-known authors of the 20th century in both the French- and German-speaking regions of Switzerland.

Swiss literature in Italian

Italian-language Swiss authors often had close ties with their Italian colleagues and many of them are better known in Italy than in their homeland; the most famous of them was the poet and writer Francesco Chiesa, who exerted a major influence on Ticino culture. His contemporary Giuseppe Zoppi made his name with Il libro dell'alpe (Book of the Alps). Mention should also be made of poets such as Giorgio Orelli, Giovanni Orelli, Felice Filippini, Plinio Martini, Valerio Abbondio, Ugo Canonica, Angelo Casè and Alberto Nessi as well as the authors Anna Felder and Fleur Jaggy; representatives of the younger generation include Fabio Cheda, Buletti, Gilberto Isella and Fabio Pusterla, who has been described as one of the most original poetic voices in contemporary Italian-language literature. Lyrical poetry in dialect has been written by Alina Borioli and Giovanni Bianconi, the brother of Piero Bianconi. Writers of more modern dialect literature include Giovanni Orelli and Gabriele Alberto Quadri. Giorgio Orelli was singled out for Switzerland's highest literary award, the Schiller Prize (an honour which, incidentally, he shares with Dürrenmatt and Frisch).

Romansh literature

Romansh literature has been in existence since the 16th century. This language is written in several dialect forms. Romansh is the fourth official national language of Switzerland. About 35,000 people in the canton of Graubünden speak Romansh in various dialects and official idioms. Due to the previous isolation and independence of the Graubünden valleys, five idioms have developed: Sursilvan (Vorderrhein region), Sutsilvan (Hinterrhein region), Surmiran (Oberhalbstein, Albula), Puter (Upper Engadine) and Vallader, which is spoken in the Lower Engadine and Val Müstair.
At the start of the 20th century, the extant works were assembled by the linguistics expert Caspar Decurtins in a comprehensive anthology entitled Chrestomathia. Romansh writers of the modern era include the Engadine novelist Clà Biert, the poet Luisa Famos, the Surselva novelists Gion Deplazes, Theo Candinas and Toni Halter, and Gian Fontana, a short-story writer. Renowned contemporary authors include the writer and journalist Flurin Spescha, novelist Leo Tuor and the young writer Arno Camenisch.

Literature in dialect

People in the German-speaking region of Switzerland speak various Alemannic dialects such as Baseldeutsch, Berndeutsch, Bündnerdeutsch, St.-Galler-Deutsch, Walliserdeutsch and Zürichdeutsch. These dialects are known collectively as "Schweizerdeutsch" or Swiss German. The modern-day cabaret-style songs known as "Schnitzelbänke", sung in dialect at the Basel Fasnacht carnival, have become famous. Some dialect literature appeared after 1900, with works by the Berne writer Otto von Greyerz and authors Rudolf von Tavel, Simon Gfeller, Carl Albert Loosli and Josef Reinhart of Solothurn. Another "dialect wave" was unleashed in about 1960 by the chansons of the Bernese troubadours headed by Mani Matter and cabaret artistes such as Franz Hohler, César Keiser and Emil Steinberger. More balladeers and dialect rock singers or bands joined their ranks after 1970. The most famous among them include Polo Hofer and Peter Reber. Renowned writers from the Bernese dialect regions include Ernst Burren, who writes only in his native Solothurn dialect, and Kurt Marti, who has achieved fame thanks to his poems in Bernese German. Julian Dillier, who worked in Basel but wrote in the Obwalden dialect, was a dialect author, playwright and radio performer from central Switzerland. A third "dialect wave" has emerged since 2004 centering around the Bern ist überall (Berne is everywhere) group with Pedro Lenz, who was born in Langenthal in the canton of Berne, the poet Michael Stauffer and Beat Sterchi, a Berne native. Another movement of the same sort has developed around the novelist Peter Weber. Its members include Bodo Hell, Michel Mettler and Anton Bruhin.

Switzerland in literature

The classical drama William Tell was written by the German author and poet Friedrich von Schiller (1759-1805) one year before his death. No other Swiss figure is more famous than William Tell, the national hero. His picture adorns the reverse of the five-franc coin. Great controversy rages as to whether Tell the hero actually lived or not. For some, he is a symbol of Swiss independence and freedom − while for others he is a mere myth. Interestingly, Schiller never travelled to Switzerland, unlike his contemporary Goethe. To this day, the Tell Festival is still staged each year in the tourist resort of Interlaken. On the other hand, the festival in Tell's home town of Altdorf is held less regularly and is mainly targeted at Swiss audiences.

Heidi by Johanna Spyri (1827-1901): The Heidi stories had already achieved worldwide success by the end of the 19th century. They are still very popular with children today. The theme of the Heidi story is how stability can be achieved in a world where social change has led to disorder and people feel insecure. And it is set in the intact Alpine world of Switzerland.

The Magic Mountain by the German writer Thomas Mann (1875-1955) was published in 1924. This "Bildungsroman" or educational novel concerns the young hero Hans Castorp, who meets a variety of characters during his seven-year stay in a sanatorium in Davos: they confront him with politics, philosophy, love, illness and death. The scene of the action is the Berghof Sanatorium. As well as being geographically remote, it represents a self-contained world. This seclusion is used to focus attention on the representative characters: their actions reflect the social, political and intellectual debates taking place in Europe before the first world war. The high mountains also provide a contrast to Castorp's homeland – the north German plain, with its sober business world. It is only in the Swiss mountains that the hero can distance himself from his bourgeois origins and ultimately escape from his longing for death.

The German poet, painter and writer Hermann Hesse (1877-1962) also lived in various regions of Switzerland. To mark his 50th birthday, the first biography of Hesse was published by his friend Hugo Ball. Hugo Ball (1886-1927) was also a German author and biographer. Moreover, he was one of the co-founders of the Dada movement and a pioneer of sound poems. In 1916, together with his friend Emmy Hennings, Ball founded the Cabaret Voltaire in Zurich, which became the birthplace of Dadaism. The premises in the Old Town of Zurich were used simultaneously as a club, gallery, pub and theatre. In the same year, Hans Arp and Richard Huelsenbeck joined the movement. Their cut paper collages and woodcuts emphasised the anti-art character of the movement. Two Romanians who also took part in the movement – Tristan Tzara and Marcel Janco – often said "da, da" (which means "yes, yes") when they were speaking. This may have prompted Hugo Ball to choose Dada as the name of the new art movement. The Cabaret Voltaire had to be closed down on account of complaints, so Ball and Tzara opened a gallery in Zurich's Bahnhofstrasse which they also called Dada. They invited well-known painters and sculptors to stage exhibitions there, including Wassily Kandinsky, Paul Klee and Giorgio de Chirico. The Cabaret Voltaire at no. 1 Spiegelgasse in Zurich is in business again – nowadays too, it is intended to be a place where people can let themselves go. The operators of the Cabaret aim to examine the issues that motivated the Dadaists in the past and are still relevant today. 

Georg Büchner (1813-1837) was also of German origin; he was born in Hesse. This writer, medic, natural scientist and revolutionary obtained a doctorate of philosophy from the University of Zurich in 1936. In the same year, he moved to the city that was once Zwingli's home, where he was appointed as an external lecturer. Büchner had already begun working on Woyzeck before he moved to Zurich. He died at the very young age of 23. Small though the volume of Büchner's works may be, they now rank as world literature.

"Do we or do we not intend to remain a Swiss state which represents one political unit to the outside world? If not (...), then for all I care, let things happen as they will, let's just totter and shamble along“. These words were written by Carl Spitteler (1845-1924) in his much-acclaimed cri de guerre, Unser Schweizer Standpunkt (Our Swiss Viewpoint) published in December 1914. In this work, he wanted to distance himself clearly from German nationalism because his work Prometheus and Epimetheus was to be exploited in Germany as evidence of anti-democratic, elitist thinking. Spitteler was a Swiss poet, writer, critic and essayist who was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1919. A municipal and poets' museum was dedicated to him in Liestal.

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