Alfred Fankhauser

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Alfred Fankhauser (born November 4, 1890 in Gysenstein near Konolfingen , † February 22, 1973 in Köniz ) was a Swiss writer , dialect poet , journalist and astrologer .

Life

Alfred Fankhauser was born as the oldest of six children into a poor Emmental family. His father Friederich Fankhauser (1867–1943) worked as a so-called “cowboy”, then mostly as a cheese-maker . Because of his temporary employment, the family had to move very often.

In 1906 he entered the (then Pietist ) Protestant teachers' seminar Muristalden (today Campus Muristalden ) in Bern . From 1910 on he worked as a primary school teacher . From 1915 he studied at the University of Bern , first for the secondary teacher diploma (1917), then with the subjects history and psychology up to the Dr. phil. (1920). He wrote his dissertation on the Bernese journalist Johann Georg Albrecht Höpfner .

In Bern he was confronted with the socialist movement , read its literature and also made personal contacts with the socialists. He began to work as a journalist, including for the left Bernese Tagwacht . However, it was not until 1938 that he was able to decide to join the Social Democratic Party . At the same time, stimulated by Simon Gfeller , he dealt intensively with the Bernese dialect literature and especially with dialect theater. From 1939 onwards he provided translations of mostly English novels for the Gutenberg Book Guild, often together with his wife Lina, including Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens .

In 1924, during a stay in Ascona and Locarno , he met the painter Johann Robert Schürch (1895–1941), who gave him the impetus to deal intensively (and for life) with astrology . He passed on his understanding of astrology as a cosmic-symbolic psychology in four textbooks that were highly respected at the time and were reprinted several times.

Fankhauser's private life is indicated with the following list: In 1917 he married his fellow student (and later teacher) Margarita Marbach (1889–1969); their marriage remained childless and was divorced in late 1922. In Bellinzona in 1925 he married Luigia Boller (1895–1975); their daughter Anna was born in 1926 and their son Johannes in 1929; Divorced in 1929. In 1930 he married Lina Imer (1900–1953); 1927 son Martin, 1930 daughter Eva; Divorce in 1941. In 1943 he married Dora Bähler (1913–?) After their daughter Ruth was born in 1941; Divorce in 1947. Finally, in 1970, he married Helene Rolli (* 1937).

After 1949 he turned more and more to painting . By the time he died - the Bern Heimatschutz Theater was in the middle of rehearsals for the re-performance of its first dialect - around 200 paintings had been created .

Create

Fankhauser received the first impetus to write from his grandfather, who took the position that only the Bible is a true book. Fankhauser wanted to write a book that was not a book of lies in the sense of the grandfather's curse, but one with substance that one could very well read next to the Bible and that could clear the minds of poor people. During his teaching seminar time, his German teacher Johann Howald awakened faith in the mission of the Great Poetry in Fankhauser, and since those days he has dreamed of participating in this mission and of publishing his first poems in magazines.

In 1914 his first long story, Rosenbaum (from Peter Bucher's diary) appeared in the Berner Woche. In 1916 the Benziger Verlag included his story Das Urlaubgesuch in its "Brachzeit-Bücher" series.

At the beginning of March 1917, his first dialect play, Dr Chrützwäg, was premiered in the Bern Heimatschutz Theater , where it absolutely did not fit: no shirt-sleeved, entertaining peasant sway "to strengthen the heart and soul" awaited the visitor, but a harrowing tragedy in a rural milieu full of social criticism and drasticism à la Strindberg . After the controversial premiere, the piece was played a second time in a "defused" revision on February 9, 1918, but then tabooed and "forgotten" for 30 years. The re-performance from 1973 is based on an even more tempered version from 1953. The suggestion of the Heimatschutz Theater founder and director Otto von Greyerz - the conservative "Bernese literary pope " - to write a popular comedy , however, was shaken to the core by current events Fankhauser does not match. Why he wrote more dialect pieces anyway, he put in the mouth of the defense attorney in Der neue Michael Kohlhaas : "Bärndütsch talk, that wott saw, the thing that avenges name gäh!" (To speak Berndeutsch means to name the matter correctly; p. 19).

In 1919, his teacher story Rosenbaum , which had been reworked into a development novel, was published by a German publisher under the title Peter the Gate and His Love .

The same publisher also published his next novel two years later: Der Gotteskranke tells the story of a Swiss officer who, after a life crisis seized by a divine (or demonic) force, wants to proclaim his vision of a “world as it should be”. With its fantastic expressionist style and content, the work provoked a merciless condemnation on the part of its former paternal sponsor, the Bernese "great critic" von Gruyères, who vehemently attacked not only the book ("more disease analysis than poetry"), but also the author himself.

Fankhauser did not respond with a newspaper replica, but committed a literary patricide with the verse satire Tobias Moor : Moor, the poet, kills von Hering, the reviewer . The poet is directed to heaven ("In hell you will not prosper"); the critic, on the other hand, ends up in hell with the words: "That he intended to judge, not knowing what it was all about," he is now judged himself and condemned to eternal ruminations ...

With his volume of essays On the Values ​​of Life , he wanted to make it clear what literature was to him: neither conservative popular education nor elitist aestheticism , not a representation of "life as it is", but a radical awareness of the deep turmoil and tragedy of human beings Soul and at the same time the repeated attempt to produce literary remedies - not stimulants or narcotics. He pointed out those authors whom he regarded as role models in this regard: Dostoevsky , Hamsun , Rilke , Hesse .

In his next novel, Vorfrühling, he remembers his own childhood, the poor circumstances of which he had to make up for by fleeing into his own fantasy world in order to “create something more beyond the eternally disappointing existence”. In her calm sequence of scenes and images, "which actually are not infrequently reminiscent of biblical stories", Fankhauser has succeeded in creating a peculiar, pensive work.

He published his next two works again: the volume of poems Day and Night with entirely “classically” -conventionally built verses and the drama The King of the World about the Bernese knight Adrian von Bubenberg , where the time of the Swiss heroes in the darkest colors paints, ruled by plague and crimes of all kinds - and by death as the Lord on earth, the "King of this world".

Awards

Works

prose

  • The vacation request . Story from the Swiss border guards. Benziger, Einsiedeln 1916
  • Peter the fool and his love . Delphin, Munich 1919
  • The god sick . Novel. Delphin, Munich 1921
    • New edition under the title Demon of the Heart : Amonesta, Vienna undated (around 1930)
  • Tobias Moor . Satire. Mimosa (= self-published), Bern 1922
  • Madonna . Three legends. Seldwyla, Bern undated (1922)
  • From the values ​​of life . Essays. Mimosa, Bern undated (1922)
  • Early spring . Novel. Grethlein, Zurich 1923; Gutenberg Book Guild, Zurich 1951; Colomba, Bern 2006, ISBN 3-033-00870-4
  • The brothers of the flame . Grethlein, Zurich 1925; New edition with 12 woodcuts by Werner Neuhaus : Ex Libris, Zurich 1983; Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 1990, ISBN 3-518-40269-2
  • Ivan Petrovich . Stories from the days of Russian distress. Patriotic Publishing and Art Institute , Berlin 1926
  • The mother's hand . Novella. Good writings, Basel 1926
  • Angels and demons . Eckart, Berlin 1926
  • The Lord of the Inner Rings . Eckart, Berlin 1929
  • A mother is looking for her son . Narrative. Illustrated by Fred Stauffer . Schweizerisches Jugendschriftenwerk, Zurich 1932 (= SJW booklet No. 4)
  • The Messiah . Novel. Gutenberg Book Guild, Zurich 1940
  • From spring to spring . Swiss printing and publishing house, Zurich 1944
  • Electoral officer . Gutenberg Book Guild, Zurich 1944
  • Because they will own the earth . Gutenberg Book Guild, Zurich 1947
  • The common land . Gutenberg Book Guild, Zurich 1952
  • I Colomba . Roman, ed. v. Katharina Fankhauser, Bern 2003

Poetry

  • Day and night . Poems. Mimosa, Bern undated (1924)
  • Song and parable . Poems. Francke, Bern 1948

theatre

  • The Chrützwäg, 1917 (revision: Volksverlag, Elgg 1953)
  • The king of this world . Mimosa, Bern undated (1925)
  • Freedom of nations . Festival, 1930
  • The new Michael Kohlhaas, in: Front der Arbeit speaks, pp. 5–22. Secretariat of the Social Democratic Party, Bern 1935
  • Grauholz and Neuenegg . Dramatic scene, 1940
  • A shadow falls, it is light, 1946
  • Vo wyt här, 1949
  • The addiction is: e Maa, A cheerful game with a serious reason, 1952
  • Would I be the sinner ?, 1954
  • God gave, 1954
  • Solomon vo Blindebach, 1956

astrology

  • Astrology as Cosmic Psychology . Pestalozzi Fellenberg House, Bern 1927
  • The real face of astrology . Orell Füssli, Zurich 1932; 2nd edition ibid. 1943; 4th edition 1980.
  • Magic. Attempt at an astrological interpretation of life . Orell Füssli, Zurich 1934; Reprint: Diederichs, Munich 1990.
  • Horoscopy . Orell Füssli, Zurich 1939; 2nd edition ibid 1946; 4th edition 1985.

Translations

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Alfred Fankhauser on ticinarte.ch
  2. ^ Alfred Fankhauser: Substance . In: The Bern Week in Words and Images, Vol. 17, 1927, p. 3 ( e-periodica )

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Fankhauser, Alfred
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Swiss writer and astrologer
DATE OF BIRTH November 4, 1890
PLACE OF BIRTH Konolfingen
DATE OF DEATH February 22, 1973
Place of death Koeniz