Hans Mühlethaler

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Hans Mühlethaler (born July 9, 1930 in Mungnau near Zollbrück , municipality of Lauperswil , canton of Bern ; † September 17, 2016 ) was a Swiss writer and playwright . His absurd play On the Border was premiered in 1963 at the Schauspielhaus Zurich . From 1971 to 1987, as secretary of the Olten group , he made a significant contribution to influencing Swiss cultural policy. He published his time-critical novels with Zytglogge Verlag and Books on Demand . In the non-fiction books Consciousness (2006) and Evolution and Mortality (2010) he developed an "evolutionary ethics" inspired by realistic cognitivism .

Teacher, writer and rebel

Mühlethaler was initially a teacher in the Emmental and in the city of Bern before he became a freelance writer. After attending the teachers' seminar, he taught in Röthenbach im Emmental from 1950 , where he was also the organist of the village church. He married early and had five children.

After discarded attempts at novels "in the tradition of Thomas Mann and Fyodor Dostoyevsky ", Mühlethaler wrote his absurd play An der Grenz . The play premiered in 1963 at the Schauspielhaus Zurich under the direction of Karl Suter and published by Hans Rudolf Hilty in his literary magazine Hortulus .

From 1967 to 1968 Mühlethaler lived in Berlin , where he, commuting between West and East , dealt with Benno Besson's productions of workers' poetry, socialized in West Berlin's bookseller's cellar and with Norbert Randow and Henryk Bereska , and joined the student awakening; he demonstrated for Commune 1 and attended the International Vietnam Congress .

For his volume of poetry tick the appropriate box , he was awarded the canton of Bern's literary prize in 1968 . In the same year, Radio DRS broadcast its radio play Osterpredigt ; and in 1969 the ten short stories Out of Blackbirds There Are Other Birds were published by Anabas-Verlag , in which he "gently rebels against the little craziness of those around him". In 1970, his daughter brought the little red student book into circulation in Bern schools, whereupon the book was temporarily banned across Switzerland.

Secretary of the Olten Group

From autumn 1970 he took part in meetings of the Olten group and became its first secretary in 1971: He built up the secretariat and made "the association a mouthpiece for the country's cultural policy". In the role of secretary of the Olten group, he was also the “co-founder of the ProLitteris copyright collecting society ”. It should be mentioned here that Mühlethaler was co-author of a critical work in 1989, which called for the revision of the then copyright law in Switzerland , which resulted in the 1992 law .

In 1978 Mühlethaler was one of the initiators of the Solothurn Literature Days . In the same year, Mühlethaler published the novel Die Fowler's solution about the “ Riedel-Guala poison trial in Burgdorf in 1926” in Zytglogge-Verlag . According to the writer Christoph Geiser , Mühlethaler uses "his dramatic story in a clever way to gently expose and critically examine the real interpersonal conflicts, the social constellations and the prejudices that trivial literature idealizes, ideologizes and mystifies."

Mühlethaler was the secretary of the Olten group until 1987. The writer Jochen Kelter became his successor in 1988. In 1989, after his resignation as secretary of the Olten group, he published his experience report Die Gruppe Olten ; He was not interested in the group's successes, "but in the tensions and difficulties with which an organization" unwilling to organize "has to struggle". In 1991 he published a second time in Zytglogge Verlag, a novel about a dropout with the title Farewell to Burgundy . The “farewell” symbolizes the farewell to an episode in the protagonist's marital history, the change in personal circumstances as a result of a trip to Burgundy , which is also a trip into the protagonist's past.

Later he was a member of the Association of Authors of Switzerland, which was founded after the Olten Group .

Self-publishing

Mühlethaler was an advocate of the self-publishing concept . “At the end of the nineties” he decided to publish his works on Books on Demand from now on : “the final step into being an outsider. But […] making books on demand also means being a pioneer ", as the journalist Fredi Lerch quotes him in 2008:" Even if a flood of publications is announced that have no longer been canonized by publishers to make books worthy of print: " At some point, newspapers and bookstores will have to take note of [the books published on self-publishing platforms in general]. The pictures of his book covers published in this way come from Martin Müller-Reinhart .

Evolutionary ethics

Hans Mühlethaler's books The Consciousness. The cause and overcoming of fear of death (2006) and evolution and mortality (2010) are philosophical in nature. He writes in it that if people overcome their fear of death , they would die earlier and thus counteract the aging problem of modern societies. If the body so decides, one should die, an attitude that is not associated with misery, but rather with a certain serenity. The time is ripe for a new so-called “evolutionary ethics”, also referred to by others as “ naturalistic ” or “ humanistic ” ethics; this grows out of concrete situations, constantly adapts to social change and is subject to a selection process similar to the biological one . According to Heinrich Kuhn, evolution and mortality is "written with exceptionally clear, simple language that is consistently subordinate to the content and carefully carries the text forward step by step" [sic]. According to Ludwig A. Minelli , founder of the euthanasia organization Dignitas , "the clear lines of his considerations are worth the attention of a large group of readers."

Private

After several years in the city of Paris , which is the scene of the poetry book Pariser Innenhof (2011) and the autobiographical novel The empty pedestal (2000), he lived again in Bern , on Münstergasse .

Works

Monographs

Contributions to anthologies

Web links

Remarks

  1. ↑ Hans Mühlethaler died at the age of 86
  2. ↑ a b c d e f g h i Fredi Lerch : From the sense of failure. . In: The weekly newspaper . No. 30-31, 2008.
  3. ^ A b Klaus Thiele-Dohrmann : Disturbance of the peace in Bern . In: The time . No. 30 , 1970 ( zeit.de ).
  4. ↑ a b Hans Mühlethaler: The Olten Group. The legacy of a rebellious generation of writers . Verlag Sauerländer , Aarau 1989. Short biography on the book cover.
  5. ↑ Denis Barrelet, Dieter Meier, Hans Mühlethaler: Copyright: Facts: Numbers, facts and demands for the revision of the copyright. Working group of authors (AGU), Bern 1989, OCLC 31169303 .
  6. ^ The founding members of the «Solothurn Literature Days» association 1978
  7. ↑ Review by Christoph Geiser on the book cover of Die Fowler's solution .
  8. ^ Paraphrase of the table of contents on the cover of the book.
  9. ↑ a b Ludwig A. Minelli : Mensch + Recht . Quarterly magazine of the Swiss Society for the European Convention on Human Rights (SGEMKO) and of DIGNITAS - Live humanely - Die humanely . No. 117 , September 2010, ISSN  1420-1038 , p. 4 ( online [PDF; accessed on February 26, 2016]).
  10. ^ Assessment by Heinrich Kuhn on the book cover of Evolution and Mortality .
personal data
SURNAME Mühlethaler, Hans
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Swiss writer and dramaturge
DATE OF BIRTH July 9, 1930
PLACE OF BIRTH Lauperswil
DATE OF DEATH 17th September 2016