Juerg Schubiger

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Schubiger (March 2014)

Jürg Schubiger (born October 14, 1936 in Zurich ; † September 15, 2014 there ) was a Swiss psychologist and writer who was best known for his children's books .

Life

Jürg Schubiger grew up as the son of a publisher in Winterthur . After various professional attempts and dropouts and long stays in southern Europe, he studied German , psychology and philosophy in Zurich . He completed his studies in 1969 with a dissertation on Franz Kafka . Ten years of work in his father's educational publishing house followed. From 1979 he worked mainly as a psychologist in his own practice - partly together with his second wife Renate Bänninger Schubiger. Writing later became his main occupation. Jürg Schubiger lived in Zurich. He was the father of two sons and, during his lifetime, the grandfather of eight grandchildren.

Literary work

At the beginning of the extensive literary work by Jürg Schubiger there are occasional texts: poetic travel reports, e.g. B. from Corsica or Ticino, most of them illustrated with his own photos, as well as stories and fairy tales that he had heard and noted on his travels. They were published in the features section of the Winterthur newspaper Der Landbote from the mid-1950s . His literary breakthrough came in the early 1970s with the collection of stories, Die vorgevorgehaben Dinge (1971). The design, the publisher and a foreword by the writer friend Franz Hohler refer to the readership of adults interested in literature. Many stories, however, have multiple addresses and are also suitable for reading with children. They are about everyday things in which you always have to be prepared for strange changes: for example a stone that breathes, a tree with huge apples, a stubborn stove, a dress you can live in.

The literary features of this "short prose" include thematic and linguistic concentration, the limitation of the characters, space and time, the direct jump into a situation, the pointed conclusion and a largely neutral narrative gesture without preconditions. From the traditional forms of the fairy tale, the saga, the swank, the fable, the parable, the calendar story or the anecdote, Jürg Schubiger develops his own "modern" variants. In the back and forth stories (1986) he tries out the newly found narrative form in a literary game with Franz Hohler. One person notes an idea, the other takes up the key word and reacts to it with his own story.

On The House of Nonna (1980), a story about a childhood in Ticino of the early 1940s, followed in 1983 Unexpectedly Green , a text with diary-like notes. A network of nature observations, memories and thoughts of a hiker is spread out here, who for a whole year walks the same path over and over again from the Ticino village to a higher alpine pasture - alone, in full concentration on gradual changes and unexpected sights.

In his later works for adults, too, Jürg Schubiger renounces the linear development of a plot, the psychologically stringently derived characteristics of characters and an omniscient commentary narrator. Instead, he varies the pattern of illumination of individual scenes, which only when viewed together produce a multifaceted overall picture: of a journey on which the main character, guided by chance, drifts from one event to the next ( Hinterlassene Schuhe , 1989), from increasingly confidential conversations between two aging people who exchange ideas about their living conditions ( Haller and Helen , 2002), of a woman looking for structuring lines in her biography ( Die kleine Liebe , 2008) and of a man who rearranges his memory and thus his life after a serious illness ( not free from giddiness , 2014). In the story cycle Everywhere is easy to miss (2012), he takes up the form of short prose and tells his readers a “pretty philosophical story” in which a little girl, a wild wolf, a strong bull and a tall woman play the main roles.

This book, the result of a revision of earlier stories, clearly shows that for Jürg Schubiger from the start there was no insurmountable boundary between writing for adults and for children. On the one hand, he is aware that he is in a different “landscape” when he writes for children. He himself says: “In this 'landscape', different rules apply, it's a different game. That is more accurate than the 'other language': It's a different game. " At the same time, he counts on his stories to work on two levels: children should find their own points of contact, adults should not lose the joy of text. For him, writing for children always means: "also for children".

Jürg Schubiger's children's literary work is extensive: from 1978 to 2013, in addition to numerous articles in newspapers, magazines and anthologies, it included 19 independently published books. The form of the story collection dominates; In addition, there are two more extensive stories ( Mother, Father, I and She - 1997 and The Story of Wilhelm Tell - 2003), three volumes of poems, four picture books, illustrated by well-known artists, and two retellings of classic literary material: The Strange Adventures des Don Quixote (2003) and, in Swiss dialect, De Stubelpeter (2010). The texts published after 1995 have almost without exception been translated into other languages ​​and contexts; among them are, besides the European ones, also culturally very different like the Korean or the Chinese. With editions in 10 different countries, the collection of stories When the World Was Young (1995) takes the top spot.

Despite the diversity of the texts, there are topics and forms of representation that Jürg Schubiger prefers. One of his favorite motifs is the “beginning”: “But there are very different types of beginnings. There are the beginnings, which are to a certain extent marked by fanfares, which are like large portals. They clearly show: This is the entry into a new area. And there are the smaller beginnings. In an everyday routine, something suddenly appears that only turns out to be the 'beginning' in retrospect, in retrospect. The little attention in everyday life that belongs to this beginning has become very important to me ». Nothing is as original for a writer as his tool: language. Jürg Schubiger pays particular attention to this aspect. In Mother, Father, Me and She , the main character, a philosophizing 10-year-old boy, states right from the start: “The words go with things. So well that you usually don't even think about it »(p. 15). If you think about it and also open up to the hypothetical, the self-evident dissolves again suddenly: «Why are there the same things and not just different? If everything were different, we would also have different languages. Every word in every language would only belong to a single thing, a single being, because everything would only exist once: a chair, a table, a rug, a book, a bed, a tree. There is only one person, but many words for him »(p. 65).

There is a lot of variety in the rich cosmos of Schubiger's characters. Certain constellations are repeated: that between son and father belongs to it, that between siblings, that between animals and humans. Often it is the girls who experience something special: They meet an angel or death, happiness or boredom. Fairy tale characters appear quite often; ordinary and extraordinary animals anyway. But things can also become protagonists: an omniscient book, a big piece of bread, a thick dress, an entire city, the sun, the moon. What the characters experience is extraordinary, but is told as if it were the most natural thing in the world: You can live in the thick dress or in the big bread, there are birds that count and girls whose language consists of numbers The family lives together with a car and like a thumb wandering to the northern Italian city of Pontetto, an entire city can even walk across the country. For Jürg Schubiger, what is decisive for the writing of stories is not the commitment to a clearly defined genre, but the orientation towards a basic "structural shape". He is fascinated by the simple literary narrative patterns with their manageable sequences and repetitions. “I probably also like fairy tales because they are abstract; it's never really about characters, not even about types. They have something of concrete painting ». Schubiger sees a literary model in Italo Calvino's collection of Italian fairy tales. He values ​​his poetic lightness more than the "grim seriousness" of the Brothers Grimm. "There is a lot of cleverness and a lot of winking." Schubiger has a preference for fine, subtle humor and linguistically realized comedy in all its shades, but avoids the sharpness of satire as well as Franz Kafka's literary path on the edge of the absurd.

In 2010, Jürg Schubiger brought out his “Children's Poems”, which were initially scattered about, in a collection illustrated by Wibke Oeser, and wrote new ones for the occasion. In this very attractively designed book with the title It's Wind's Birthday , you can get a good overview of the themes and forms of his poetry. The collection is dedicated to the abundance of opportunities for children to experience: with mother and father, with people and animals, with seasons and nature, with sadness and happiness, with the expressive possibilities of language and with the literary structures of poetry, to be amazed and to ask. Even that which is laden with problems is not excluded.

Jürg Schubiger's children's books have always been unthinkable without illustrations. They do not serve as decorative accessories or as a mere introduction, but have their own weight as interpretive comments. This applies in particular to the three award-winning picture books The White Bear and the Black Bear (2007), When Death Came to Us (2011) and The Child in the Moon (2013).

When asked what he wanted to achieve with his literary writing for both adults and children, Jürg Schubiger answered as follows:

“It goes without saying that this form of writing cannot be guided by an express intention. The question: What do you want to achieve with your stories? goes wrong here. I'm happy to achieve something, but I'm not looking for anything in particular. A more stimulating question variant would be: If you had intentions, what would it be? What would suit you and your beliefs? My answer would be: I would want the reader to

  1. that he endures the ambiguous with pleasure,
  2. that in opposites he sees more what is complementary and mutually dependent than what is mutually exclusive,
  3. that he pays attention to the things that are there with him, this way and no other, this dusty bike, this strip of light on the carpet, this dripping faucet,
  4. that he discovers what is extremely real in what is possible, in what is brought about, and
  5. that he realizes that such intentions better stay in the subjunctive. "

Awards

Works

Prose and poetry

Books for children and young readers

Radio plays

  • Please keep talking . Directed by Barbara Schlumpf. Zurich, DRS I 1994
  • The first seven days . Directed by Barbara Schlumpf. Zurich, DRS I 1996
  • To the end of the world . Directed by Buschi Luginbühl. Zurich, DRS I 1999
  • The collision (with Franz Hohler ). Directed by Barbara Schlumpf. Zurich, DRS I 2000
  • De Tell and sin Bueb . Directed by Geri Dillier . Zurich, DRS I 2006
  • Haller and Helen . Directed by Geri Dillier . Zurich, DRS I and II 2012

Lectures, speeches, essays

  • Franz Kafka. The transformation. An interpretation . Atlantis, Zurich 1969 (= Zurich contributions to German literature and intellectual history , Volume 34, also dissertation at the University of Zurich 1969 DNB 571652549 ).
  • Always and forever Pestalozzi? Children's and youth literature between pedagogy, literature and philosophy. In: New German Literature , Vol. 45, 1997
  • Write for children. Margin notes . In: Reading and writing in open lessons . Edited by Andrea Bärtschi-Kaufmann, Sabe, Zurich 1998
  • Children's literature in conversation . In: Bookmarks. Announcements from the Reading Center of the Heidelberg University of Education in 1999
  • My stories - as illustrators tell them . In: Next door. Switzerland's share of German-language children's and youth literature. Chronos, Zurich 1999
  • There's always a book to visit in the evening. About reading on the edge of the bed . In: 1000 and 1 book , Vienna 2005
  • Jesus doesn't laugh . In: The man in no time. Jesus stories from Switzerland. Ed. Von a + w, training and further education for pastors, Zurich 2005
  • How important am i? In: writers preach. Edited by Matthias Zeindler, Theological Publishing House, Zurich 2006
  • What I have in mind when I write . Annual edition 2008, Circle of Friends of the Institute for Youth Book Research, Frankfurt a. M. 2010

literature

  • Rudolf Bussmann , Martin Zingg: A hidden intimacy. An interview with Jürg Schubiger . In: Drehpunkt 56. The Swiss literary magazine. Lenos, Basel 1983
  • Hans-Joachim Gelberg : onions, radishes, tomatoes and pumpkins. How Schubiger's stories got to the reader . In: All things. Workshop book. Beltz and Gelberg, Basel 1996
  • Maria Lypp : Bulky miracles. On Jürg Schubiger's stories . In: Next door. Switzerland's share of German-language children's and youth literature. Edited by the Swiss Youth Book Institute, Zurich 1999
  • Bernhard Rank: Jürg Schubiger. Children's literature of thoughtfulness . Schneider, Hohengehren 2012

Web links

Commons : Jürg Schubiger  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Jürg Schubiger. In: Kürschner's German Literature Calendar 2014/2015: Volume I: AO. Volume II: PZ. , Walter De Gruyter Incorporated, 2014, p. 956, ISBN 978-3-11-033720-4 .
  2. ↑ Children's literature in conversation . Guest: Jürg Schubiger. In: Bookmarks. Announcements from the reading center of the Heidelberg University of Education, issue 6, p. 27
  3. ↑ Children's literature in conversation . Guest: Jürg Schubiger. In: Bookmarks. Announcements from the reading center of the Heidelberg University of Education, issue 6, p. 18
  4. ↑ The in-between belongs very much to me. Andersen Prize Winner Jürg Schubiger. In: Book and Mouse. The magazine of the Swiss Institute for Children's and Youth Media. Vol. 6, no. 2, p. 4 f.
  5. ↑ The in-between belongs very much to me . Andersen Prize Winner Jürg Schubiger. In: Book and Mouse. The magazine of the Swiss Institute for Children's and Youth Media. Vol. 6, H. 2, p. 5
  6. ↑ How many pages does your thickest book have? In: 1000 and 1 book, vol. 15, no. 4, p. 33
personal data
SURNAME Schubiger, Juerg
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Swiss psychologist and writer
DATE OF BIRTH October 14, 1936
PLACE OF BIRTH Zurich
DATE OF DEATH 15th September 2014
Place of death Zurich