Literary Association Winterthur

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Photo of the founding meeting of the Winterthur Literary Association in 1917, standing from left Adolf Vogel, Hans Kägi, Gottlieb Bachmann, Walther Hünerwadel, sitting from left Heinrich Brunner, Paul Fink, Rudolf Hunziker, Hans Reinhart, Johannes Ninck

The Literary Association Winterthur , or Die Literäre for short , is a literary society from Winterthur . It was founded on May 1, 1917 by Hans Reinhart and Rudolf Hunziker . The current co-presidency consists of Claudio Notz and Barbara Tribelhorn.

The association now has around 200 members and mainly organizes readings with eight to ten contemporary authors each year in the Coalmine Café in the Volkart House . Up until the mid-1990s, the association was also the editor of over 60 publications, 45 of which were gifts to members and 14 manuscripts and a few other publications. For the 100th anniversary, the city library dedicated a New Year's sheet to the association.

history

founding

The Winterthur Literary Association was founded on May 1, 1917 by seven founding members in the “Gasthof zum Löwen”. According to the statutes, the association initially had a board of seven to eleven members, one of whom was a representative of Theodor Reinhart's library commission . The first president was Rudolf Hunziker, the first vice-president and actuary was Hans Reinhart. The other four founding members were:

Already at the founding meeting it was planned to publish the first edition of a Winterthur yearbook in autumn (the Winterthur yearbook known today was brought into being in the 1950s by founding member Hans Kägi). In doing so, the Literary Association implemented a project that Hunziker had been carrying with him since the spring of 1914, but which it was unable to realize due to the First World War . The planned book was finally moved as an almanac to 1918 as the first book of the association at the Vogel bookstore and, according to the first general assembly in 1919, should have been a success.

Founding phase and interwar period

House to patience

At the beginning, the association consisted mainly of Hunziker's circle of friends. As a patron, Hans Reinhart also repeatedly supported the association financially. The association also pledged to support the Winterthur City Library , to which it provided financial support for the procurement of non-existent works. This also happened because the association did not want to create its own library. Literary evenings were also organized. In 1919 the association was allowed to move into its own premises in the " Haus zur Patuld " bought by Oskar Reinhart , for which the association made him an honorary member. During the crisis in the post-war years, the association held charitable events for the authors who were also affected by the crisis, but could not prevent its member Jakob Christoph Heer from moving to his daughter in Germany. He was also given honorary membership at a farewell event in Wülflingen Castle .

The yearbooks continued to be issued and received regular replies in the press, as the writer Eduard Korrodi wrote in the Neue Zürcher Zeitung after the yearbook was published in 1923 , saying that the “Winterthurer Wunderhorn” had poured out its “blessing” again. The yearbooks appeared regularly until the Second World War and were part of the core business of the Literary Association.

Literary evenings were also held regularly in the interwar period, to which the majority of well-known authors were invited. The evenings were advertised and discussed in the Winterthur newspapers. The guests included local authors such as the poet Richard Schneiter , but also foreign authors such as Sven Scholander , Heinrich Mann and Rainer Maria Rilke . These lectures were held regularly until the 1930s, but after that, for financial reasons, they were restricted to events for which a sufficiently large audience was to be expected.

Second World War and the death of Hunziker

During the Second World War , the program had to be restricted and it was increasingly collaborated with the Historisch-Antiquaristenverein, the Kunstverein, the Musikkollegium and the Mozart community in order to be able to continue offering a cultural program in the city. Guests at events at this time were Mary Lavater-Sloman , the Winterthur poet Ernst Kappeler and Hermann Scherchen . The yearbooks also came out only to a limited extent at this time, namely in 1938, 1943 and 1945 and the general assemblies were completely suspended.

After the end of the Second World War, the death of Hunziker was the next blow for the club. After his death, the board had to decide that there should only be a yearbook every two to three years. Hunziker's successor as president was for a short time the high school teacher Gustav Egli, replaced by interim president and city councilor Hans Bachmann in 1949 and 1950. The association continued the literary evenings, more with emphasis on literary demanding and with less entertainment. Guests from this period include Paul Wehrli , Carl Jacob Burckhardt , Gertrud von Le Fort and Ernst Wiechert .

1950 until today

In 1950, history professor Marcel Beck was again elected as a new president. In 1955, under his aegis, the union with the «Kunstkamin Winterthur», an association of a former LVW member, was established in competition with the LVW program during the Second World War. However, the journalistic activity became more and more difficult, the yearbooks could not sell anymore and the literature generally had to assert itself against competition from radio and television. In 1957, Hans Reinhart bequeathed the rights to his work to the Literary Association. At the end of Beck's decade as president, Adolf Vogel bequeathed 10,000 francs to the association in Danish government bonds as a foundation in order to reward good performance in German lessons. Today the association uses this money to organize a youth writing competition every few years.

After a decade Beck resigned as president, followed by the German teacher Erwin Kobel. Three years after Reinhart's death, the Volkart Foundation bequeathed an amount of 100,000 francs to the association, which was intended to provide financial security for the association over a longer period of time. From 1966 to 1968, Walter Gross, a well-known city writer, worked on the board. Guests at the literary evenings of this decade were Martin Walser , Uwe Johnson , Walter Matthias Diggelmann Golo Mann , Günter Eich , Ernst Bloch , Adolf Muschg and Max Frisch .

Beck was succeeded by Ulrich Schelling as President in 1968, also a teacher at the canton school and, at the age of 33, the youngest member of the board. This again increased its influence on the program and introduced longer-term program planning, also with an emphasis on more philosophical authors. There were also several program cancellations during his presidential term - twice in January / February 1974 because the speakers had died shortly before; this was the case with Erhart Kästner and Marieluise Fleisser . Siegfried Lenz in December 1968 , Mani Matter in the 1971/1972 season , Uwe Johnson again in 1973 and Wolfgang Hildesheimer in 1978 ensured that the halls were full .

In 1980, another teacher, Heinz Schmitz, took over the helm of the LVW. The association was also concerned about the annual publications that had to be made according to the statutes and which have long since appeared only sparsely. A few facsimiles were still published, but only until 1994. In 1986 the Literary Association published another anthology with texts by Winterthur authors. However, this met with criticism from the Olten group and the Writers 'Association , as no authors' fees were paid. Contemporary literature would not have had much to do with Winterthur's present. This criticism is also justified insofar as there is no reference to the Winterthur youth riots of the 1980s in the LVW's minutes . Heinz Schmitz tried to promote young authors, even if many of his suggestions aroused rather restrained interest. The literary evenings ran like a red thread during his presidency, for example Ernst Jandl , Peter Härtling , Heidi Keller or, previously requested by the LVW for many years, Wolfdietrich Schnurre .

Schmitz was succeeded by the technical college professor Beat Schenk as president. Under him, apart from a few more publications, the company concentrated entirely on readings. For example, Anita Albus , Cees Nooteboom and Christoph Hein were guests . The association had to hold its own against increasing cultural competition on the square in Winterthur for longer and more. Schenk's successor was Hans-Jörg Diener and from 1998 the Coalmine Bar became the regular home of events for the "literary", as the association calls itself in the new millennium. Diener's successor was Lisa Briner, who from 2016 co-chaired Barbara Tribelhorn.

Literature and source

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