Otto Steiger (writer)

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Otto Steiger (born August 4, 1909 in Uetendorf near Thun ; † May 10, 2005 in Zurich ) was a Swiss writer and radio news anchor. He was the grandson of the Swiss poet Georg Steiger . Otto Steiger was married and had a son and a daughter.

Life

Otto Steiger grew up in Bern and studied Romance languages in Paris . For lack of money he broke off his studies and worked a. a. as a caster and guide. After returning to Switzerland in 1936, Steiger became an editor and news anchor for the Swiss dispatch agency .

From the beginning of the war until 1943 Otto Steiger was the official “voice of the nation”, which was supposed to guarantee the authenticity of the radio news in the event of an invasion. Then in March 1943 he founded a private business school with his own name (Steiger School), which he ran himself and sold in 1954 to Paul Spahn , who was also a well-known news anchor. In 1955 he founded a trading company in order to pursue his literary inclinations.

He made his literary debut in 1942 with the marriage story They act as if they were alive : Even this debut was a typical Steiger book with a narrative in the frame . An anonymous male first-person narrator goes to an inn in the country on a hot Sunday afternoon in August and sits down at a table that is completely in the sun. After about an hour, a young couple joins him. The man sits on a chair in the shade while he lets his girlfriend take a seat in the sun. His name is Walter Staufer, her name is Anna Schwander and he is a waitress. The first-person narrator says goodbye and leaves. On the way home, he imagines the further life of the two: "Before my eyes I saw their future ..." The first-person narrator disappears practically completely during the entire story, which begins in the years of World War II and at some point in the fictional ones 1960s ends. The novel closes with the sentence: “This is how I saw Anna Schwander's life pass before my eyes!” And is written entirely from the perspective of the protagonist.

Steiger's second novel, And yet everything ends in peace, followed in 1949 .

His third novel in 1952, Portrait of a Notable Man , was condemned by critics as propaganda for communism . The book was actually translated into Russian without Steiger's assistance and 300,000 copies were sold.

After he carelessly accepted an invitation from the Soviet writers' association in 1957 , the press defamed and ignored the "red Steiger". This trip was intended as compensation for the unauthorized translation of his third novel in 1952. His socially critical books, many of them crime novels, were only published by small publishers.

So he tried drama and youth books, which he had more success with than his adult books, such as the novel Lornac Is Everywhere (1980). He received awards in both categories. From then on things went up again. Books such as tracelessly available (1980), Die Unreifeprüfung (1984), Der Doppelgänger (1985), Schott (1992), Schachmatt (1996) and, most recently, the collection of stories The Miracle of Schondorf (2001) have been reissued, some of them up to the present day. Since 1999 Otto Steiger was again a sought-after writer. At the Solothurn Literature Days he met his former opponent Prof. Dr. Werner Weber to settle the conflict over the trip to Russia. The two have become good friends over the past 10 years.

Otto Steiger's work is a lot bigger than one might assume. Around 20 novels and 10 books for young adults were translated into 17 languages.

This led the radio DRS journalist R. Zehnder, who visited and interviewed him on his 95th birthday, to conclude that Steiger's work was in line with Honoré de Balzac , Lew Tolstoy and Ernest Hemingway . As Steiger 2005 unexpectedly by a fault of the staff at the Waid Hospital died, wrote Charles Linsmayer in the " Bund " an obituary in which he Steiger style with Albert Camus and Samuel Beckett compared.

He found his final resting place in the Hönggerberg cemetery .

Offices and activities

  • 1952–1957 he was President of the Zurich Writers' Association
  • 1970–1974 Vice President of the Swiss Writers' Association
  • 1974 co-founder of the copyright company ProLitteris and about 10 years first director until 1984.
  • 1974–1981 Board of Trustees of the Swiss Schiller Foundation
  • 1981/1982 President of the German-Swiss PEN Center
  • Freelance writer and columnist for
  • 1975–1983 the magazine «Femina»
  • 1978–1979 the Tages-Anzeiger
  • the union press.

Awards

Works (selection)

Novels, short stories, short stories

  • They pretend to be alive , 1942
  • And yet it all ends with peace , 1949
  • Portrait of a respected man , 1952, new editions by Unionsverlag , Zurich, 1981, Eco-Verlag, Zurich 1987 and Edition 8 , Zurich 2009
  • The Twerenbold brothers , 1954
  • The Journey to the Sea , 1960
  • The year of eleven months , 1962
  • Being able to start all over again , 1962, later appeared in a new version under the title Die Schlinge (1992)
  • Cat and Mouse , 1963
  • The hole in the sound barrier , 1965
  • Die Tote im See , 1966, new edition as Die Tote im Wasser , Edition 8, Zurich 2009
  • Stories of the Day , 1973
  • All right , 1978
  • Present without a trace , 1980
  • The Immaturity Exam , 1984
  • The doppelganger , 1985
  • Orienteering , 1988
  • Maybe Patagonia , 1989 and Edition 8, Zurich 2009
  • Collected Works. 9 volumes, ed. by Rolf Thut, Bettina Kobold, Verena Stettler , 1985–1992
  • Schott , 1992 and Edition 8, Zurich 2009
  • Aunt Lisa's heirs , 1994 and Edition 8, Zurich 2009
  • Checkmate , 1996 and Edition 8, Zurich 2009
  • One piece only, memories in episodes , 1999
  • The miracle of Schondorf , 2001

Youth books

  • Catch a thief , 1974
  • Nobody comes to India , 1976
  • Dead End , 1978
  • Me and my burglar , 1978
  • Bought Silence , Benziger , Zurich / Cologne 1979; as paperback: dtv, Munich 1981, ISBN 3-423-07821-9
  • A game to be played out , 1980
  • Number 16 47 12 , 1980
  • Lornac is everywhere , 1980, filmed under the title L'or noir de Lornac (1987) with Maria Schneider a . a.
  • A line through the bill , 1984
  • A visit from the future , 1984
  • Vagabond School , 1987
  • Off to Hollywood , 1993

Plays

  • Martin's Journey Behind the Rainbow , 1966
  • The siege , 1967
  • Such a nice little party , 1968
  • On the stairs , 1969

literature

Web links
personal data
SURNAME Steiger, Otto
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Swiss writer and radio news anchor
DATE OF BIRTH 4th August 1909
PLACE OF BIRTH Uetendorf near Thun
DATE OF DEATH May 10, 2005
Place of death Zurich