Peter Dürrenmatt

Peter Dürrenmatt (born August 29, 1904 in Herzogenbuchsee ; † March 21, 1989 in Basel ; resident in Guggisberg ) was a Swiss historian , publicist and liberal-national-conservative politician .

Life

Peter Dürrenmatt was the son of the lawyer and politician Hugo Dürrenmatt , a grandson of the journalist and politician Ulrich Dürrenmatt and a cousin of the writer Friedrich Dürrenmatt .

Dürrenmatt studied history , German and Latin at the Universities of Bern and Geneva and was a grammar school teacher in 1930, first in Bern, then for a few years in Germany. He joined the right-wing conservative Bund für Volk und Heimat , whose general secretary he became, and was also involved in the Heimatwehr and, from 1941, in the federal community . From 1936 Dürrenmatt worked as a journalist: from 1936 to 1943 he was editor of the Swiss medium press . From 1943 to 1977 he worked for the Basler Nachrichten , of which he was editor-in-chief from 1949 to 1969.

As a member of the Liberal Democratic Party, Dürrenmatt was a member of the Grand Council of the Canton of Basel-Stadt from 1950 to 1965 . From 1959 to 1979 he was a member of the National Council . Apart from his patriotic journalistic work, he became known throughout Switzerland through his motion submitted in 1965 for a total revision of the Swiss Federal Constitution . In 1968 he was one of the founders of the Forum Helveticum (its first president until 1976). In 1968 he was honored with an honorary doctorate from the University of St. Gallen . From 1969 to 1975 he was honorary professor for newspaper studies at the University of Bern.

Works (selection)

• The federal constitution. Their becoming and their probation , Basel 1948
• Germany's reconstruction. Travel reports , reprint from the Basler Nachrichten , 1950
• The disintegration and reconstruction of politics , Munich 1951
• The Small State and the Problem of Power , Basel 1955
• Europe and the German center. A Swiss voice , Zurich a. a. 1955
• Swiss history , Bern 1957
• The world between war and peace , Bern 1959
• We Swiss and total war. On the moral principles of Swiss national defense , Zurich 1959
• Europe wants to live. A commitment to European reality , Bern 1960
• Spiritual geography - culture of nations: Switzerland , Nuremberg 1962
• The relationship of the Germans to the reality of politics , Munich 1963
• Dealing with Germans , Nuremberg 1963 ( Dealing with Peoples , Volume 15)
• Spoken in time , Zurich / Stuttgart 1965
• A hundred Swiss stories , Rorschach 1969
• How free is the press? Basics of modern journalism using the example of Switzerland , Bern 1971
• The mayor in a fishbowl. And other stories , Rorschach 1972
• Turning point. Stations in a lifetime , Lucerne 1986
• Ajoie 1944 , Bern 1975
• Challenge of Switzerland , Zurich 1979
• Special case and terminus. Switzerland in the socialist age. Flamberg, Zurich 1979, ISBN 3-7179-2161-4 .

Web links

• Paul Fink: Dürrenmatt, Peter. In: Historical Lexicon of Switzerland .