Urs Widmer (writer)

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Urs Widmer (2012)

Urs Widmer (born May 21, 1938 in Basel ; † April 2, 2014 in Zurich ) was a Swiss writer and translator .

Life

Urs Widmer was born in Basel as the son of the translator, literary critic and high school teacher Walter Widmer . Because of his father's activities, Widmer came into contact with literature and the literary business as a child. The German author and Nobel Prize winner Heinrich Böll was a frequent guest at the Widmer house. Widmer's German teacher at the Realgymnasium Basel was the author Rudolf Graber . He studied German , Romance languages and history at the universities of Basel , Montpellier and Paris . In 1966 he was in Basel with Heinz Rupp with the work 1945 or The "new language". PhD studies on prose of the “young generation” .

Widmer then started as a publishing editor at Walter Verlag in Olten, then moved to Germany for Suhrkamp Verlag . He soon left the publishing house, but not the city of Frankfurt am Main , where he lived as a freelance writer from 1967 to 1984 before returning to Switzerland. During his time in Frankfurt he wrote reviews for the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung and taught as a lecturer in modern German literature at the University of Frankfurt . In 1968 Widmer made his debut as a writer with the short story Alois . In 1969 he was one of the co-founders of the Publishing House of Authors , through which his plays are still published today.

Urs Widmer was a member of the German Academy for Language and Poetry in Darmstadt, the German Academy of Performing Arts in Bensheim, the Academy of Arts Berlin-Brandenburg and a member of the Graz Forum Stadtpark .

Urs Widmer died on April 2, 2014 after a serious illness and was buried in the Enzenbühl cemetery in Zurich. Until his death he lived mostly in Zurich. He was married to a psychoanalyst and had a daughter.

His estate is in the Swiss Literary Archives in Bern .

plant

Urs Widmer's extensive work includes novels, short stories, essays, plays and radio plays. He was considered one of the most versatile Swiss authors today. The strength of his works lies in the imaginative, ironic spinning out of trivial plot schemes from classic adventure and travel history to parody and the surreal . On the one hand, Widmer wanted to write “fiction”, but at the same time “let as much social reality as possible become tangible.” With his work Widmer often succeeded in bridging the gap between U and E, between avant-garde style and books with bestseller potential. The jury of the Friedrich Hölderlin Prize 2007 noted that a strength of Widmer's texts was "the change of tones (...): irony and satire stand alongside surreal and realistic precision".

From 2000 many of Widmer's works showed autobiographical references. His (pseudo-) autobiographical trilogy about his mother ( Der Geliebte der Mutter , 2000), his father ( Das Buch des Father , 2004) and himself ( Ein Leben als Zwerg , 2006) is one of his greatest successes with audiences . It becomes clear how his parents' ambiguous game - a burlesque facade against a serious background - also influenced his later writing style. If one reads the novel Der Geliebte der Mutter as an autobiographical text, the author would be flirting with being the son of the influential Swiss entrepreneur and conductor Paul Sacher . The ambiguity of the text does not force such a reading, but it keeps it open.

Widmer presented his most successful play Top Dogs , a social satire, with the director Volker Hesse at the Berlin Theatertreffen 1997. The so-called “Top Dogs” become “ underdogs ” there. In an outplacement center, they experience in themselves the horror and the grotesque that they have inflicted on others through their dismissal.

In addition, Widmer worked as a translator like his father. He translated a large number of works by French and English-speaking authors.

Awards and honors

Works

Prose works

  • Alois. Narrative. Diogenes, Zurich 1968.
  • The blackbird in the rain in the garden. Narrative. Diogenes, Zurich 1971.
  • The research trip. Adventure novel. Diogenes, Zurich 1974.
  • Swiss stories . Hallwag, Bern 1975.
  • The yellow men. Novel. Diogenes, Zurich 1976.
  • From the window of my house. Prose. Diogenes, Zurich 1977.
  • Hand and foot. A book . Moon Press, The Hague 1978 (miniature book).
  • Shakespeare's stories. Volume 2. Plays by Shakespeare retold. Diogenes, Zurich 1978.
  • Photos (= Pa-ra-bü. Volume 25). Patio Frankfurt am Main 1980.
  • The Urs Widmer Reader . Diogenes, Zurich 1980.
  • The narrow country. Novel. Diogenes, Zurich 1981.
  • Love night. Narrative. Diogenes, Zurich 1982.
  • The stolen creation. A fairy tale. Diogenes, Zurich 1984.
  • Indian summer. Narrative. Diogenes, Zurich 1985.
  • The disappearance of the Chinese in the new year. Diogenes, Zurich 1987.
  • Up, up, you shepherds! The cow is running away! Columns. Diogenes, Zurich 1988.
  • The Congress of Paleolepidopterists. Novel. Diogenes, Zurich 1989.
  • The paradise of oblivion. Narrative. Diogenes, Zurich 1990.
  • The blue siphon . Narrative. Diogenes, Zurich 1992
  • Love letter for mary. Narrative. Diogenes, Zurich 1993.
  • In the Congo . Novel. Diogenes, Zurich 1996
  • Before us the flood. Stories. Diogenes, Zurich 1998.
  • The Book of Nightmares. With drawings by Hannes Binder . Sanssouci at Nagel & Kimche, Zurich 2000.
  • Mother's lover. Novel. Diogenes, Zurich 2000.
  • The father's book. Novel. Diogenes, Zurich 2004.
  • A life as a dwarf. Diogenes, Zurich 2006.
  • Valentin Lustig's pilgrimage. Report of a walk through 33 of his paintings. Diogenes, Zurich 2008.
  • Mr. Adamson. Novel. Diogenes, Zurich 2009.
  • Silent post. Little prose. Diogenes, Zurich 2011.
  • Travel to the edge of the universe. Autobiography. Diogenes, Zurich 2013, ISBN 978-3-257-06868-9 .

Essays, lectures and non-fiction books

  • 1945 or the "New Language". Studies on the prose of the "young generation" . Pedagogical Publishing House Schwann, Düsseldorf 1966 (= dissertation, Basel 1965)
  • In us and around us and around us. In: Renate Matthaei (Ed.): Trivialmythen. March, Frankfurt 1970, pp. 11-19 (reprints, e.g. Area-Verlag, Erftstadt 2004, ISBN 3-89996-029-7 , pp. 31-39).
  • The normal and the longing. Essays and stories. Diogenes, Zurich 1972.
  • The sixth doll in the belly of the fifth doll in the belly of the fourth and other reflections on literature (= Grazer poetics lectures ). Droschl, Graz 1991.
  • The money, the work, the fear, the happiness. Diogenes, Zurich 2002.
  • From life, from death and from the rest also this and that. Frankfurt poetics lectures. Diogenes, Zurich 2007.
  • When rereading “Alois”. In: Renatus Deckert (ed.): The first book. Writer on her literary debut . Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt 2007, ISBN 978-3-518-45864-8 , pp. 125-128.
  • The dream of working without domination. 1968 - from Suhrkamp Verlag to Verlag der Automobiles. In: Neue Zürcher Zeitung . 11./12. June 2011, No. 135, p. 21 f.

Plays

  • The long night of the detectives. Detective piece in three acts. With a foreword by the author. Diogenes, Zurich 1973, ISBN 3-257-20117-6 . Performing rights: Verlag der Autor , Frankfurt am Main 1973. Premiere: December 1973 Basel.
  • Nepal. Piece in the Basel colloquial language. Frankfurt am Main 1976.
  • Stan and Ollie in Germany. Frankfurt am Main 1979.
  • Züst or Die Aufschneider. Frankfurt am Main 1979.
  • Dr New Noah. Frankfurt am Main 1984.
  • All right. Stan and Ollie in Germany. Frankfurt am Main 1988.
  • Jeanmaire . A piece of Switzerland. Frankfurt am Main 1992.
  • The crack in the bowl. Frölicher - a festival. Frankfurt am Main 1992.
  • Midsummer Night's Rage. Frankfurt am Main 1993.
  • Top dogs . Frankfurt am Main 1996.
  • The black spider , based on the novella by Jeremias Gotthelf and Midsummer Night's Fury , a paraphrase of Shakespeare's Midsummer Night 's Dream . Both appeared in the text book: The Black Spider - Midsummer Night's Fury: Two Pieces. Publishing house of the authors , Frankfurt am Main 1998, ISBN 978-3-88661-202-4 .
  • King of books. Banking secrets. Frankfurt am Main 2001.
  • Münchhausen's grandson. World premiere, 2012, Zurich.
  • The end of money. World premiere, March 24, 2012, Staatstheater Darmstadt

Radio plays / radio broadcasts

  • Who cannot see has to hear. WDR 1969
  • Henry Chicago. WDR 1970.
  • Operetta. WDR 1971.
  • Aua 231. WDR 1971.
  • Anna from behind and from the front. WDR 1971.
  • Death and longing. SFB 1972
  • Doctor Watson's cat. WDR 1972.
  • The survival of the immortal Mimi. SWF 1973
  • The terrible confusion of Giuseppe Verdi. SWF 1974.
  • The climber. BR 1974
  • TV evening. SWF 1976.
  • The ballad of the hopes of the fathers. WDR 1976.
  • The dwarfs in the city. SDR 1978
  • The brass quartet or 80 questions about happiness. SWF / hr / NDR / BR 1979
  • The toes of the elves. SDR, 1981.
  • Indian summer. SWF 1984.
  • Dr New Noah. DRS 1984
  • To the friends. SWF / hr 1986.
  • The visitor from Kassel. SWF / DRS 1986.
  • The great sound engineer. SWF / WDR / NDR 1988.
  • The god and the girl. SWF 1988.
  • The Africa explorer. SWF 1990.
  • Bottom's dream. SWF 1990.
  • The erased tape. 1992.
  • The sultan's wives. 1993.
  • Helmut's letter. 1994.
  • The power horn. SWR 2005.
  • The end of money. HR 2012.
  • From the window of my house from SRF 2013

Editions

  • Seán O'Casey : A selection from the plays, the autobiography and the essays , Zurich 1970
  • Gottfried Keller : The flag of the seven upright ones , Berlin 1989

Translations

literature

Web links

Obituaries

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Swiss writer: Urs Widmer is dead. In: Spiegel Online . April 3, 2014, accessed April 3, 2014 .
  2. ↑ Urs Widmer. In: Kürschner's German Literature Calendar 2014/2015: Volume I: AO. Volume II: PZ. , Walter De Gruyter Incorporated, 2014, pp. 1139-1140, ISBN 978-3-11-033720-4 .
  3. ↑ Page can no longer be called up , search in web archives: The re (invention) of the German language . ORF1 , May 15, 2008.@1@ 2Template: Toter Link / oe1.orf.at
  4. ↑ Endowed guest lecturer in Poetics ( Memento from February 10, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) at the University of Frankfurt
  5. ↑ Wassermann Literature Prize for Urs Widmer ( Memento from December 20, 2013 in the Internet Archive ), on fuerth.de, accessed on December 20, 2013.
  6. ↑ On www.literatur.ch, accessed on January 19, 2014 ( Memento of February 3, 2014 in the Internet Archive ).
  7. ↑ Page no longer available , search in web archives: World premiere report at Glanz und Gloria on February 29, 2012 in the video portal of Swiss television SF, accessed on March 18, 2012.@1@ 2Template: Dead Link / www.srf.ch
  8. ↑ Dieter Langhardt: The red carpet is rolled up. Page no longer available , search in web archives: Review in the Thurgauer Zeitung , accessed on March 18, 2012.@1@ 2Template: Toter Link / www.thurgauerzeitung.ch
  9. ↑ Page no longer available , search in web archives: Das Ende vom Geld , Staatstheater Darmstadt@1@ 2Template: Toter Link / www.staatstheater-darmstadt.de
personal data
SURNAME Widmer, Urs
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Swiss writer and translator
DATE OF BIRTH May 21, 1938
PLACE OF BIRTH Basel
DATE OF DEATH April 2, 2014
Place of death Zurich