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Friedrich Dürrenmatt

Friedrich Dürrenmatt

Friedrich Dürrenmatt, born on January 5, 1921 in Konolfingen in the canton of Bern as the son of a Protestant pastor and the grandson of the politician and satirist Ulrich Dürrenmatt, read literature, philosophy and science (not theology, as is sometimes claimed) in Zurich and Bern. He decided early on to follow a career in literature and also maintained a lifelong active interest in drawing and painting. The results of his interest in art can be seen in the large number of caricatures and satirical drawings that make up the stock of the museum’s holdings at the Fondation Charlotte Kerr Dürrenmatt in Neuchâtel. It is highly instructive to trace the causal relations between Dürrenmatt’s artistic oeuvre and his literary works. He always regarded the theatre in terms of “a combination of painting and writing”. Dürrenmatt died of a heart attack on December 14, 1990; his fiction and his drama have become part of world literature.