Thomas Bernhard

Ruth Starkman (University of San Francisco)

Ed. by Gerhard P. Knapp, University of Utah
The Literary Encyclopedia. Volume 1.4.2: German-language Writing and Culture: Austria, Switzerland, Luxembourg, Liechtenstein, 800-present.
Vol. editors: Gerhard P. Knapp (University of Utah), Jennifer Marston William (Purdue University), Herbert Rowland (Purdue University), Jill E. Twark (East Carolina University)

Dates

Born 9 Feb 1931
Died 1989
Activity 1956-1989

Places

Born in Netherlands
Active in Austria; Germany

Activities

Primary

Novelist
Playwright / Dramatist

Resources

Suicide and murder, obsession and mania, incest and patricide, madness and loneliness, Austria and Nazis: these are a few of Thomas Bernhard's favorite themes. In his enormous œuvre of seventy novels, plays, short stories, and verse, these themes return with relentless repetition as though each utterance were a profound new epiphany of the same Schopenhauerian aphorism: life is suffering, Austria is hell on earth. Bernhard loved and hated his hometown of Salzburg; but he pursued the land of his fathers like a patricidal maniac. Born out of wedlock on 9^th February 1931 in Heerlen (The Netherlands) two years before Austria's native son, Adolf Hitler came to power, Bernhard died on 12 February 1989 in Gmunden, Austria at the …

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1438 words

Citation: Starkman, Ruth. "Thomas Bernhard". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 28 August 2003 [https://staging.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=5433, accessed 25 November 2024.]

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