Friedrich Dürrenmatt

Gerhard P. Knapp (University of Utah)

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 5 Jan 1921
Died 14 Dec 1990
Activity 1943-1990

Places

Born in Switzerland
Active in Switzerland; Germany

Genres and Modes

Crime and Detective

Activities

Primary

Essayist
Novelist
Playwright / Dramatist
Theatre Director

Other

Film/TV Script-writer/ Screenwriter
Painter

Resources

Among the German-speaking authors in Switzerland who rose to international fame after the Second World War, playwright, novelist and essayist Friedrich Dürrenmatt is the most prominent. Already during his lifetime, his texts ranked high in the modernist canon for students, theater audiences and readers around the globe. His most celebrated plays, translated into virtually all written languages, remain in the repertoire of theaters worldwide to this day. Like his countryman Max Frisch with whom he has been often – and not always perceptively – compared, Dürrenmatt owed his tremendous early success to the stage and to this particular moment in history. During the p…

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2553 words

Citation: Knapp, Gerhard P.. "Friedrich Dürrenmatt". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 19 March 2004 [https://staging.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=1114, accessed 21 November 2024.]

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