Hermann Burger
Encyclopedia
Hermann Burger was a Swiss
poet
, novelist and essayist. In his creative works Burger often focused on society's lonely outsiders and, increasingly, the inevitability of death. His virtuosity in applying literary styles and use of thorough research
are significant features of many of his publications.
, Canton of Aargau
; his father worked for an insurance company. He enrolled at the ETH Zurich
in 1962 and began studying architecture, but switched to German literature and art history in 1964. The publication of the poetry collection "Rauchsignale" ("Smoke Signals") in 1967 marked the beginning of his literary career, followed by the prose collection Bork in 1970. For the next couple of years Burger focused on his career in literary studies, writing his thesis
on Paul Celan
and his habilitation treatise on contemporary Swiss literature
. He taught at universities in Zurich
, Bern and Fribourg
and worked as a literary editor for the Aargauer Tagblatt. His academic experience is reflected in the loosely autobiographical novel "Die künstliche Mutter" ("The Artificial Mother") which won him the Conrad-Ferdinand-Meyer-Preis
in 1980. It was dedicated to his wife and its first edition has the dedication „Für Anne Marie“.
Burger's first major novel "Schilten. Schulbericht zuhanden der Inspektorenkonferenz" ("Schilten. School Report for the Attention of the Inspectors' Conference") was published in 1976 and made into a movie by Swiss film director Beat Kuert in 1979. It is about a teacher who has to tell the conference of inspectors about the development of his pupils, but speaks about death cult, graveyards and burials in a very detailed way. Archetypes of this novels are Franz Kafka
and Thomas Bernhard
. Burger mixes reality and fiction, and the more one reads about him, the more one finds out, that Burger writes about himself, his own suffering.
He won the Ingeborg Bachmann Prize
in 1985 for his story "Die Wasserfallfinsternis von Badgastein" ("The Waterfall-Eclipse of Badgastein"). 1988, a changing of publishers from S. Fischer to Suhrkamp took place in a spectacular way.
The novel "Brenner" (in two volumes, four were planned), shows a protagonist wrapped in cigar smoke, who tells his life - Burger himself was a cigar smoker and descendant of cigar producers. Volume 1 has exactly 25 capitles, like a cigar box contains 25 cigars. Each capitle's name contains the name of a famous cigar brand. The second capitle announces the author's suicide intention: A red Ferrari is bought, because saving money no longer makes sense. It is about the divorce and the grief about having no contact to his two kids. Burger's last lessor was emeritus historian Jean Rudolf von Salis (= „Jérôme von Castelmur-Bondo“ in the novel). The last months of Burger's life and a review on his 46 years are described detailed in this roman a clef
, he describes all coining persons (under changed names).
Burger's depressive and desperate moods grew with his literary acclaim, leading him to write the "Tractatus logico-suicidalis" (1988), a collection of aphorism
s advocating suicide
. The 1046 aphorisms are about the sentence „Gegeben ist der Tod, bitte finden Sie die Lebensursache heraus.“ (Death is given, please finde the cause of life.) The title remembers Ludwig Wittgenstein
's Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus
. The book about suicide was viewed by the critics with sarcasm, and the seriousity of his suicide plans were not recognized. On February 28, 1989 he committed suicide in Brunegg
by taking an overdose of sleeping pills. Not until Burger's death the critics saw similarities to Jean Améry
and his book Hand an sich legen (that Burger knew).
Burger's early promoter Marcel Reich-Ranicki
, literature critic, wrote March 3, 1989, few days after his death, in an obituary: „Hermann Burger war ein Artist, der immer aufs Ganze ging, der sich nicht geschont hat. Er war ein Mensch mit einer großen Sehnsucht nach dem Glück. Die deutsche Literatur hat einen ihrer originellsten Sprachkünstler verloren.“ („Hermann Burger was an artist who went the whole hog every time, didn't conserve himself. He was a man with a big longing for happiness. The German literature has lost one of her most inventive language artists.")
His work - mainly prose - was coined by very precise investigation. He e.g. has sworn the magic oath because he wanted to write about a magician (in Diabelli). The oath created a fascinating new challenge for him: Describing Diabelli's tricks without breaking the oath.
Burger was very faithful in linguistic matters, too. When he was young and wanted to build his style of writing, he did copy passages out of literature (e.g. by Thomas Mann
) and filled their syntax with new content. The protagonists of his novels and narrations try to describe the situation of their lives in a way that is linguistically virtuosic and in love with details. Those protagonists mostly are diseased and the receiver of their texts is very often a higher authority, e.g. the „Inspektorenkonferenz“ (inspector's conference) in "Schilten" (1976).
Switzerland
Switzerland name of one of the Swiss cantons. ; ; ; or ), in its full name the Swiss Confederation , is a federal republic consisting of 26 cantons, with Bern as the seat of the federal authorities. The country is situated in Western Europe,Or Central Europe depending on the definition....
poet
Poet
A poet is a person who writes poetry. A poet's work can be literal, meaning that his work is derived from a specific event, or metaphorical, meaning that his work can take on many meanings and forms. Poets have existed since antiquity, in nearly all languages, and have produced works that vary...
, novelist and essayist. In his creative works Burger often focused on society's lonely outsiders and, increasingly, the inevitability of death. His virtuosity in applying literary styles and use of thorough research
Research
Research can be defined as the scientific search for knowledge, or as any systematic investigation, to establish novel facts, solve new or existing problems, prove new ideas, or develop new theories, usually using a scientific method...
are significant features of many of his publications.
Life
Hermann Burger was born in 1942 in BurgBurg, Aargau
Burg is a municipality in the district of Kulm in the canton of Aargau in Switzerland.-History:Unter-Rinach Castle, which the village name references, was probably built in the 12th Century. It was the family seat of the lords of Rinach, who were vassals of the Habsburgs...
, Canton of Aargau
Aargau
Aargau is one of the more northerly cantons of Switzerland. It comprises the lower course of the river Aare, which is why the canton is called Aar-gau .-History:...
; his father worked for an insurance company. He enrolled at the ETH Zurich
ETH Zurich
The Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich or ETH Zürich is an engineering, science, technology, mathematics and management university in the City of Zurich, Switzerland....
in 1962 and began studying architecture, but switched to German literature and art history in 1964. The publication of the poetry collection "Rauchsignale" ("Smoke Signals") in 1967 marked the beginning of his literary career, followed by the prose collection Bork in 1970. For the next couple of years Burger focused on his career in literary studies, writing his thesis
Thesis
A dissertation or thesis is a document submitted in support of candidature for an academic degree or professional qualification presenting the author's research and findings...
on Paul Celan
Paul Celan
Paul Celan was a poet and translator...
and his habilitation treatise on contemporary Swiss literature
Swiss literature
There is no such thing as a Swiss national vernacular literature, as there is no dominant national language. The four main languages of French, Italian, German and Romansch form the four branches which make up a literature of Switzerland...
. He taught at universities in Zurich
Zürich
Zurich is the largest city in Switzerland and the capital of the canton of Zurich. It is located in central Switzerland at the northwestern tip of Lake Zurich...
, Bern and Fribourg
Fribourg
Fribourg is the capital of the Swiss canton of Fribourg and the district of Sarine. It is located on both sides of the river Saane/Sarine, on the Swiss plateau, and is an important economic, administrative and educational center on the cultural border between German and French Switzerland...
and worked as a literary editor for the Aargauer Tagblatt. His academic experience is reflected in the loosely autobiographical novel "Die künstliche Mutter" ("The Artificial Mother") which won him the Conrad-Ferdinand-Meyer-Preis
Conrad-Ferdinand-Meyer-Preis
The Conrad-Ferdinand-Meyer-Preis is a literary award in memory of Conrad Ferdinand Meyer.The prize is given annually to up to three recipients by the Conrad Ferdinand Meyer-Stiftung in Zurich.-Laureates:*1938 Max Frisch*1939 Franz Fischer...
in 1980. It was dedicated to his wife and its first edition has the dedication „Für Anne Marie“.
Burger's first major novel "Schilten. Schulbericht zuhanden der Inspektorenkonferenz" ("Schilten. School Report for the Attention of the Inspectors' Conference") was published in 1976 and made into a movie by Swiss film director Beat Kuert in 1979. It is about a teacher who has to tell the conference of inspectors about the development of his pupils, but speaks about death cult, graveyards and burials in a very detailed way. Archetypes of this novels are Franz Kafka
Franz Kafka
Franz Kafka was a culturally influential German-language author of short stories and novels. Contemporary critics and academics, including Vladimir Nabokov, regard Kafka as one of the best writers of the 20th century...
and Thomas Bernhard
Thomas Bernhard
Thomas Bernhard was an Austrian novelist, playwright and poet. Bernhard, whose body of work has been called "the most significant literary achievement since World War II," is widely considered to be one of the most important German-speaking authors of the postwar era.- Life :Thomas Bernhard was...
. Burger mixes reality and fiction, and the more one reads about him, the more one finds out, that Burger writes about himself, his own suffering.
He won the Ingeborg Bachmann Prize
Ingeborg Bachmann Prize
The Festival of German-Language Literature, formerly Ingeborg Bachmann Prize, is a literary competition which takes place yearly in Klagenfurt, Austria...
in 1985 for his story "Die Wasserfallfinsternis von Badgastein" ("The Waterfall-Eclipse of Badgastein"). 1988, a changing of publishers from S. Fischer to Suhrkamp took place in a spectacular way.
The novel "Brenner" (in two volumes, four were planned), shows a protagonist wrapped in cigar smoke, who tells his life - Burger himself was a cigar smoker and descendant of cigar producers. Volume 1 has exactly 25 capitles, like a cigar box contains 25 cigars. Each capitle's name contains the name of a famous cigar brand. The second capitle announces the author's suicide intention: A red Ferrari is bought, because saving money no longer makes sense. It is about the divorce and the grief about having no contact to his two kids. Burger's last lessor was emeritus historian Jean Rudolf von Salis (= „Jérôme von Castelmur-Bondo“ in the novel). The last months of Burger's life and a review on his 46 years are described detailed in this roman a clef
Roman à clef
Roman à clef or roman à clé , French for "novel with a key", is a phrase used to describe a novel about real life, overlaid with a façade of fiction. The fictitious names in the novel represent real people, and the "key" is the relationship between the nonfiction and the fiction...
, he describes all coining persons (under changed names).
Burger's depressive and desperate moods grew with his literary acclaim, leading him to write the "Tractatus logico-suicidalis" (1988), a collection of aphorism
Aphorism
An aphorism is an original thought, spoken or written in a laconic and memorable form.The term was first used in the Aphorisms of Hippocrates...
s advocating suicide
Suicide
Suicide is the act of intentionally causing one's own death. Suicide is often committed out of despair or attributed to some underlying mental disorder, such as depression, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, alcoholism, or drug abuse...
. The 1046 aphorisms are about the sentence „Gegeben ist der Tod, bitte finden Sie die Lebensursache heraus.“ (Death is given, please finde the cause of life.) The title remembers Ludwig Wittgenstein
Ludwig Wittgenstein
Ludwig Josef Johann Wittgenstein was an Austrian philosopher who worked primarily in logic, the philosophy of mathematics, the philosophy of mind, and the philosophy of language. He was professor in philosophy at the University of Cambridge from 1939 until 1947...
's Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus
Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus
The Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus is the only book-length philosophical work published by the Austrian philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein in his lifetime. It was an ambitious project: to identify the relationship between language and reality and to define the limits of science...
. The book about suicide was viewed by the critics with sarcasm, and the seriousity of his suicide plans were not recognized. On February 28, 1989 he committed suicide in Brunegg
Brunegg
Brunegg is a municipality in the district of Lenzburg in the canton of Aargau in Switzerland.-History:Brunegg is first mentioned in first half of the 12th Century as Bruneco. In 1273 it was mentioned as Brunegge. Brunegg castle was built on a hill at the edge of the Jura mountains in the 13th...
by taking an overdose of sleeping pills. Not until Burger's death the critics saw similarities to Jean Améry
Jean Améry
Jean Améry , born Hanns Chaim Mayer, was an Austrian-born essayist whose work was often informed by his experiences during World War II...
and his book Hand an sich legen (that Burger knew).
Burger's early promoter Marcel Reich-Ranicki
Marcel Reich-Ranicki
Marcel Reich-Ranicki is a Polish-born German literary critic and member of the literary group Gruppe 47. He is regarded as one of the most influential contemporary literary critics in the field of German literature and therefore was in Germany often called the 'Pope of literature' .-Life:Marcel...
, literature critic, wrote March 3, 1989, few days after his death, in an obituary: „Hermann Burger war ein Artist, der immer aufs Ganze ging, der sich nicht geschont hat. Er war ein Mensch mit einer großen Sehnsucht nach dem Glück. Die deutsche Literatur hat einen ihrer originellsten Sprachkünstler verloren.“ („Hermann Burger was an artist who went the whole hog every time, didn't conserve himself. He was a man with a big longing for happiness. The German literature has lost one of her most inventive language artists.")
His work - mainly prose - was coined by very precise investigation. He e.g. has sworn the magic oath because he wanted to write about a magician (in Diabelli). The oath created a fascinating new challenge for him: Describing Diabelli's tricks without breaking the oath.
Burger was very faithful in linguistic matters, too. When he was young and wanted to build his style of writing, he did copy passages out of literature (e.g. by Thomas Mann
Thomas Mann
Thomas Mann was a German novelist, short story writer, social critic, philanthropist, essayist, and 1929 Nobel Prize laureate, known for his series of highly symbolic and ironic epic novels and novellas, noted for their insight into the psychology of the artist and the intellectual...
) and filled their syntax with new content. The protagonists of his novels and narrations try to describe the situation of their lives in a way that is linguistically virtuosic and in love with details. Those protagonists mostly are diseased and the receiver of their texts is very often a higher authority, e.g. the „Inspektorenkonferenz“ (inspector's conference) in "Schilten" (1976).
List of works
- Rauchsignale (1967) poems
- Bork (1970) prose pieces
- Schilten. Schulberichtzuhanden der Inspektorenkonferenz (1976) monologue
- Diabelli (1979) stories
- Kirchberger idyllen (1980) poems
- Die Künstliche Mutter (1982) novel
- Ein Mann aus Wörtern (1983)
- Die allmähliche Verfertigung der Idee beim Schreiben (1986)
- BlankenburgBlankenburgBlankenburg may refer to:* Blankenburg am Harz, a German town in the district of Harz, Saxony-Anhalt* Blankenburg Castle , the castle in Blankenburg am Harz * Bad Blankenburg, a German town in the Saalfeld-Rudolstadt district of Thuringia...
(1986) stories - Als Autor auf der Stör (1987)
- Der Schuss auf die Kanzel. Eine Erzählung (1988)
- Tractatus logico-suicidalis. Über die Selbsttötung (1988)
- BrennerBrennerBrenner might refer to:* The Brenner Pass, one of the major passes through the Alps, linking Italy and Austria* Brenner, a municipality in South Tyrol* Brenner Base Tunnel railway tunnel through the base of the Brenner massif.* Brenner...
(volume 1 published in 1989; volume 2 published posthumously in 1992)
Awards
- 1977 - Award of the Schweizerische Schillerstiftung for Schilten
- 1980 - Conrad Ferdinand MeyerConrad Ferdinand MeyerConrad Ferdinand Meyer was a Swiss poet and historical novelist, a master of realism chiefly remembered for stirring narrative ballads like "Die Füße im Feuer" .-Biography:...
-Award - 1983 - Friedrich HölderlinFriedrich HölderlinJohann Christian Friedrich Hölderlin was a major German lyric poet, commonly associated with the artistic movement known as Romanticism. Hölderlin was also an important thinker in the development of German Idealism, particularly his early association with and philosophical influence on his...
-Award of Bad Homburg for Die künstliche Mutter - 1984 - Aargau Literature Award
- 1985 - Ingeborg BachmannIngeborg BachmannIngeborg Bachmann was an Austrian poet and author.-Biography:Bachmann was born in Klagenfurt, in the Austrian state of Carinthia, the daughter of a headmaster. She studied philosophy, psychology, German philology, and law at the universities of Innsbruck, Graz, and Vienna...
-Award for Die Wasserfallfinsternis von Badgastein, ein Hydrotestament in fünf Sätzen (in: Blankenburg) - 1986 - Work order of the Stiftung Pro HelvetiaPro HelvetiaThe foundation Pro Helvetia is a public foundation of Switzerland, held by Confédération Suisse.-Presidents:*From 1939 to 1943, Heinrich Häberlin.*From 1944 to 1952, Paul Lachenal.*From 1952 to 1964, Jean-Rodolphe de Salis....
- 1988 - "Gesamtwerkspreis" of the Schweizerische Schillerstiftung
External links
- http://www.cpw-online.de/lemmata/burger_hermann.htm
- http://hermann_burger.know-library.net/
- http://www.svbbpt.ch/Literatur/deutsch/treschT12.htm