Widmer, Urs 1938-

PERSONAL: Born May 21, 1938, in Basel, Switzerland; married; children: one daughter. Education: Earned Ph.D.

MEMBER: Deutsche Akademie für Sprache und Dichtung, Akademie der Kiinste Berlin-Brandenburg.

AWARDS, HONORS: Karl-Sczuka-Preis, 1974; Hör-spielpreis, Kriegsblinden, 1976, for the radio play “Fernsehabend”; prize from Schweizerischen Schiller-stiftung, 1985; Basler Literaturpreis, 1989; award from the Canton of Zurich, 1989, for Der Kongreβ der Paläolepidopterolgen; prize from Siidwestfunk-Literaturmagazins, 1992, for Der blaue Siphon; Kunst-preis der Stadt Zürich, 1995; Kunstpreis der Gemeinde Zollikon, 1997; 3sat-Innovationspreis, Mülheimer Dramatikerpreis, and von der Zeitschrift Theater heute, all 1997, for Top Dogs; Heimito von Doderer Literatur-preis, 1998; Kulturpreis, Gemeinde Riehen, 1999; Ehrengabe des Kantons Zürich im Bereich Literatur, 2000; Bertolt-Brecht-Literaturpreis, City of Augsburg, 2001; Franz-Nabl-Preis, City of Graz, 2002; GroBer Literaturpreis, Bayerischen Akademie der Schönen Kün-ste, 2002; audience prize, Radio Suisse Romande an-läBlich des Salon International du Livre et de la Presse in Genf, 2002, for Der Geliebte der Mutter; Mainzer Stadtschreiber-Preis, 2003; Preis der Schweizerischen Schillerstiftung, 2004; Anerkennungsgabe der Stadt Zürich, 2004; jury prize, Italo-Svevo Preises, 2006; named gastdozent für Poetik, University of Frankfurt, 2007; Prix Littéraire Lipp Suisse, 2007, for Das Buch des Vaters, 2007; Friedrich-Holderlin-Preis, City of Bad Homburg, 2007.

WRITINGS:

1945 [Neunzehnhundertfünfundvierzig] oder die “Neue Sprache,” Padagogisscher Verlag (Düsseldorf, West Germany), 1966.

Alois, Diogenes (Zurich, Switzerland), 1968, published with Die Amsel im Regen im Garten, 1988.

(With Jürgen Becker) WDR Hörspielbuch, Westdeut-scher Rundfunk (Cologne, West Germany), 1969.

Die Amsel im Regen im Gerten, Diogenes (Zurich, Switzerland), 1971.

Der richterliche Eingriff in den Vertrag, Aku-Fotodruck (Zurich, Switzerland), 1971.

Das Normale und die Sehnsucht (essays), Diogenes (Zurich, Switzerland), 1972.

Die lange Nacht der Detektive: Kriminalstück in 3 Akten (play; produced in Basel, Switzerland, at Basler Theater, 1973), Diogenes (Zurich, Switzerland), 1973.

Das Vermächtnis der Miss D. Awdrey-Gore, Diogenes (Zurich, Switzerland), 1974.

Die Forschungsreise, Diogenes (Zurich, Switzerland), 1974.

Stellung und Entwicklung der schweizerischen Papier-industrie im Lichte der wirtschaftlichen Integration Europas (thesis on the paper box industry), Peter Lang (Bern, Switzerland), 1974.

Schweizer Geschichten, Hallway (Stuttgart, West Germany), 1975.

Das jüngst entjungferte Madchen, Diogenes (Zurich, Switzerland), 1975.

Die gelben Manner (novel), Diogenes (Zurich, Switzerland), 1976.

Vom Fenster meinse Hauses aus, Diogenes (Zurich, Switzerland), 1977.

Nepal: Stuck in der Basler Umgangssprache (play;produced in Frankfurt, West Germany, at StadtischeBiihnen, 1977), Diogenes (Zurich, Switzerland), 1977.

(Coauthor) Erklarung einiger Dinge, Langewiesche-Brandt (Munich, West Germany), 1978.

(With Max Zaugg) Hand und Fuss, Moon Press (The Hague, Netherlands), 1978.

(Coauthor) Shakespeares Geschichten: Alle Stücke von William Shakespeare, Diogenes (Zurich, Switzerland), 1978.

Suomei und ihr Netz (textbook), R. Mayer (Munich, West Germany), 1979.

(With Thomas Bodmer) Das Urs Widmer Lesebuch, Diogenes (Zurich, Switzerland), 1980.

Zust oder die Aufschneider: Ein Traumspiel (play; produced in Frankfurt, West Germany, at Schaus-piel Frankfurt, 1981), Diogenes (Zurich, Switzerland), 1980.

Das enge Land (novel), Diogenes (Zurich, Switzerland), 1981.

Liebesnacht, Diogenes (Zurich, Switzerland), 1982.

Fernsehabend, Grasl (Baden, West Germany), 1983.

Die gestohlene Schöpfung: Ein Märchen, Diogenes (Zurich, Switzerland), 1984.

Indianersommer, Diogenes (Zurich, Switzerland), 1985.

(Coauthor) Alltag-Knalltag: Guten-Morgen-Satiren, Fischer Tasenbuch (Frankfurt, West Germany), 1985.

Nepal/Der neue Noah: Zwie Stucke (play; produced in Zurich, Switzerland, at Schauspielhaus Zürich, 1984), Verlag der Autoren (Frankfurt, West Germany), 1986.

Stan und Ollie in Deutschland (play; produced in Munich, West Germany, at TamS Miinchen, 1979), Verlag der Autoren (Frankfurt, West Germany), 1987.

Das Verschwinden der Chinesen im neuen Jahr, Diogenes (Zurich, Switzerland), 1987.

Alles klar (play), produced in Zurich, Switzerland, at Theater am Neumarkt, 1987.

(Contributor) Paul Camenisch (exhibition catalog), Editions Galerie Specht (Basel, Switzerland), 1987.

Auf auf ihr Hirten! Die Kuh haut ab!, Diogenes (Zurich, Switzerland), 1988.

Liebesnacht; die gestohlene Schopfung; Indiansommer (collection), Verlag Volk und Welt (Berlin, Germany), 1988.

Der Kongrefi der Palaolepidopterolgen (novel), Diogenes (Zurich, Switzerland), 1989.

Das Fahnlein der sieben Aufrechten, K. Wagenbach (Berlin, Germany), 1989.

Das Paradies des Vergessens (short stories), Diogenes (Zurich, Switzerland), 1990.

(With others) Josefine Mutzenbacher, oder, Die Geschichte einer Wienerischen Dime von ihr selbst erzahlt (novel), Schneekluth (Munich, Germany), 1990.

(With Machael Ruetz) Schweiz, Süiddeutscher (Munich, Germany), 1990.

Frolicher—Ein Fest (play), produced in Zurich, Switzerland, at Theaterhaus Gessnerallee, 1991.

Die sechste Puppe im Bauche der funften Puppe im Bauch der vierten und andere Uberlegungen zur Literatur, Literaturverlag Droschl (Graz, Austria), 1991.

Der blaue Siphon (short stories), Diogenes (Zurich, Switzerland), 1992.

Der Sprung in der Schussel (play; produced in Munich, Germany, at TamS Miinchen, 1990), Verlag der Autoren (Frankfurt, Germany), 1992.

(With Urs Rauber) Jeanmarie: Ein Stuck Scheiz (play; produced in Bern-Liebefeld, Switzerland, at Auffiihrungshalle Konizstrasse 161, 1992), Verlagder Autoren (Frankfurt, Germany), 1992.

Herz der Finsternis: Mit dem “Dongo-Tagebuch” unddem “Up-river Book” sowie einem Nachwort imAnhang, Haffmans (Zurich, Switzerland), 1992.

Liebesbrief fur Mary (novel), Diogenes (Zurich, Switzerland), 1993.

1945 nachgetragen: In den Triuimmern von Darmstadt(history), E. Roether Verlag (Darmstadt, Germany), 1995.

Im Kongo (novel), Diogenes (Zurich, Switzerland), 1996.

(With others) Gesange der Hammer, O. Muller(Salzburg, Austria), 1996.

Top Dogs (play; produced in Zurich, Switzerland, atTheater am Neumarkt, 1996), Verlag der Autoren(Frankfurt, Germany), 1997.

(With others) Der Pensionierte: Fragment eines Kriminalromans, Diogenes (Zurich, Switzerland), 1997.

Urs Widmer, Edition Text + Kritik (Munich, Germany), 1998.

Vor uns die Sintflut, Diogenes (Zurich, Switzerland), 1998.

Der Geliebte der Mutter (novel), Diogenes (Zurich, Switzerland), 2000.

Bankgeheimnisse (play), produced in Zurich, Switzerland, at Theaterhaus Gessnerallee, 2001.

Das Geld, die Arbeit, die Angst, das Gluck (columns and essays), Diogenes (Zurich, Switzerland), 2002.

Das Buch des Vaters: Roman, (novel), Diogenes (Zurich, Switzerland), 2004.

(Reteller) Shakespeares Konigsdramen, illustrated by Paul Flora, Diogenes (Zurich, Switzerland), 2004.

Ein Leben als Zwerg, Diogenes (Zurich, Switzerland), 2006.

Vom Leben, vom Tod und vom Ubrigen auch dies und das, Diogenes (Zurich, Switzerland), 2007.

Author of more than thirty radio plays. Contributor to books, including Die schwarze Spinne: Nach der Erzahlung von Jeremias Gotthelf, Verlag der Autoren (Frankfurt, Germany), 1998.

SIDELIGHTS: Urs Widmer produces fiction in a variety of formats. He writes plays, such as Top Dogs, in which the audience is challenged by actors portraying “themselves” as characters. As Theatre Journal critic Thomas Apple pointed out, the play “has to do with the personal and social consequences of hyperorganized workplaces populated by appropriately hyperorganized workers.” In such prose works as Das Paradies des Vergessens and Der blaue Siphon, Widmer “cultivates the short form, mininovels in which he nevertheless compresses astonishingly complex plots,” according to Sigrid Bauschinger, writing in World Literature Today. Reviewing Das Paradies des Vergessens, Bauschinger noted that in just one hundred pages, Widmer manages to fit three interconnected tales centered on a writer whose run-ins with his contentious publisher mirror the plots of his stories. That motif is taken up in Der blaue Siphon, in which a writer has visions of doom triggered by war memories. While brief, said Bauschinger, this book is also “filled with an astonishing array of plots and subplots,” with a narrator “constantly [moving] among present, past, and future.”

In 1996, Widmer published Im Kongo, a novel that employs World War II themes, as some of the author’s previous works did. In reviewing the book for German Quarterly, Peter Arnds said that what interests him about German-language novels of the ‘80s and ‘90s “is the continuity of the Fascist experience from past to present that these novels share as a theme. If one applies this principle of continuity to Widmer’s text, the central question is how the Swiss past, Switzerland’s stance vis à vis Nazi Germany, resurfaces in the present as depicted [in the story].” The protagonist, Kuno, is introduced sitting in the Zaire jungle, writing his memoirs on a laptop computer. He recalls his past as a retirement-home employee in Zurich, where his own father and another elderly man reveal their roles in World War II. Kuno himself has Nazi ties—he is in the employ of a Nazi-sympathizer brewer who has sent him to Africa to learn why a brewing plant is failing. The novel takes a surrealistic turn as Kuno and other (white) characters are envisioned as black on their return to Zurich.

In this novel, the Congo functions as a metaphor, wrote Arnds. “In many ways it is the direct opposite of Switzerland, the jungle as opposed to a civilized place, the black continent as opposed to the white one, the freedom of an immense landscape versus the narrowness of a small country in the Alps. But upon closer inspection one finds that the Congo shows parallels with Switzerland.” Specifically, “the parallel of the Swiss forest through which Jewish refugees tried to make their way into freedom with the deadly Zairian jungle is obvious. Often where Widmer speaks of atrocities in the Congo he simultaneously refers to Switzerland, its capture of refugees and their deportation back into Nazi Germany.”

To Arnds, the extent to which “the violence of one historical period is connected to another becomes apparent if one looks at the theme of entrepreneurship in the novel. The jungle brewery…. inscribes a line from colonialism via National Socialism to post-colonial business in the Third World.” The beer produced “quenches the men’s thirst—whether in the desert during the war or in the Congo jungle—and therefore fills them with energy to be violent, but it also seems to facilitate violence because it numbs them to the atrocities.”

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

German Quarterly, fall, 1998, “Into the Heart of Darkness: Switzerland, Hitler, Mobuto, and Joseph Conrad in Urs Widmer’s Novel Im Kongo,” pp. 329-342.

Theatre Journal, May, 1998, review of Top Dogs, p. 262.

World Literature Today, fall, 1991, review of Das Paradies des Vergessens, p. 698; spring, 1993, review of Der blaue Siphon, p. 370.