Peter Bichsel

Bichsel, Peter (Lucerne, 1935- ), grew up in Olten, Switzerland, then trained and for 13 years worked as a primary-school teacher in Solothurn before becoming a freelance writer in (1968; from now on his interest in left-wing politics, initially expressed in the columns of various Swiss newspapers, led to a more active involvement, notably as the adviser for the social-democrat Bundesrat, Willi Ritschard, from 1973 to 1980.

His early poetry, reflecting his preoccupation with Kurt Schwitters and the Dadaist movement (see Dadaismus), had appeared in the 1950s, and he had already acted as co-author of the novel Das Gästehaus (1965), the result of a writing colloquium led by Walter Höllerer. But it was with the collection of short stories, Eigentlich möchte Frau Blum den Milchmann kennenlernen (1964)—21 prose miniatures relating a series of missed opportunities, unfulfilled desires, and unspoken words—that Bichsel made his debut and won instant acclaim. In 1965 he was awarded the prize of Gruppe 47 for his rather more controversial prose work, Die Jahreszeiten (1967), the grotesquely realistic portrait of a house and its inhabitants, which has the length, if not the coherence, of a novel. While the narrator sets out to give an accurate and detailed description of the house, he is also determined to tell a story; but he is frustrated by the inadequacies of language as well as by his own lack of imagination. His attempt to create a purely fictional character, by the name of Kieninger, ends in failure, and he has to admit to being unable to sustain the effort involved in keeping him alive. A further collection of short stories, Kindergeschichten (1969), again met with remarkable success. The protagonists of the seven stories, all with their own particular eccentricities, rebel against the immutability of the world around them, but their dogged determination to effect a change ends only in their isolation.

In his theoretical work, Der Leser. Das Erzählen (Frankfurter Poetik-Vorlesungen, 1982), Bichsel pleads for the imaginative cultivation of the art of story-telling and for a literature in which the contents are merely a pretext for a far more fundamental human need: that of communication. The collection of stories Der Busant. Von Trinkern, Polizisten und der schönen Magelone (1985) illustrate these ideas.

In his various collections of short stories Bichsel continues the tradition of J. P. Hebel's Kalendergeschichten and of the short prose of Robert Walser, but he paints a far bleaker picture than his literary predecessors, as he describes the comfortless, uneventful realities of everyday life in a dry, resigned tone, and with a succinctness lightened only by his rather droll sense of humour.

Other works include Des Schweizers Schweiz (1969), in which Bichsel talks openly about his relationship to Switzerland and his political stance; Geschichten zur falschen Zeit (1979), Schulmeistereien (1985), Irgendwo anderswo (1986), and Im Gegenteil (1990), all collections of essays and prose which originally appeared in newspapers; and Zur Stadt Paris (1993), a collection of short stories and prose miniatures in which the art of story-telling is explored still further.

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Peter Bichsel (born March 24, 1935) is a popular Swiss-German writer and journalist representing modern German literature. He was a member of the Gruppe Olten.

Bichsel was born 1935 in Lucerne, Switzerland, the son of manual labourers. Shortly after he was born, the Bichsels moved to Olten, also in Switzerland. After finishing school, he became an elementary school teacher, a job which he held until 1968. From 1974 to 1981 he was the personal advisor of Willy Ritschard, a member of the Swiss Federal Council. Between 1972 and 1989 he made his mark as a "writer in residence" and a guest lecturer at American universities. Bichsel has lived on the outskirts of Solothurn for several decades.

One of his first and most well-known works is And Really Frau Blum Would Very Much Like to Meet the Milkman (translated from the German by Michael Hamburger in 1968). Not as short as this first one, his children's stories were just as successful. For the most part, Bichsel's works for younger readers address the stubborn desire of children to take words literally and wreak havoc on the world of communicated ideas. In the early 1970s and 1980s, Bichsel's journalistic work pushed his literary work mainly into the background. Only Der Busant (1985) and Warten in Baden-Baden appeared again to have the Bichsel style that was so familiar to German readers. Peter Bichsel gave up being a professional teacher early in his lifetime, yet he has continued to teach his readers that the drudgery and banality of life is of our own making. Conversely, we have every opportunity to prevent our lives from being boring. This theme has helped make Peter Bichsel a symbol of German literary work today.

Awards

• 1965 Prize of "Group 47"
• 1970 Deutscher Jugendbuchpreis
• 1981/82 Stadtschreiber von Bergen
• 1996 Mainzer Stadtschreiber
• 1999 Gottfried-Keller-Preis
• 2004 Honorary Doctor of Theology, University of Basel

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