Thomas Bernhard | |
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| Born | Nicolaas Thomas Bernhard (1931-02-09)9 February 1931 Heerlen, Netherlands |
| Died | 12 February 1989(1989-02-12) (aged 58) Gmunden, Austria |
| Occupation | Novelist, playwright |
| Nationality | Austrian |
| Period | 1957–1989 |
| Literary movement | Postmodernism |
| Notable works | Correction Extinction Gathering Evidence Woodcutters |
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| Website | |
| thomasbernhard | |
Nicolaas Thomas Bernhard (German:[ˈtoːmasˈbɛʁnhaʁt]; 9 February 1931 – 12 February 1989) was an Austrian novelist, playwright, poet and polemicist who is considered one of the most important German-language authors of the postwar era. He explored themes of death, isolation, obsession and illness in controversial literature that was pessimistic about thehuman condition and highly critical of post-war Austrian and European culture. He developed a distinctive prose style often featuring multiple perspectives on characters and events, idiosyncratic vocabulary and punctuation, and long monologues by protagonists on the verge of insanity.
Born in the Netherlands to his unwed Austrian mother, for much of his childhood he lived with his maternal grandparents in Austria and in boarding homes in Austria and Nazi Germany. He was closest to his grandfather, the novelist Johannes Freumbichler, who introduced him to literature and philosophy. As a youth, he contractedpleurisy and tuberculosis and lived with debilitating lung disease for the rest of his life. While recovering in a sanatorium he began writing poetry and stories and met Hedwig Stavianicek, a wealthy heiress who supported his literary ambitions and whom he later described as the most important person in his life.
After his breakthrough novelFrost (1963), he established himself over the next 20 years as a leading novelist and playwright in German. His major works include the novelsCorrection (1975) andExtinction (1986) and his memoirsGathering Evidence (1975–82).George Steiner called him "at his best, the foremost craftsman of German prose afterKafka andMusil".[1] He influenced the Austrian vernacular and a younger generation of Austrian writers includingElfriede Jelinek.
Bernhard was controversial in Austria for his public polemics against what he saw as his homeland's post-war cultural pretensions, antisemitism, provincialism, and denial of its Nazi past. While critics labelled him aNestbeschmutzer (one who fouls his own nest), he described himself as a troublemaker. He died of heart failure in his apartment inGmunden, Upper Austria, in February 1989. Controversy extended beyond his death when it was revealed that his will sought to prohibit the publication or performance of his works in Austria for 70 years.
Thomas Bernhard was born on 9 February 1931 inHeerlen, the Netherlands, where his unmarried Austrian mother, Herta Bernhard, worked as a maid. In the autumn of 1931, Herta took Thomas to Vienna to live with her parents: Anna Bernhard and her de facto husband, the novelist Johannes Freumbichler. (Thomas never met his biological father, Alois Zuckerstätter, who refused to acknowledge him and committed suicide in 1940.)[2][3]
In 1935, Herta's parents moved with Thomas to Seekirchen, near Salzburg. In 1936, Herta married Emil Fabjan and the following year moved with him and Thomas toTraunstein,Bavaria, inNazi Germany.[4] Fabjan never adopted Thomas, and Bernhard always referred to him as his guardian rather than his stepfather.[5] Herta's parents moved to the nearby village of Ettendorf in 1939.[6] Bernhard was closest to his grandfather and later called him "an anarchist, if only in spirit."[7] Freumbichler introduced Bernhard to literature and philosophy and was a major influence on his life.[8]
Bernhard was miserable in the Nazi school system where he was required to join theDeutsches Jungvolk, a branch of theHitler Youth, which he hated. At age eight, he was sent to a home for maladjusted children and at age 12 to a boarding school in Salzburg where he experienced allied bombing raids.[9] After the war, the Fabjan and Freumbichler families moved to Salzburg where Bernhard continued his schooling. In 1947, Bernhard left school to start an apprenticeship with a grocer.[10]
Bernhard took private singing lessons and aspired to become an opera singer. In early 1949, he developed pleurisy and was eventually diagnosed with tuberculosis. He stayed in various hospitals and sanatoriums until January 1951. Bernhard's grandfather died in 1949 and his mother died of cancer the following year.[10]
In 1950, while staying at the Grafenhofsanatorium inSankt Veit im Pongau, Bernhard met Hedwig Stavianicek (1894–1984), a wealthy heiress who was more than thirty-seven years his senior. Stavianicek was to provide him with financial and emotional support and introductions to patrons of art and culture. Bernhard later called her hisLebensmensch (a predominantly Austrian term coined by Bernhard which refers to the most important person in one's life). He cared for her in her home in Vienna in the last months of her life in 1984.[11]
From 1951 to 1955, Bernhard worked as a court reporter and cultural journalist for the Salzburg newspaperDemokratisches Volksblatt. He continued his private singing lessons and had poems and short stories published in theVolksblatt and other publications. In late 1955, he published a scathing critique of theSalzburger Landestheater and the ensuing controversy ended his journalistic career. From autumn 1955 to 1957, with the financial support of Stavianicek, he studied acting and singing at the SalzburgMozarteum.[12] There he met a music student Ingrid Bülau. They became lifelong friends and at one point considered marriage.[12]
From 1956 to 1960, Bernhard was associated with the literary and cultural groups centred on the magazineStimmen der Gegenwart (Voices of the Present) and the composer Gerhard Lampersberg and his wife, the singer Maja Lampersberg. At this time, Bernhard's first volumes of poetry were published:Auf der Erde und in der Hölle (On Earth and in Hell, 1957),In hora mortis (At the hour of death, 1958), andUnter dem Eisen des Mondes (Under the Steely Moon, 1958). His libretto for Gerhard Lampersberg'sDie Rosen der Einöde (Roses of the Wasteland) was also published in 1958.[13]
From 1960 to 1963 Bernhard travelled extensively in Austria, England and mainland Europe. In 1962, he wrote a novelFrost, which was revised and published in 1963.[14]
Bernhard's poetry received little critical attention butFrost sparked controversy and divided critical opinion. NovelistCarl Zuckmayer praised the novel and it won the Julius Campe Prize and the Bremen Literature Prize. Bernhard's novellaAmras was published in 1964 and, according to biographer Gitta Honegger, consolidated his favourable critical reputation.[15][16] In 1965, Bernhard bought a disused farmhouse in Obernathal,Upper Austria. For the rest of his life he divided most of his time between his farmhouse and Stavianicek's apartment in Vienna.[17]
In 1967, after completing his second novelGargoyles, Bernhard had surgery to remove a tumour from his lungs and spent several months recovering in the Baumgartnerhöhe sanatorium. The following year he was awarded the Austrian Little State Prize for emerging talent. His acceptance speech, in which he stated: ''We are Austrians, we are apathetic; we are life as crass disinterest in life; in the process of nature we are megalomania..." caused an uproar and an angry response from the Austrian minister for culture. The following year, the ceremony for the Anton Wildgans Prize was cancelled when the organisers learned that Bernhard intended to deliver a revised version of the same speech.[18]
In 1970, Bernhard's novelThe Lime Works was published and his first professionally produced play,A Party for Boris, premiered at theDeutsches Schauspielhaus, Hamburg. The production was overseen by German directorClaus Peymann who went on to direct most of Bernhard's premiers.The Lime Works andA Party for Boris earned Bernhard theGeorg Büchner Prize.[19] When Bernhard was awarded theGrillparzer Prize for the same play in 1972, he staged a protest because the organisers of the ceremony did not recognise him and escort him to his seat.[20]
The 1970s was Bernhard's most productive decade. His playsThe Ignoramus and the Madman (1972) andThe Force of Habit: A Comedy (1974) premiered at the Salzburg Festival,The Hunting Party (1974) andThe President (1975) premiered at the Vienna Burgtheater, andMinetti (1976),Immanuel Kant (1978) andThe Eve of Retirement (1979) premiered at the StuttgartStaatstheater under Peymann.[21] His novelCorrection (1975) is widely considered his masterpiece[22][23] and his five volumes of memoirs (1975-82) (collected in English translation asGathering Evidence) achieved critical acclaim.[24]
In 1978, Bernhard was diagnosed withsarcoidosis and a terminal heart complaint. His half-brother Peter Fabjan, a doctor of medicine, moved to Gmunden, near the author's farmhouse, and became his unofficial medical adviser.[25][26] In 1979, Bernhard resigned from the German Academy for Language and Literature when it made the former West German presidentWalter Scheel an honorary member. In a letter to theFrankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung he called the academy pretentious and hypocritical for admitting mediocre politicians.[27]
Bernhard continued his prolific output in the 1980s. Eight new full-length plays were premiered and he wrote a series of novels comprising long monologues by ageing and ill protagonists who Honegger compares to Bernhard in their "race against death."[28] His 1984 novelWoodcutters was controversial for its attack on Austrian culture and cultural figures. Gerhard Lampersberg sued him for defamation but later withdrew his suit. The novel was Bernhard's most commercially successful, selling 60,000 copies within six weeks of publication.[29]
Bernhard frequently engaged in public controversies, writing letters, opinion pieces and satirical sketches for newspapers and magazines in which he attacked politicians, public figures and European culture.[30][31] He was often criticised as aNestbeschmutzer (one who fouls his own nest; that is, Austria)[32] but preferred to call himself a troublemaker.[33] His final playHeldenplatz (1988), commissioned by Vienna's Burgtheater for the celebrations of its centenary, sparked another controversy when the press revealed that it would include attacks on Austria for antisemitism and denial of its Nazi past. Numerous politicians and public figures called for a ban on the production, Bernhard received death threats, and the Burgtheater was guarded by 200 police officers on the opening night of the play in November 1988.[34][35]
Following theHeldenplatz dispute, Bernhard's health deteriorated. He died of heart failure in his apartment in Gmunden on 12 February 1989.[26][36] His reputation as a troublemaker continued beyond the grave when a clause of his will was published, stipulating that none of his works or plays could be performed in Austria for the duration of copyright:[37]
I emphasize expressly that I do not want to have anything to do with the Austrian state and that I reject in perpetuity not only all interference but any overtures in this regard by this Austrian state concerning my person or my work. After my death, not a word shall be published from my papers, wherever such may exist, including letters and scraps of paper.
— Thomas Bernhard, Last will and testament
Most of Bernhard's work has autobiographical elements, although fact and fiction are freely mixed. According to Honegger: "Bernhard's life and work are inextricably intertwined with Austria's convulsive history in the twentieth century."[38]
Bernhard's work presents a pessimistic view of the human condition in which death is an inescapable presence.[39][40] Critic Mark Anderson states, "death in his writing comes as a random, unjustifiable, but unavoidable cut in existence that cancels all previous hope and striving".[41] Literary critic Stephen Dowden states that in Berhard's fiction there is no redemption for man in religion, politics, art or history.[42]
The typical Bernhard protagonist is a middle-aged male who, according to Dowden, is "self-absorbed, histrionically pessimistic, and motivated by a deep loathing of culture and self," but who is nevertheless "strangely charismatic because of the powerful musical language with which he expresses his inner life." His protagonists must "learn to live without recourse to metaphysical lies or utopian deceptions."[43]
Bernhard depicts a postwar Austria steeped in cultural pretensions, antisemitism, denial of its Nazi past and devotion to a morally bankrupt Catholicism.[44] Dowden argues that Austria is often used as a metaphor for the human condition. Just as Austrian history is a story of decline into insignificance, so human beings struggle pointlessly against death; just as Austria engages in self-deception regarding its past and its place in the world, so human beings engage in self-deceptions about the redemptive power of religion, family and culture.[45]
Recurring motifs in Bernhard's work include isolation, incest, madness, chronic illness and suicide.[46][47] Many of Bernhard's characters suffer from mental and physical illness which Dowden sees as metaphors for Bernhard's moral pessimism and the decline of European society and culture.[48] His protagonists are often engaged in failed intellectual and artistic projects in a futile and destructive attempt to achieve perfection and thus transcend death.[49]
In the face of inevitable death, Bernhard's characters often demonstrate a will to survive. Honegger states, "TheÜberlebenskünstler is Bernhard's central archetype: the survival artist as a virtuoso performance artist." Dowden argues that Bernhard's works also attest to a will to rebel against conformity and to develop an independent self-identity: "His entire oeuvre amounts to one unswerving experiment in thinking against the grain, in forcing the imagination to explore the parts of life it resists the most."[50]
Bernhard developed a distinctive prose style which is often described as musical, emphasising the rhythms of Austrian German, repetition of key phrases, and variations on recognisable themes.[51] Anderson states that his prose works "all spring, or appear to spring, from the obsessive monologue going on inside Bernhard’s head, a continuous text uttered by a single droning voice that is endlessly reformulated, corrected, and filtered through a hundred different registers."[52] Honegger distinguishes between Bernhard's early prose which was characterised by multiple perspectives and stylistic experimentation and the late works beginning withYes (1978) which she calls "concerts for a solo mind."[53]
Bernhard's works are known for their distinctive punctuation and vocabulary. Many comprise a stream of long sentences, unbroken by any paragraph or chapter markings.[52] Honegger states: "His verbal inventions have entered the German vocabulary. His constructions of interminably interlocked clauses and sub-clauses stretch the German language to its limit."[54]
The tone of Bernhard's work is often described as satirical, ironic, polemical and unsentimental.[55][56][57] Dowden argues that the extreme and often contradictory views of his protagonists invite the reader to detect ironies and read them as satires. Readers are not expected to accept or reject the opinions of Bernhard's protagonists but to engage with their "verbal struggle against death".[58]
Bernhard's pessimism is often undercut by comedy and black humour. According to Anderson: "The death narrative is always also the record of survival, a survival through a grotesquely jubilant, at times comic writing."[59] Dowden states that "comedy arises when people attempt to create meaning or convince themselves that the world holds something for them....[It is] an austere comedy of catastrophe, despair and mockery."[60]
Bernhard is widely considered one of the most important German-language writers of the second half of the 20th century.[61][62][63] Critics generally consider his major prose works to beCorrection (1975),[64][65]Extinction (1986)[66] and his five volumes of memoirs (1975-82) (collected in English translation asGathering Evidence.)[67]
Bernhard wrote 18 full-length plays, many of which premiered at leading German-language venues including theDeutsches Schauspielhaus in Hamburg, theSalzburg Festival and the ViennaBurgtheater.[68] His plays polarised audiences and critics and often caused media and political controversy for their pessimism and polemics against Austrian and European culture and institutions.[68][69] According to Dowden: "His public was eager to see what powerful figure he would insult next, what enraged outcry he would elicit, who would try to sue him, and how he would respond."[70]
Honegger states that Bernhard's prose style has influenced the German language: "his performative grammar and incendiary vocabulary have been appropriated by politicians of all persuasions, exploited by the media, and imitated by lesser writers."[71] Bernhard has influenced younger Austrian writers includingElfriede Jelinek,Lilian Faschinger,Robert Menasse andJosef Haslinger.[72] Since 2022, the research projectGlobalBernhard at theUniversity of Vienna has been investigating the various forms of literary resonance and commentary that Thomas Bernhard's work has triggered among international authors.[73]
In 1999, Bernhard's literary executor, his half-brother Peter Fabjan, lifted the ban on the performance of his plays in Austria.[74] Although Bernhard stipulated in his will that none of his unpublished writings should be published, this has sometimes been circumvented.[75] Notably, a memoirMy Prizes appeared in 2009[76] and his correspondence with his publisher Siegfried Unseld from 1961 to 1989 – about 500 letters – was published in December 2009.[77] Bernhard's collected works were published in 22 volumes from 2003 to 2015.[78]
The International Thomas Bernhard Society (Internationale Thomas Bernhard Gesellschaft (ITBG)) was founded in 1999.[79] In a collaborative project between the ITGB, theAustrian Academy of Sciences, and the German publishing houseSuhrkamp, the Thomas Bernhard Research Center at the Austrian Center for Digital Humanities createdthomas bernhard in translation, the "first online database of all published translations of Thomas Bernhard's works." As at July 2025, it comprised over 1,000 entries in 42 languages.[80]
Bernhard received numerous awards in recognition of his work. These include:
This partial bibliography lists works by Bernhard by the date of their first publication in separate volumes in commercial editions. Plays are listed by the date of first publication or performance. English translations are listed by date of publication. Unless otherwise stated, the sources are Honegger,[88] Dowden,[89] the International Thomas Bernhard Society,[90] the Thomas Bernhard in Translation database,[91] and the individual works listed.
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