Walter Matthias Diggelmann(1927-1979)
- Writer
Walter Matthias Diggelmann was born on July 5th 1927 in Zurich
(Switzerland) as an illegitimate child and raised by foster parents.
Although raised in poverty, he managed to enroll in high-school, but
was afterward forced by his step-father to learn the profession of a
watchmaker. Diggelmann committed a minor crime of stealing a watch and
flew to Italy when the police were after him. From Italy his was
deported by the Italian fascists to Dresden where he was arrested by
the Gestapo after having spent some time in prison, before he was
deported back to Switzerland where he was put for a longer time in a
psychiatric clinic. Interrupted by further stays in mental
institutions, he worked as a construction worker, plate-washer,
doorman, grave-digger, journalist, advertisement writer and assistant
director until he won his first prices for his theater pieces just at
the time when he had planned to drown himself in the Lake of Zurich. He
then established himself as a free novelist, play-write, poet and
political journalist, often attacking the systems of capitalist
governments, economy and society in Switzerland and elsewhere. He also
played an important role in supporting people who were prosecuted by
the Swiss government for communist activity while he was prosecuted by
the same government himself. Consequently, his break-through as an
internationally recognized author started with the publications of his
works in Eastern Europe, especially in Hungary. During his career, W. M.
Diggelmann wrote more than 20 novels, dozens of theater pieces, radio
texts, film scenarios and hundreds of political columns. His work was
translated in several languages. Between 2000 and 2006, a selection of
his collected works appeared in 6 volumes. Diggelmann was married three
times. To a wider public he become known through the film by Walter
Marti and Reni Mertens "The self-destruction of W. M. Diggelmann" (1973)
when he appeared on stage with a bottle of wine and a carton of
cigarettes. In his last novel "Shadows. Diary of a Disease" (1979), he
uncompromisingly described step by step the decrease of his body and
mind by brain tumor and cancer. In his last short story "Some last
words of the Great Meinardi in the night of his death" (1979) the
crossing of the border between life and death got probably of the most
impressive descriptions of this topic in world-literature. After having
visited his beloved Hungary for a last time, Diggelmann died on
November 29th, 1979 in the University Hospital in Zurich.