Friedrich Dürrenmatt

Dürrenmatt was born in Konolfingen, canton of Bern, the son of a Protestant pastor. His grandfather, Ulrich Dürrenmatt, was a conservative politician. The family moved to Bern in 1935. Dürrenmatt began studies in philosophy, German philology, and German literature at the University of Zürich in 1941, but moved to the University of Bern after one semester where he also studied natural science. During his time as a student, he was briefly a member of the Fröntler (Frontists), a far-right movement parallel to those of National Socialism in the German Reich and fascism in Italy. He later attributed this activity to a desire to rebel against his father. In 1943, he decided to become an author and dramatist and dropped his academic career. In 1945–46, he wrote his first play It Is Written (later revised as The Anabaptists: A Comedy in Two Acts). Dürrenmatt traveled in 1969 to the United States, in 1974 to Israel, and in 1990 to Auschwitz in Poland. In 1990 he gave two famous speeches, one in honour of Václav Havel ("Die Schweiz – ein Gefängnis/Switzerland – A Prison") on discovering that he had been spied on for five decades, along with 800,000 of his left-leaning fellow citizens, by the Swiss secret service; the other in honour of Mikhail Gorbachev ("Kants Hoffnung/Kant's Hope"). Dürrenmatt often compared the three Abrahamic religions and Marxism, which he also saw as a religion. Dürrenmatt died from heart failure on 14 December 1990 in Neuchâtel aged 69. From a young age and throughout his lifetime, Dürrenmatt also enjoyed painting, although this largely remained a private passion. Some of his works and his drawings were exhibited in Neuchâtel in 1976 and 1985 and in Zürich in 1978. Since 2000, over 1,000 of his artistic works have been exhibited in the Centre Dürrenmatt Neuchâtel, part of the Swiss National Library. The museum was designed by Mario Botta and constructed around the author's former home.

On 11 October 1946, Dürrenmatt married the actress Lotti Geißler. They first lived in Basel, where their son Peter was born in 1947, before relocating to Ligerz, a village in the canton of Bern. The couple's second child, Barbara, was born in 1949, followed by Ruth in 1951. Geißler died on 16 January 1983, plunging Dürrenmatt into a personal and professional crisis. In 1984, Dürrenmatt married actress and director Charlotte Kerr whom he met while working on a documentary in the months following Geißler's death. Kerr recorded her memories of the couple's shared life in her book Die Frau im roten Mantel (The Woman in the Red Coat).

Like Bertolt Brecht, Dürrenmatt explored the dramatic possibilities of epic theatre. Next to Brecht he has been called its "most original theorist". When he was 26 his first play, It Is Written (Es steht geschrieben), premiered to great controversy. The story of the play revolves around a battle between a sensation-craving cynic and a religious fanatic who takes scripture literally, all of this taking place while the city they live in is under siege. The play's opening night in April 1947 caused fights and protests in the audience. Between 1948 and 1949 Dürrenmatt wrote several segments and sketches for the anti-Nazi Cabaret Cornichon in Zürich including the short single-act grotesque play The Rescued (Der Gerettete). His first major success was the play Romulus the Great. Set in the year A.D. 476, the play explores the last days of the Roman Empire, presided over and brought about by its last emperor, Romulus. As his most widely performed and translated play, The Visit (Der Besuch der alten Dame, 1956) is often regarded as Dürrenmatt's best work. It is a grotesque fusion of comedy and tragedy about a wealthy woman who offers the people of her hometown a fortune if they will avenge the wrongs done to her. The satirical drama The Physicists (Die Physiker, 1962), which deals with issues concerning science and its responsibility for dramatic and dangerous changes to the world, has also been presented in translation. Dürrenmatt announced his intention in 1970 to abandon literature, instead adapting established works for theatre. He went on to write detective novels and critical essays. His radio plays published in English include Hercules in the Augean Stables (Herkules und der Stall des Augias, 1954), Incident at Twilight (Abendstunde im Spätherbst, 1952) and The Mission of the Vega (Das Unternehmen der Wega, 1954). The two late works Labyrinth and Turmbau zu Babel are a collection of unfinished ideas, stories and philosophical thoughts.

His novel, A Dangerous Game (also known as Die Panne (Traps)) was adapted into a Marathi play, Shantata! Court Chalu Aahe (Silence! The Court Is in Session) by Indian playwright Vijay Tendulkar in 1967. The play has since then been performed in various Indian languages, and made into a film by the same name by Satyadev Dubey. It was also adapted into the 2021 Hindi feature film Chehre. His play The Visit has been adapted and Indianised into a play called Miss.Meena by Chennai-based theatre group 'perch'. The Visit has also been adapted as a musical by Kander and Ebb. His play Incident at Twilight has been adapted into a play called Sann 2025 by Piyush Mishra. In November 2024, Ian McDiarmid adapted A Conversation at Night and An Incident at Twilight under the name Different Truths for BBC Radio Drama on 3. It featured Ian McDiarmid, Jim Broadbent, Michael Moreland and Ian Dunnett Jnr.