The intellectual border crosser Adolf Muschg turns 90
Published: Monday, May 13th 2024, 09:20
Updated At: Monday, May 13th 2024, 09:20
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Adolf Muschg has joined the ranks of renowned Swiss authors with over forty books. In addition, his name is synonymous with political commitment - sometimes controversial. His wide range of activities also includes academic teaching. He is now 90 years old.
Adolf Muschg has become quieter. It has been around half a year since he appeared in public, last fall at the Hottinger Literaturgespräche or before that at a panel on Goethe's relationship with Andermatt.
He is no longer asked by the media to comment on anything and everything. Nevertheless, he has spoken out, for example in 2022 with a declaration of solidarity with the Ukrainian people after Putin's invasion, an open letter signed by thousands of authors. In the same year, he was one of the co-signatories "against war funding from Switzerland" or for more clarity in relations with the EU, on the 30th anniversary of the EEA rejection.
Prestigious awards
At the age of 75, Muschg received the Gottfried Keller Prize (2019) for his literary work, together with his colleague Thomas Hürlimann. Four years earlier, he was awarded the Swiss Grand Prix Literature for his life's work. These prestigious literary awards followed major honors: the Grand Cross of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany in 2004 and the Georg Büchner Prize in 1994.
His most recent novel is "Aberleben" from 2021, in which Muschg tells the story of an elderly author who discontinues his cancer treatment, leaves his marriage behind and moves away from Switzerland to write a new novel. Muschg himself lives in Männedorf on Zurich's Gold Coast with his third wife, Atsuko Kanto.
He was born on May 13, 1934 in Zollikon near Zurich. Here, on the Gold Coast, he had his first experiences with the liberal establishment, which he repeatedly held up a mirror to with his essays on Switzerland, for example in the volume "O mein Heimatland" (1998).
Muschg studied German, English and philosophy in Zurich and Cambridge before embarking on a university career. This took him to Tokyo Christian University as a lecturer from 1962 to 1964.
Japan became a love for life. He has returned there again and again. The country forms a narrative bracket in his work, from his debut "In the Summer of the Rabbit" (1965) to "Homecoming to Fukushima" (2018).
In 1970, Muschg took over the Chair of Literature at ETH Zurich. The combination of writing and reflection became one of his trademarks. His books stand out for their compositional and stylistic artistry. Sometimes the professorial author spins a web of motifs and allusions, sometimes the clever narrator seduces with playful wit in his texts.
The magnum opus
The two talents come together in the thousand-page novel "The Red Knight" (1993). The work is the fruit of a ten-year examination of the Grail seeker Parzival and at the same time of themselves. The novel about a utopia and its failure, about love and death, masterfully bridges the gap between essay and narrative, literary fiction and personal consternation.
This magnum opus stands out from his oeuvre, which includes prose, plays, essays, a biography of Gottfried Keller and speeches. Not to be forgotten are the Frankfurt Poetry Lectures entitled "Literature as Therapy" (1981). In these lectures, Muschg invokes the therapeutic and subversive power of literature.
In his academic teaching activities, he repeatedly sought ways out of the university environment. In 1994, he founded (together with Heinz F. Schafroth) the legendary "Holocene" reading series for young literary talents at the ETH. Many were there, Ruth Schweikert for example, or Melinda Nadj Abonji with one of her first appearances. In 2003, Muschg also accepted when the ailing Berlin Academy of Arts was looking for a mediating president.
"Existential deformation
His political contributions in particular have led to sometimes heated discussions among the Swiss public. With Gottfried Keller as his leading figure, Muschg, a citizen, has always been a trenchant and persistent advocate of a cosmopolitan, liberal homeland that also sees itself as part of Europe.
Writing was his "déformation existentielle", as he once said, and literature was a form of questioning - also of himself. He was always prepared to expose himself personally, politically and literarily in public. In doing so, he always made himself vulnerable. From time to time, he reacted to criticism provoked by himself with palpable hurt. The controversy with Christoph Blocher, who in 1997 described him as a traitor to the country, remains in his memory. His far-reaching reaction in "O my homeland" then earned him criticism in turn.
Lesser known site
In 2022, filmmaker Erich Schmid juxtaposed this well-known side of the intellectual Muschg with his documentary "Muschg - The Other". A trip to Japan serves as a cinematic bracket. His half-sister Elsa Muschg, the author of the Hansi and Ume stories, paved the way for him.
At the beginning of the film, the author reads from his book "Return to Fukushima". From there, the journey leads back to his childhood, to his father, who was already 60 years old when he was born, and to his mother, who was plagued by severe depression. Muschg speaks here of his devastated family with analytical wisdom and not without bitterness.
The film concludes with a visit to a temple in Kyoto. It shows Muschg getting to know himself in Japan. His literary works play a subordinate role. In "Der weisse Freitag" (2017), he himself wrote that his texts do not come to terms with himself, because "purity is a cold zone". More important than the literary works are the people, as Muschg himself remarks at the end of the documentary on a park bench: the people who have allowed him to "live well with myself".
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