Niklaus Meienberg

In New York City he worked as a clerk for the Federation of Migros Cooperatives and in Vancouver, Canada, as a bulldozer driver.

As a main subject, he chose history (at the University of Fribourg, then at the ETH Zurich and later thanks to a stipend, in Paris).

Meienberg, who was represented by leftist Moritz Leuenberger, a later member of the Bundesrat (Swiss Federal Council), won the process against the two sons of Wille.

The title in turn seems to be a reference to German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer’s (1788–1860) main work “Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung” (“The World as Will and Representation”, sometimes also known in English as “The World as Will and Idea”) Meienberg's penmanship found a lot few other sophisticated word-plays, too: In "Die Erschiessung des Landesverräters Ernst S." he calls the traitor's execution "Tells Geschoss" (Tell's projectile"), because the executor shot through the betrayer's eye, like Tell shot through an apple, and the macabre punchline is as follows: in German, the "eyeball" is literally called "eye apple".

Even Meienberg's book's titles attest a liking for word jokes (e.g. "The make-believing of true facts" that inverts "Die Vorspiegelung falscher Tatsachen", which is a set phrase in the world of German-speaking courts and jurisdiction.)

The above-mentioned report is partially based on photographs of unpublished letters that Wille wrote to his wife.

In the Afterword, Meienberg, admitted this fact as follows: The guard commanding supervisor of the local museum Meilen never had flipped open the book, but was happy that its content pleased me and photographer Roland Gretler that much, and didn’t mind me excerpting any passages of the text or Roland Gretler integrally photographing a few dozens of pages.

The Austrian writer Erich Hackl thinks, Meienberg killed himself, because he was no longer able to cope with the direction of the world.

Her book received rather bad reviews in Switzerland's papers and magazines, only in Germany were some positive voices.