Swiss literature
Dutch Renaissance and Golden Age First in order of date are the Minnesingers, the number of whom in the districts that ultimately formed part of the medieval Swiss Confederation are said to have exceeded thirty.
Nicholas Manuel (1484–1530), a many-sided Bernese, composed satirical poems in German against the pope, while Valerius Anshelm (died 1540), also of Bern, wrote one of the best Swiss chronicles.
Aegidius Tschudi of Glarus, despite great literary activity, published but a single German work in his lifetime, the Uralt warhafflig Alpisch Rhaetia sam pt dem Tract der anderen Alpgebirgen (1538) besides his map of Switzerland (same date).
Very characteristic of the age are the autobiography of the Valais scholar Thomas Platter (1499–1582) and the diary of his still more distinguished son Felix (1536–1614), both written in German, though not published till long after.
[1] Gradually Swiss historical writers gave up the use of Latin for their native tongue, so Michael Stettler (1580–1642) of Bern, Franz Haffner (1609–1671) of Soleure, and quite a number of Grisons authors (though the earliest in date, Ulrich Campell of Süs, c. 1509–c.
At Bern Albrecht von Haller, though especially distinguished as a scientific writer, yet by his poem Die Alpen (1732) and his travels in his native country did much to excite and stimulate the love of mountain scenery.
By their united exertions the antiquated traditions of German literature were broken down to a large extent, while great praise was bestowed on English poets, Shakespeare, Milton and others.
Another famous Zürich writer was Solomon Gesner, the pastoral poet, and yet another was JK Lavater, now best remembered as a supporter of the view that the face presents a perfect indication of character and that physiognomy may therefore he treated as a science.
Johannes von Müller of Schaffhausen, was the first who attempted to write (1780) a detailed history of Switzerland, which, though inspired rather by his love of freedom than by any deep research, was very characteristic of his times.
JG Ebel was a Swiss by adoption only, but deserves mention as the author of the first detailed guidebook to the country (1793), which held its ground till the days of Murray and Baedeker.
Ulrich Hegner (1759–1840) of Winterthur wrote novels full of local colour, as is also the case with David Hess (painter) (1770–1843) in his description of a cure at Baden in Aargau and various tales.
Such were Heinrich Leuthold (1827–1879), August Corrodi (1826–1885) and Leonhard Widmer (1808–1868), the author of Trittst im Morgenrot daher (1842) (which, set to music by the Cistercian monk Alberic Zwyssig (1808–1854), is now known as the Swiss Psalm), of Es lebt in jeder Schweizerbrust (1842), and Wo Berge sich erheben (1844).
[1] Among the chief Swiss writers in the department of belles-lettres, novelists, poets, etc., may be mentioned Ernst Zahn, Meinrad Lienert, Arnold Ott, Carl Spitteler, Fritz Marti, Walther Siegfried, Adolf Frey, Hermann Hesse, Jakob Christoph Heer, Joseph Victor Widmann, and Gottfried Strasser.
Others of note are Melinda Nadj Abonji, Sibylle Berg, Hermann Burger, Erika Burkart, Jürg Federspiel, Lukas Hartmann, Thomas Hürlimann, Franz Hohler, Zoë Jenny, Jürg Laederach, Hugo Loetscher, Kurt Marti, Niklaus Meienberg, Gerhard Meier, Milena Moser, Adolf Muschg, Paul Nizon, Erica Pedretti, Martin Suter, Peter Weber, and Markus Werner.
He was killed in a judicial duel in 1397, the last scion of his ancient house, and left some amatory poems behind him, while one is extant only in a translation by Chaucer, who makes flattering mention of him.
More individual and characteristic are the romance about Charlemagne, entitled Fierabras le Giant (1478), by Jean Bagnyon, and the poem named Congé pris du siècle siculier (1480), by Jacques de Bugnin.
A French refugee at Lausanne, Jean Barbeyrac (1674–1744), published in 1712 the Droit de la nature et des gens, a translation of Puffendorf's treatise, with a striking preface of his own.
Among her earlier works were two novels, Le mari sentimental (1783), and the Lettres de Mistriss Henley publiées par son ami (1784), both of which had a great vogue in their day and paint, from her own experience, the sad results of an unsuitable marriage.
The chief of this school was HB de Saussure one of the founders of geology and meteorology, while his Alpine ascents (undertaken in the cause of science) opened a new world even to non-scientific travellers.
The brothers De Luc devoted themselves mainly to questions of physics in the Alps, while Sénebier, the biographer of Saussure, was more known as a physiologist than as a physicist, though he wrote on many branches of natural science, which in those days was not yet highly specialized.
On the other hand, Marc Théodore Bourrit, the contemporary of these three men, was rather a curious and inquisitive traveller than a scientific investigator, and charms us even now by his genial simplicity as contrasted with the austerity and gravity of the three writers we have mentioned.
His Course de Bâle à Bienne par les vallées du Jura appeared in 1802, while descriptions of his travels, as well as of the manners of the natives, local history, and in short everything that could stimulate national sentiment, were issued in a series of periodicals from 1783 to 1831 under the successive titles of Etrennes helvétiennes and of Conservateur suisse.
He was the first writer of the Suisse Romande to undertake such wanderings, so that, with obvious differences, he may be regarded not merely as the forerunner, but as the inspirer and model of later Vaudois travellers and climbers in the Alps, such as Rodolphe Töpffer, of Eugène Rambert, and of the last-named's most brilliant pupil, Émile Javelle (1844–1883), whose articles were collected in 1886 by the pious care of his friends under the title of Souvenirs d'un alpiniste.
Two Vaudois, Charles Monnard (1790–1865) and Louis Vulliemin (1797–1879) carried out their great scheme of translating (1837–1840) J. von Müller's Swiss history with its continuation by Hottinger, and then completed it (1841–1851) down to 1815.
The Vaudois noble Frédéric Gingins-la-Sarra (1790–1863) represents yet another type of historian, devoting himself mainly to the medieval history of Vaud, but occasionally going beyond the numberless authentic documents brought to light by him, and trying to make them prove more than they can fairly be expected to tell us.
Fribourg has produced the local novelist Pierre Sciobret (1833–1876) and the Bohemian poet Etienne Eggis (1830–1867), and Neuchâtel Auguste Bachelin (1830–1890) whose best novel was Jean Louis, a tale of which the scene is laid in the old-fashioned little village of St Blaise.
Madame de Gasparins (1813–1894) best tale is Horizons prochains (1857), a very vivid story of rural life in the Vaudois Jura, remarkable for the virile imagination of its descriptions.
[1] More recent authors include Charles Ferdinand Ramuz (1878–1947), whose novels describe the lives of peasants and mountain dwellers, set in a harsh environment, the poets Blaise Cendrars (born Frédéric Sauser, 1887–1961), Léon Savary (1895–1968), Gustave Roud (1897–1976), Jean-Georges Lossier (1911–2004), Pericle Patocchi (1911–1968), Maurice Chappaz (1916–2009) and Philippe Jaccottet (born 1925), Armel Guerne (1911–1980) and the novelists Catherine Colomb (1892–1965), Monique Saint-Hélier (1895–1955), Alice Rivaz (1901–1998), Prix Renaudot winner Georges Borgeaud (1914–1998), Yvette Z'Graggen (1920–2012) and Prix Goncourt winner Jacques Chessex (1934–2009).
In addition, the priest Maurus Carnot (1865–1935) who had grown up in Samnaun but did not write in the Romansh dialect of his hometown, learned Sursilvan in Disentis, and later used it for plays, lyric, and short stories dealing with rural life.
More recently, the Sursilvan writer Arno Camenisch (born 1978) gained attention outside the Romansh community for his novels and short stories, including the bilingual Romansh-German book Sez Ner.
