120th Anniversary of the Birth of Ludwig Hohl on 9 April 2024

News

07.04.2024

Born in Nestal, Switzerland, in 1904, Ludwig Hohl spent his twenties in Paris, Vienna and The Hague. Highly respected by writers such as Friedrich Dürrenmatt, Max Frisch and Peter Handke, Hohl lived most of his life in relative obscurity, tasting success only in the final decade of his life, when he won the Robert Walser Centenary Prize in 1978. He is best known for his magnum opus The Notes.

In 2023, Suhrkamp published four new titles by Hohl from the estate of the author, including the previously unpublished novella A Strange Turn, about which Matthias Weichelt of the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung wrote: »In this volume, you can rediscover [Ludwig Hohl] in his wild, raw beginnings. That is, of course, if you’re not afraid of drinks that are thrown down ›in floods, in cascades‹«.

Ludwig Hohl

Ludwig Hohl was born in Nestal, Switzerland, in 1904. He spent his twenties in Paris, Vienna and The Hague. In 1937, he returned to Biel, then moved to Geneva where he lived in a basement apartment and worked as a writer, initially publishing in newspapers only. Even though Hohl was highly esteemed by his peers, writers such as Friedrich Dürrenmatt, Max Frisch and Peter Handke, he lived most of his life in relative obscurity, tasting success only in the last decade of his life, when he won the Robert Walser Centenary Prize in 1978. He is best known for his magnum opus Die Notizen. He died in Geneva in 1980, in the same year in which he received the Petrarca-Prize.

Ludwig Hohl

Ludwig Hohl was born in Nestal, Switzerland, in 1904. He spent his twenties in Paris, Vienna and The Hague. In 1937, he returned to Biel, then...