Walter Matthias Diggelmann(1927-1979)

Walter Matthias Diggelmann was born on July 5th 1927 in Zurich (Switzerland) as an illegitimate child and raised by foster parents. Although raised in poverty, he managed to enroll in high-school, but was afterward forced by his step-father to learn the profession of a watchmaker. Diggelmann committed a minor crime of stealing a watch and flew to Italy when the police were after him. From Italy his was deported by the Italian fascists to Dresden where he was arrested by the Gestapo after having spent some time in prison, before he was deported back to Switzerland where he was put for a longer time in a psychiatric clinic. Interrupted by further stays in mental institutions, he worked as a construction worker, plate-washer, doorman, grave-digger, journalist, advertisement writer and assistant director until he won his first prices for his theater pieces just at the time when he had planned to drown himself in the Lake of Zurich. He then established himself as a free novelist, play-write, poet and political journalist, often attacking the systems of capitalist governments, economy and society in Switzerland and elsewhere. He also played an important role in supporting people who were prosecuted by the Swiss government for communist activity while he was prosecuted by the same government himself. Consequently, his break-through as an internationally recognized author started with the publications of his works in Eastern Europe, especially in Hungary. During his career, W. M. Diggelmann wrote more than 20 novels, dozens of theater pieces, radio texts, film scenarios and hundreds of political columns. His work was translated in several languages. Between 2000 and 2006, a selection of his collected works appeared in 6 volumes. Diggelmann was married three times. To a wider public he become known through the film by Walter Marti and Reni Mertens "The self-destruction of W. M. Diggelmann" (1973) when he appeared on stage with a bottle of wine and a carton of cigarettes. In his last novel "Shadows. Diary of a Disease" (1979), he uncompromisingly described step by step the decrease of his body and mind by brain tumor and cancer. In his last short story "Some last words of the Great Meinardi in the night of his death" (1979) the crossing of the border between life and death got probably of the most impressive descriptions of this topic in world-literature. After having visited his beloved Hungary for a last time, Diggelmann died on November 29th, 1979 in the University Hospital in Zurich.