Robert Walser (15 April 1878 – 25 December 1956), was a German-speaking Swiss writer.
Life and work t
1879–1897[edit
Walser was born into a family with many children. His brother Karl Walser became a well-known stage designer and painter. Walser grew up in Biel, on the language border between the German- and French-speaking cantons of Switzerland, and grew up speaking both languages. He attended primary school and progymnasium, which he had to leave before the final exam when his family could no longer bear the cost. From his early years on, he was an enthusiastic theatre-goer; his favorite play was The Robbers by Friedrich Schiller. There is a watercolor painting that shows Walser as Karl Moor, the protagonist of that play.[citation needed]
From 1892 to 1895, Walser served an apprenticeship at the Bernische Kantonalbank in Biel. Afterwards he worked for a short time in Basel. Walser's mother, who was "emotionally disturbed", died in 1894 after being under medical care for a long period.[citation needed] In 1895, Walser went to Stuttgart where his brother Karl lived. He was an office worker at the Deutsche Verlagsanstalt and at the Cotta'sche Verlagsbuchhandlung; he also tried, without success, to become an actor. On foot, he returned to Switzerland where he registered in 1896 as a Zürich resident. In the following years, he often worked as a "Kommis", an office clerk, but irregularly and in many different places. As a result, he was one of the first Swiss writers to introduce into literature a description of the life of a salaried employee.