From the Berliner Morgenpost we learn that Charlotte Kerr, the widow of the great Swiss playwright Friedrich Dürrenmatt, has lost her court battle against Hugo Loetscher for defaming her husband in his book Lesen statt klettern.
Also sprach Charlotte Kerr, Witwe des Schweizer Dramatikers Friedrich Dürrenmatt, gestern vor dem Berliner Landgericht: "Ich bin nicht verärgert, sondern zutiefst in meiner Ehre gekränkt und diffamiert." Was die mutmaßliche Mittsiebzigerin, deren Mann im Dezember 1990 starb, als ehrenrührig und infam zu empfinden vorgibt, ist ein Text aus dem Band "Lesen statt klettern. Aufsätze zur literarischen Schweiz", den der eidgenössische Schriftsteller und langjährige Dürrenmatt-Freund Hugo Loetscher 2003 im Diogenes Verlag veröffentlicht hatte. In einem dem Komödiendichter zugeeigneten, achtseitigen Unterkapitel namens "Die Abdankung", schweizerische Bezeichnung für Trauerfeier, beschreibt er Details des Abschieds von Friedrich Dürrenmatt in dessen Haus und die anschließende Verbrennung des Dramatikers im Krematorium.
One of the most serious points of defamation was that Loestcher claims to have seen a "book by Stephen King on the night table" of Dürrenmatt, and it looked as though he had just put it down after reading it.
I personally find a great deal of satisfaction that Dürrenmatt may have been reading Stephen King. There is something comforting in the thought that Dürrenmatt, who discovered the grotesque in everyday human life, would see a soulmate in King, who sees the horror in the banal. Certainly King would be inspired by Dürrenmatt’s short story Der Tunnel, where the quotidian opens out to the horror of the abyss.
There is no question that Stephen King has been too productive in his career, and has produced too many inferior works. But for anyone who doubts King’s literary capabilities, I urge you to read his autobiographical On Writing (in German: Das Leben und das Schreiben}. In any case, I am grateful to Frau Kerr for her misguided lawsuit – it opens up new possibilities for cross-cultural literary influence.
