The library

Bibliothèque

Friedrich Dürrenmatt's personal library is next to the cloakroom. This is where he enjoyed coming to drink his coffee, to read or to accept interviews: the room has been restored to its original appearance under Dürrenmatt, including its original furnishings.

This part of the library, which has the greatest number of books (the rest of them are in the house above), boasts over 4000 volumes of world literature, arranged in the order applied by Dürrenmatt himself, that is by each author's native tongue. To be found here are the German classics that Dürrenmatt so loved - from Christoph Martin Wieland (1733-1813) to E.T.A. Hoffmann (1776-1822), and including Gotthold Ephraim Lessing (1729-1781) and Jean Paul (1763-1825), but also certain signed works by such authors of the day as Max Frisch (1911-1991) and Paul Celan (1920-1970). Then, too, there are art books from all periods, as well as the collected cartoons of Paul Flora (1922-2009), Tomi Ungerer (*1931) and Roland Topor (1938-1997).

Most of the philosophical and scientific tomes attesting to Dürrenmatt's great diversity of interests and his cosmological outlook have been assembled in the part of the library left closed to the public. An inventory of the library exists, and a project is currently underway to draw up a detailed catalogue.

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