Friedrich Glauser

Writer

• Born: February 9, 1896
• Birthplace: Vienna, Austria
• Died: December 8, 1938
• Place of death: Genoa, Italy

Biography

Crime novelist Friedrich Charles Glauser was born in Vienna, Austria, in 1896. He wrote in German, and the Glauser Prize, the prestigious German award for crime writing, is named for him.

Glauser’s father, Charles Pierre Glauser, was a French teacher, and his mother, Theresia Scubitz, was the daughter of the headmaster at the Handelsakademie in Aussig, Bohemia, where her grandfather had been a teacher. Glauser’s mother died in 1900. Glauser attended the Elisabeth Gymnasium and then was sent to a boarding school in Thurgau, Switzerland, but he had to withdraw because he lacked the money to pay his tuition.

He was accepted in 1916 to study chemistry at Zurich University, but he enjoyed literary studies more, finding his talent and friends among the university’s Dadaist community. Unfortunately, that community also encouraged a nascent drug habit and an addiction to morphine and opium. In 1918, Glauser’s situation went from bad to worse: In January, the university appointed him a guardian to keep him out of trouble; by June, he had been arrested for forging a prescription; and in August, he was admitted to the Münsingen asylum, the first of a series of mental institutions. This initial stay lasted fourteen months but did nothing to curb his addiction. In 1920, he attempted suicide and was again committed. Later that year, in an effort to find a structured and stable situation that would allow him to avoid his addiction, Glauser joined the French Foreign Legion. He was stationed in North Africa, and his time there was productive, structured, and successful. He likely would have stayed on but was forced to leave in 1923 when he developed a heart condition.

Glauser’s first novel, Gourrama: Ein Roman aus der Fremdenlegion, drew on his experiences in the French Foreign Legion and was set in North Africa. The book remained unpublished during his lifetime, and the habits he had developed in the legion did not provide him sufficient stability. He resumed his former destructive behaviors, wandering around Europe, working odd jobs as a dishwasher in Paris and a miner in Belgium. He also worked as a nurse in one of the mental institutions where he previously had been an inmate. He resumed his drug habit and again attempted suicide, entering the Waldau asylum in 1925 upon his return to Switzerland. He used this hospital stay more productively, writing stories and submitting them for publication in several magazines. The literary editor of Der kleine Bund, a newspaper in Bern, Switzerland, saw merit in his writing and published it, helping him develop an enthusiastic audience.

Around this time, Glauser began a relationship with Beatrice Gutekunst and took a job as a gardener’s assistant so he could afford to date her. He found the work appealing and enrolled in the Horticultural College of Oeschberg near Bern, receiving a diploma in 1931. However, after graduation he returned to full-time writing, moving with Gutekunst to France for several years.

After the relationship with Gutenkunst ended, Glauser returned to his father’s house and with parental patronage was able to write full-time. He published frequently in magazines and newspapers, wrote an autobiographical novel, Mensch im Zwielicht, and developed the character of Police Constable Jakob Studer, the protagonist of his best-known and best-loved novels.

Glauser’s father died in 1937, and Glauser died of natural causes a year later while in Genoa, Italy, on the eve of his marriage to a woman named Berthe Brendel. Several of his novels, including Gourrama and Mensch im Zwielich, were published after his death.