Gertrud Leutenegger was born and grew up in Schwyz, Switzerland, where her father was a book editor. She later lived in both the Italian-speaking and French-speaking parts of Switzerland. After completing her secondary education she initially undertook teacher training and became a Kindergarten teacher. She also worked in a psychiatric clinic for a time and was as a custodian at the Nietzsche House in Sils Maria. Leutenegger's interest in theatre led to drama studies at the Zürich University of the Arts from 1976 to 1979 where she studied director's theatre. She worked as assistant producer to Jürgen Flimm, a noted exponent of Regietheater, at the Deutsches Schauspielhaus, Hamburg, in 1978. In the same year, she was awarded the prestigious Jury Prize of the Ingeborg Bachmann Prize for her early literary work. Many other [|prizes] and distinctions followed. After short spells in Florence and Berlin, Leutenegger lived for a long time in Japan. She now lives in Zürich. In 2010 she was elected to the German Academy for Language and Literature in Darmstadt.
Work
Leutenegger first came to prominence as a poet, later bringing her poetic vision to her novels, the first of which, Vorabend, was published in 1975. Her work is noted for its subjective vision, use of myth and fairy tale, dreams and poetry. There is also a strong element of political engagement, for example in the 1985 novel Kontinent which deals with issues of environmental damage. Leutenegger's most recently published work was the novel Panischer Frühling. This tells the story of a woman stranded in London when the eruption of the Icelandic volcanoEyjafjallajökull in 2010 brought all air-traffic to a sudden halt. This was shortlisted for both the Swiss Book Prize and the German Book Prize in 2014 and was awarded the Roswitha Prize in the same year.
Vorabend. Novel. Suhrkamp, Frankfurt am Main 1975 Ninive. Novel. Suhrkamp, Frankfurt am Main 1977, Lebewohl. Gute Reise. Dramatic Poem, Suhrkamp, Frankfurt am Main 1980, Wie in Salomons Garten. Poems. Eremiten-Presse, Düsseldorf 1981 Gouverneur. Novel. Suhrkamp, Frankfurt am Main 1981 Komm ins Schiff. Dramatic Poem. Suhrkamp, Frankfurt am Main 1983 Kontinent. Suhrkamp, Frankfurt am Main 1985 Das verlorene Monument. Suhrkamp, Frankfurt am Main 1985 Meduse. Suhrkamp, Frankfurt am Main 1988 Acheron. Suhrkamp, Frankfurt am Main 1994 Sphärenklang. Dramatic Poem. Eremiten-Presse, Düsseldorf 1999 Pomona. Novel. Suhrkamp, Frankfurt am Main 2004, Gleich nach dem Gotthard kommt der Mailänder Dom. Stories and other writings. Suhrkamp, Frankfurt am Main 2006, Matutin. Novel. Suhrkamp, Frankfurt am Main 2008, Panischer Frühling. Novel. Suhrkamp, Frankfurt am Main 2014, Das Klavier auf dem Schillerstein. Prose. Nimbus, Wädenswil, 2017,
Literature
Ackermann, Esther: "Gertrud Leutenegger". In: Andreas Kotte : Theaterlexikon der Schweiz. Vol. 2, p. 1101. Chronos, Zürich 2005, Böttcher, Kurt, et al., eds., Lexikon deutschsprachiger Schriftsteller 20. Jahrhundert. Hildesheim: Georg Olms Verlag, 1993, p. 476. Felka, Rike: Das geschriebene Bild. Über Gertrud Leutenegger. Passagen, Wien 1996, Horvat, Vesna Kondrič: Der eigenen Utopie nachspüren: zur Prosa der deutschsprachigen Autorinnen in der Schweiz zwischen 1970 und 1990, dargestellt am Werk Gertrud Leuteneggers und Hanna Johansens. Lang, Bern et al. 2002, Leeder, Diana: Momentary Peace. An examination of the Catholic references in the works of Gertrud Leutenegger. Lang, Bern 2011, Pormeister, Eve: Grenzgängerinnen. Gertrud Leutenegger und die schreibende Nonne Silja Walter aus der Schweiz. Atelier SAXA - Worte und Bilder, Berlin 2010, Zinggeler, Margrit: Literary Freedom and Social Constraints in the Works of Swiss Writer Gertrud Leutenegger. Amsterdamer Publications for Language and Literature. Amsterdam, Atlanta: Rodopi, 1995.
