author
Jakob Schaffner
1875–1944
Raised through hardship and remembered for the raw force of his autobiographical fiction, this Swiss novelist turned a troubled childhood into some of his best-known writing. His life and work also carry a darker, unsettling political turn that makes him a complicated figure in literary history.
1 Audiobook
Der Dechant von Gottesbüren : Roman
by Jakob Schaffner
About the author
Born in Basel on November 14, 1875, Jakob Schaffner lost his father early and spent part of his childhood in an orphanage. Those experiences stayed with him and later shaped some of his most important writing, especially Johannes (1922), a novel often linked to his own early life.
Schaffner belonged to a generation of Swiss writers who pushed away from comfortable middle-class conventions and aimed for something more intense and searching. He lived in Germany from 1913, worked across fiction and essays, and became known as a significant Swiss novelist of his time.
His legacy is complicated. Reliable reference sources note that he later became a supporter of Nazism, a fact that now strongly affects how his work and public life are understood.