Robert Walser (Swiss Standard German: [ˈvalzər]; 15 April 1878 – 25 December 1956) was a German language Swiss writer noted for writing four novels (one published posthumously) and a large number of feuilletons, short stories, and causeries. His unconventional, sometimes enigmatic works were appreciated by contemporaries such as Walter Benjamin, Hermann Hesse, Franz Kafka, Robert Musil and Kurt Tucholsky. He additionally worked as a copyist, an inventor's assistant, a butler, and in various other low-paying trades.
After marginal early success in his literary career, the popularity of his work gradually diminished through the 1920's, making it increasingly difficult for him to support himself through writing. He eventually had a nervous breakdown and spent the remainder of his life in sanatoriums. His work underwent a rediscovery in the 1970's with the deciphering of the microscripts (see below), and a large portion of his work was first translated into and published in English in the 2000's and onward. Walser is now considered one of the important German-language authors of the 20th century and a significant figure in modernism.
Born Robert Otto Walser, he was the second-youngest of eight children of Adolf Walser (1833–1914), a trained bookbinder who owned a workshop producing stationery goods and picture frames, and his wife Elisabeth (Elisa) Walser (1839–1894). His brother Karl Walser became a well-known stage designer and painter; his elder sister Lisa worked as a teacher and was the family's principal caregiver, while his younger sister Fanny (Fani) Hegi-Walser would later, in 1967, transfer Walser's literary estate to the Carl Seelig Foundation. Walser grew up in Biel, Switzerland, on the language border between the German- and French-speaking regions of Switzerland, and grew up speaking both languages. He attended primary school and progymnasium, which he had to leave before the final exam when his family could no longer bear the cost. From his early years on, he was an enthusiastic theatre-goer; his favourite play was The Robbers by Friedrich Schiller. There is a watercolor painting that shows Walser as Karl Moor, the protagonist of that play.
From 1892 to 1895, Walser served an apprenticeship at the Bernischer Kantonalbank in Biel. Afterwards he worked for a short time in Basel. Walser's mother Elisabeth (1839–1894), described in contemporary terms as gemütskrank — a designation roughly corresponding to what would later be classified as an affective psychosis — died in 1894 after a prolonged illness during which she had been cared for by her elder daughter, Lisa Walser. The Swiss Germanist Peter von Matt has argued that Walser's symbiotic relationship with his mother was constitutive for his literary work. In 1895, Walser went to Stuttgart where his brother Karl lived. He worked as a clerk in the advertising department of the Union Deutsche Verlagsgesellschaft; he also tried, without success, to become an actor, auditioning for an actress at the Stuttgart Hoftheater. On foot, he returned to Switzerland where he registered in 1896 as a Zürich resident. In the following years, he often worked as a "Kommis", an office clerk, but irregularly and in many different places. As a result, he was one of the first Swiss writers to introduce into literature a description of the life of a salaried employee.
In 1898, the influential critic Joseph Victor Widmann published a series of poems by Walser in the Bernese newspaper Der Bund. This came to the attention of Franz Blei, and he introduced Walser to the circle of Art Nouveau figures centered on the magazine Die Insel, including Frank Wedekind, Max Dauthendey and Otto Julius Bierbaum. Numerous short stories and poems by Walser appeared in Die Insel.
Until 1905, Walser lived mainly in Zürich, though he often changed lodgings and also lived for a time in Thun, Solothurn, Winterthur and Munich. In 1903, he fulfilled his military service obligation and, beginning that summer, was the "aide" of an engineer and inventor in Wädenswil near Zürich. This episode became the basis of his 1908 novel Der Gehülfe (The Assistant). In 1904, his first book, Fritz Kochers Aufsätze (Fritz Kocher's Essays), appeared in the Insel Verlag, with eleven illustrations by his brother Karl.
At the end of 1905 he attended a course in order to become a servant at the castle of Dambrau in Upper Silesia. The theme of serving would characterize his work in the following years, especially in the novel Jakob von Gunten (1909). In 1905, he went to live in Berlin, where his brother Karl Walser, who was working as a theater painter, introduced him to other figures in literature, publishing, and the theater. Occasionally, Walser worked as secretary for the artists' corporation Berliner Secession.
In Berlin, Walser wrote the novels The Tanners (Geschwister Tanner), The Assistant (Der Gehülfe) and Jakob von Gunten. They were issued by the publishing house of Bruno Cassirer, where Christian Morgenstern worked as editor. Apart from the novels, he wrote many short stories, sketching popular bars from the point of view of a poor "flaneur" in a very playful and subjective language. There was a very positive echo to his writings. Robert Musil and Kurt Tucholsky, among others, stated their admiration for Walser's prose, and authors like Hermann Hesse and Franz Kafka counted him among their favorite writers.
Walser published numerous short stories in newspapers and magazines, many for instance in the Schaubühne. They became his trademark. The larger part of his work is composed of short stories – literary sketches that elude a ready categorization. Selections of these short stories were published in the volumes Aufsätze (1913) and Geschichten (1914).
In 1913, Walser returned to Switzerland. He lived for a short time with his sister Lisa in the mental home in Bellelay, where she worked as a teacher. There, he got to know Frieda Mermet, a washer-woman with whom he developed a close friendship. After a short stay with his father in Biel, he went to live in a mansard in the Biel hotel Blaues Kreuz. In 1914, his father died.
In Biel, Walser wrote a number of shorter stories that appeared in newspapers and magazines in Germany and Switzerland and selections of which were published in Der Spaziergang (1917), Prosastücke (1917), Poetenleben (1918), Seeland (1919) and Die Rose (1925). Walser, who had always been an enthusiastic wanderer, began to take extended walks, often by night. In his stories from that period, texts written from the point of view of a wanderer walking through unfamiliar neighborhoods alternate with playful essays on writers and artists.
During World War I, Walser repeatedly had to go into military service. At the end of 1916, his brother Ernst died after a time of mental illness in the Waldau mental home. In 1919, Walser's brother Hermann, geography professor in Bern, committed suicide. Walser himself became isolated in that time, when there was almost no communication with Germany because of the war. Even though he worked hard, he could barely support himself as a freelance writer. At the beginning of 1921, he moved to Bern in order to work at the public record office. He often changed lodgings and lived a very solitary life.
During his time in Bern, Walser's style became more radical. In a more and more condensed form, he wrote "micrograms" ("Mikrogramme"), called thus because of his minuscule pencil hand that is very difficult to decipher. He wrote poems, prose, dramolettes and novels, including The Robber (Der Räuber). In these texts, his playful, subjective style moved toward a higher abstraction. Many texts of that time work on multiple levels – they can be read as naive-playful feuilletons or as highly complex montages full of allusions. Walser absorbed influences from serious literature as well as from formula fiction and retold, for example, the plot of a pulp novel in a way that the original (the title of which he never revealed) was unrecognizable. Much of his work was written during these very productive years in Bern.