SOURCE: “Thomas Bernhard,” in Major Figures of Contemporary Austrian Literature, edited by Donald G. Daviau, Peter Lang, 1987, pp. 89–115.

In the following essay, Brokoph-Mauch explores the defining characteristics of Bernhard’s poetry, novels, and plays.

Thomas Bernhard, the grandson of the Austrian writer Johann Freumbichler, was born 10 February 1931 out of wedlock as the son of a peasant. He grew up in Southern Bavaria and lived there until he entered a boarding school in Salzburg in 1943. In 1946 he exchanged school for a two-year apprenticeship in a grocery store in a poverty-stricken district of Salzburg. There he contracted a lung disease that sent him to several hospitals and lung sanatoriums for the following three years. During that time his grandfather and his mother died (1949 and 1950), severing both his most rewarding and his most difficult relationship up to this point in his life. At the sanatorium Grafenberg he started to write his...