Brigitte Schwaiger (6 April 1949 – 26 July 2010) was an

Austria Austria, formally the Republic of Austria, is a landlocked country in Central Europe, lying in the Eastern Alps. It is a federation of nine Federal states of Austria, states, of which the capital Vienna is the List of largest cities in Aust ...

n author born in

Freistadt Freistadt (, ) is a small Austrian town in the state of Upper Austria in the region Mühlviertel. With a population of approximately 7,500 residents, it is a trade centre for local villages. Freistadt is the economic centre of a district of the sa ...

.Brigitte Schwaiger obituary
/ref> She was the daughter of a doctor, while her great grandmother was Carola Seligmann, an opera singer who died in the

Theresienstadt concentration camp Theresienstadt Ghetto was established by the SS during World War II in the fortress town of Terezín, in the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia ( German-occupied Czechoslovakia). Theresienstadt served as a waystation to the extermination c ...

. Schwaiger attended grammar school at Freistadt until 1967 and then studied two semesters of Psychology, Germanic and Romance linguistics in

Vienna Vienna ( ; ; ) is the capital city, capital, List of largest cities in Austria, most populous city, and one of Federal states of Austria, nine federal states of Austria. It is Austria's primate city, with just over two million inhabitants. ...

. In 1968, she married a

Spanish Spanish might refer to: * Items from or related to Spain: **Spaniards are a nation and ethnic group indigenous to Spain **Spanish language, spoken in Spain and many countries in the Americas **Spanish cuisine **Spanish history **Spanish culture ...

Officer, and moved with him to Madrid and then Mallorca before divorcing him four years later. She then attended the

Pedagogic Pedagogy (), most commonly understood as the approach to teaching, is the theory and practice of learning, and how this process influences, and is influenced by, the social, political, and psychological development of learners. Pedagogy, taken a ...

Academy in

Linz Linz (Pronunciation: , ; ) is the capital of Upper Austria and List of cities and towns in Austria, third-largest city in Austria. Located on the river Danube, the city is in the far north of Austria, south of the border with the Czech Repub ...

, where she played part-time in cellar theatres and worked as a production assistant at

ORF ORF or Orf may refer to: * Norfolk International Airport, IATA airport code ORF * Observer Research Foundation, an Indian research institute * One Race Films, a film production company founded by Vin Diesel * Open reading frame, a portion of the g ...

(''Österreichischer Rundfunk'' - Austrian Broadcasting). Her first novel, ''Wie kommt das Salz ins Meer?'' (''Why Is There Salt in the Sea?'', 1977) became a sensational bestseller which sold several hundred thousand copies throughout German-speaking Europe. The heavily autobiographical first-person story tells of the monotony of everyday married life and of unsuccessful attempts to flee this world. In 1988 the novel was dramatised in a German film by

Peter Beauvais Peter Beauvais (September 9, 1916 in Weißenstadt, Germany – December 17, 1986 in Baden-Baden, Germany) was a German television film director and scriptwriter. As a director for three decades, he helped pioneer and significantly influenced the de ...

, starring Nicolin Kunz and

Siemen Rühaak The siemens (symbol: S) is the unit of electric conductance, electric susceptance, and electric admittance in the International System of Units (SI). Conductance, susceptance, and admittance are the reciprocals of resistance, reactance, and ...

. Although her later works did not achieve the success of her first novel, ''Fallen lassen'', a report of her experience in psychiatry, was met with critical acclaim. Brigitte Schwaiger was found dead in a branch of River Danube in Vienna at the End of July 2010. It probably was suicide. She often had spoken about "the shorter way" she would like to choose.

Awards

* 1984 Culture Prize of the Province of Upper Austria

Works

* ''Wie kommt das Salz ins Meer?'' (''Why Is There Salt in the Sea?'', 1977) * ''Mein spanisches Dorf'' (1978) * ''Lange Abwesenheit'' (1980) * ''Die Galizianerin'' (1982) * ''Der Himmel ist süß – Eine Beichte'' (1984) * ''Führer, Befiehl!'' (1986) (monologue play) * ''Mit einem möcht' ich leben'' (1987) (poems) * ''Liebesversuche'' (1989) * ''Schönes Licht'' (1990) * ''Tränen beleben den Staub'' (1991) * ''Der rote Faden'' (1992) * ''Jaro heißt Frühling'' (1994) * ''Ein langer Urlaub'' (1997) * ''Fallen lassen'' (2006) (describes her experience with psychiatry)

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Schwaiger, Brigitte 1949 births 2010 deaths 20th-century Austrian writers Austrian women writers