Prof. em. Dr. Adolf Muschg

Adolf Muschg was Full Professor of German Language and Literature at the ETH Zurich, beginning in 1970. In 1997 he became the first director of the Collegium Helveticum at the Semper Observatory. He retired on 30 September 1999.

His teaching emphasized contemporary literature and working with the texts of seminar participants as well as prospective authors. His research was dedicated to Gottfried Keller, Goethe and Wolfram von Eschenbach and the correlation of literature and therapy.

Prof. Muschg was born in 1934 in Zollikon ZH. After studying Germanic languages in Zurich, where he completed his doctorate under Emil Staiger with a dissertation on Ernst Barlach in 1959, he was a secondary school teacher. Prior to his appointment at the ETH, he worked at universities in Japan (ICU Tokyo), Göttingen, Ithaca, and Geneva. He was a guest lecturer at academic and literary institutions throughout the world. He has served on several federal commissions, e.g. from 1974 to 1977 for the complete revision of the Swiss Federal Constitution and in 1997 for the creation of the Swiss Foundation for Solidarity.

Adolf Muschg has been an author since 1965 ("Im Sommer des Hasen") and has since published a number of novels, stories and dramatic works. His latest well-known novel was "Der Rote Ritter. Eine Geschichte von Parzival", for which he received the Büchner Prize in 1994. He is the recipient of numerous international awards and a member of the Academies of Berlin, Mainz, Darmstadt and Hamburg. His works have been translated into many languages.