Friedrich Duerrenmatt was born on January 5, 1921, in Konolfingen, Switzerland. His father Reinhold, a Protestant minister, and his mother Hulda, a devout Christian, kept an orderly house and ensured that their son, Friedrich, and their daughter, Vroni, received an excellent education.
Friedrich, to his parents' disappointment, did not perform well at school. His own doubts about the Christian faith intensified over time, along with his general feeling of dislocation. As the years passed, he became more and more like his father's father Ulrich, who had been a well-known anti-establishment journalist and poet in Bern, and who had been imprisoned for his political work.
During his youth,...
