Today is the birthday of the Swiss novelist, pianist and actor GUIDO BACHMANN. (d: 2003) Born in Luzern, Switzerland, Bachmann work includes Gilgamesch, Madeira, Die Parabel, Echnaton, and Dionysos. 

Gilgamesh is Bachmann’s first work published in 1966. The book is dedicated to Bachmann’s friend Alfred Arm. Roland Steinmann, the protagonist of the novel, is an adolescent as talented as he is complicated and vulnerable, who is in trouble because of his adolescent love for another boy named Christian. The educational and problem novel is considered socially critical, modern and timeless.

Among other things, the novel led to the “Burgdorfer scandal” because of its provocative depiction of human sexuality. When the novel was published in 1966, it became the talk of the day because of its homoerotic passages. After a reading in 1967 in Burgdorf by a reading group named “group 67” it came to a scandal: the high school student Martin Schwander was temporarily excluded as organizer of the reading of the high school, and the group 67 was so pressured that it disbanded