Guy de Pourtalès

Guy de Pourtàles (* August 4, 1881 in Berlin, † 12 June 1941 in Lausanne ) was a French-Swiss writer.

Life

Guy de Pourtàles belonged to the family of Pourtàles. His parents were Swiss sailors Hermann de Pourtàles and Marguerite "Daisy" Marcet ( 1857-1888 ). He was born in Berlin because his father was stationed there at the time as an officer in the service of William I. As Guy de Pourtàles was six years old, the family returned to Switzerland. They first lived in the Canton of Geneva and after the second marriage of his father in 1891 in Mies. Guy de Pourtàles went to Geneva and Vevey to school and attended high school in Neuchâtel. After his graduation in 1899, he studied in Germany only chemistry and music, from 1905 then literature at the Sorbonne.

Even after the study was Guy de Pourtàles in Paris and later took French citizenship. In 1911 he married Hélène Marcuard. They had three children: Françoise, Raymond and Rose de Pourtàles.

His first works were La cendré et la flamme (1910) and Solitudes (1913). He was also an employee at the newspaper hebdomadaire Revue and co-founder of the Société littéraire de France. Later he translated plays of William Shakespeare into French. Became internationally known Guy de Pourtàles by his biographical novels about the famous composer Franz Liszt (1925, German 1927), Frédéric Chopin (1927, German 1935), Richard Wagner (1932, German 1933) and Hector Berlioz (1939, dt. , 1940 ). Other of his novels deal with the Geneva patrician, as well as his most famous work The Miraculous Draught of Fishes (1937, German 1938), for which he was awarded the 1937 Grand Prix du Roman of the Académie française.

In 1939 Guy de Pourtàles back to Switzerland, where he became seriously ill the outbreak of the Second World War, the defeat of France and had to witness the death of his son Raymond at the front. In 1941, he died in Lausanne.

Works (excerpt)

  • Franz Liszt: A Novel of Life, Urban -Verlag, 1927
  • Ludwig II of Bavaria and King Hamlet, Urban -Verlag, 1929
  • Farewell Europe, Urban -Verlag, 1932
  • The Blue Sound: Frederick Chopin's life, Urban -Verlag, 1935
  • Richard Wagner: man and master, Knaur Nachf., 1933
  • The Miraculous Draught of Fishes, H. Hugendubel, 1938
  • Fantastic Symphony: Hector Berlioz and the romantic Europe, P. Hugendubel, 1940
June 12 Grand Prix du roman de l'Académie française Theaterlexikon der Schweiz WorldCat Integrated Authority File
288016
de