Thomas Bernhard

Thomas Bernhard was born in 1931 in Heerlen, Netherlands as an illegitimate child to Herta Fabjan (1904-1950) and the carpenter Alois Zuckerstätter (1905-1940). Bernhard was an Austrian playwright and novelist.

Bernhard spent much of his early childhood with his maternal grandparents in Vienna and Seekirchen, Salzburg. His mother's marriage in (1936) occasioned a move to Traunstein, Bavaria.
Bernhard's grandfather, the author Johannes Freumbichler, pushed for an artistic education for the boy, including musical instruction. Bernhard went to elementary school in Seekirchen and later attended the Johanneum boarding school, which he quit in 1947 to start an apprenticeship with a grocer.

Due to an intractable lung disease, Bernhard spent the years 1949 to 1951 at the sanatorium Grafenhof. He trained as an actor at the Mozarteum in Salzburg (1955-1957). After that he began work as a freelance author.
Bernhard died in 1989 at home in Ohlsdorf near Gmunden, Upper Austria, where he had moved in 1965. His attractive house is now a museum, the most striking feature of which is the presence of hundreds of pairs of Bernhard's shoes. In his last will, Bernhard prohibited any new stagings of his plays and publication of his unpublished work in Austria. His death was announced only after his funeral.