Gerold Späth

Gerold Späth was born on 16 October 1939 in Rapperswil, a small lakeside town on the upper Lake Zurich in the canton of St. Gallen. He came from a dynasty of organ builders, the family firm Späth Orgelbau. He grew up by the lake speaking the local dialect of the lakeside boys, and later compared his childhood to the adventures of Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn. After secondary school he trained as an export clerk, then spent long periods in Vevey, London and Fribourg.

Späth began writing in 1968, while still working in his father's organ-building business, where he stayed until 1975. His debut novel Unschlecht (1970), a modern picaresque tale inspired in part by Grimmelshausen's Simplicissimus and Günter Grass's The Tin Drum, made his name at once, and in 1970 he received the Conrad Ferdinand Meyer Prize.

Rapperswil became the model for the invented towns in three linked novels, Unschlecht, Balzapf oder Als ich auftauchte (1977) and Barbarswila (1988), satirical studies of Swiss small-town life. Commedia (1980), with its more than two hundred fictional self-portraits of people from every class and an imaginary museum tour, received the Alfred Döblin Prize. Other books included Stimmgänge, Die heile Hölle, Sacramento, Sindbadland, Stilles Gelände am See, Das Spiel des Sommers neunundneunzig, Die gloriose White Queen, Aufzeichnungen eines Fischers, Mich lockte die Welt and Alyeska (2019).

He also wrote numerous radio plays, one of which, Der See am Morgen, won the radio play prize of the Radio Basel foundation, and stage works including Unser Wilhelm! Unser Tell! His work was translated into several languages.

Späth was married to Christine Lötscher. For a time he lived with his family in Italy and Ireland before returning to live mainly in Rapperswil, and he said that life abroad sharpened his view of Switzerland. Like his organ-building forebears he valued careful, lasting craftsmanship, saying that an organ should still be a good organ in 200 years. He was also a keen fisherman, which inspired his notes from a fisherman's year.

Gerold Späth died on 14 October 2026, two days before what would have been his 87th birthday. His family informed his publisher, Lenos Verlag in Basel, which announced the death on 15 October, writing that with Gerold Späth a great storyteller had been lost. The news was reported by the Swiss news agency Keystone-SDA, SRF and other Swiss media. No cause of death was made public.

Späth is remembered as one of the defining voices of German-Swiss literature of his generation, a writer who brought baroque richness, comedy and melancholy to his satirical picture of the idyllic Swiss world. His Rapperswil novels are the subject of scholarly study, and his archive is held by the Swiss Literary Archives.