Bernkhard Tomas

Thomas Bernhard was an Austrian prose writer and playwright.

An illegitimate child, he was raised in Austria by his mother’s parents (his grandfather was a writer). He attended a Catholic school, leaving it in 1947 to begin working as a shop assistant. From 1949 to 1951 he underwent treatment in a pulmonary sanatorium; he suffered from lung disease throughout his life. From 1955 to 1957 he studied acting at the Salzburg Mozarteum University of Music and Dramatic Arts. He then devoted himself entirely to literature. In 1965 he moved to his own house in the district of Gmunden, where he later died.

A sickly loner, uncompromising toward any hypocrisy in personal and public relations, Bernhard earned a reputation in his country as a defamer and public scandal-monger through his harsh criticism of all the institutions of Austrian society. In his will he prohibited the publication and staging of his own works in Austria.