Robert Faesi

Son of the businessman Heinrich Friedrich Faesi,[1] Robert Faesi was born into a well established and affluent Zürich family. After successfully completing his schooling, he initially studied Law, before switching to German studies. In 1907 he obtained his doctorate with a dissertation on Abraham Emanuel Fröhlich, a nineteenth century poet-theologian. Faesi then took a position as a high school teacher in Zürich, also undertaking several extended educational tours, before ending up in 1911 at the University of Zurich where he was appointed, in 1922, "extraordinary" professor for the history of modern Swiss and German literature. Further distinctions and promotions followed at the university, and in 1953 he was nominated an emeritus professor.

From his perspective as a Germanist he wrote monographs about writers of "modern classics" such as Conrad Ferdinand Meyer, Carl Spitteler, Rainer Maria Rilke and Thomas Mann, and also chronicled a history of recent Swiss literature. With his story Fusilier Wipf which was the basis for a film that came out in 1938, Faesi also made a start on his own contribution to the more popular end of the nation's literary canon. For his Zürcher-trilogy of novels, dealing with the history of Zürich during the first half of the nineteenth century, he received the city's literary prize in 1945.

A collection of letters and other documentary material on Robert Faesi along with some memoir-material is held in the Manuscript department at the Zürich Central Library