Inglin, Meinrad

Born July 28, 1893, in Schwyz Canton. Swiss author. Writes in German. Son of a watchmaker; worked as a waiter in a hotel. Studied philology at the universities of Bern and Geneva.

Inglin adopted the realistic tradition of Swiss literature in the novels Life in Ingoldau (1922), which depicts provincial life in a small Swiss town in the early 20th century, Wendall von Oew (1925), and Hotel Grand Excelsior (1928). He also published a collection of historical short stories, Youth of a Nation (1933), on the emergence of the Swiss cantons, and the novella Honorable Death (1952), dealing with the struggle of the Swiss people against the French conquerors in 1798. His most famous novel is The Mirror of Switzerland (1938), an account of the country’s acute political struggle during the years of World War I.