Works and letters

Walter Gross (1924-1999), son of a factory worker and a trained bookbinder, lived as a freelance writer in Winterthur. He published two volumes of poetry, "Messages Still in the Dust" (1957) and "Answers" (1964). In addition, he occasionally wrote prose and contributed reviews and essays for newspapers and radio. Walter Gross died in 1999 in Winterthur, almost entirely forgotten. His second and final poetry collection was published in 1964 by Piper Verlag, facilitated by Ingeborg Bachmann. After that, he fell silent for more than thirty years and wandered through the forests, similar to Robert Walser. The son of a factory worker and a trained bookbinder was one of the most important Swiss poets after World War II, whose poems are represented in all significant German-language anthologies, even long after his silence, despite the distance of half a century.