# Fame.am profile — machine-readable export
# Canonical URL: https://fame.am/person/thomas-bernhard
# Generated: 2026-09-07T19:17:06.337Z

schema: https://schema.org/Person
url: "https://fame.am/person/thomas-bernhard"
name: "Thomas Bernhard"
slug: "thomas-bernhard"
description: "An Austrian novelist who spent three decades savaging Austria itself — its Nazi evasion, its small-town smugness, its cultural fakery — in prose so merciless and distinctive that George Steiner ranked him with Kafka and Musil, then tried to ban his own work from his homeland for 70 years after death."
tagline: "Austrian playwright and novelist (1931–1989)"
image: "https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:FilePath/Thomas_Bernhard_(1987).jpg?width=1200"
gender: "male"
country:
  name: "Austria"
  isoCode: "AT"
category:
  name: "Writers"
  slug: "writers"
profileType:
  name: "Writer / Author"
  slug: "writer"
birthDate: "1931-02-09"
deathDate: "1989-02-12"
livingStatus: "DECEASED"
scores:
  popularity:           56.63
  momentum:             0
  historical:           24.564764
  currentAttention:     0
  sourceConfidence:     70
  profileCompleteness:  80
  trendDirection:       "FALLING"
ranks:
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  country:  248
  category: null
tags:
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    slug: "writers"
  - name: "Writer / Author"
    slug: "writer-author"
  - name: "Literature"
    slug: "literature"
  - name: "Fiction"
    slug: "fiction"
  - name: "Theatre"
    slug: "theatre"
  - name: "Screenwriting"
    slug: "screenwriting"
  - name: "Poetry"
    slug: "poetry"
  - name: "Austria"
    slug: "austria"
platforms:
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    url:       "https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0076767/"
    handle:    "nm0076767"
  - platform:  "WEBSITE"
    url:       "https://thomasbernhard.at"
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    type:  "DATABASE"
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    title: "توماس برنهارد"
    type:  "WIKIPEDIA"
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    title: "Thomas Bernhard"
    type:  "WIKIPEDIA"
  - url: "https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Bernhard"
    title: "Thomas Bernhard"
    type:  "WIKIPEDIA"
  - url: "https://gl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Bernhard"
    title: "Thomas Bernhard"
    type:  "WIKIPEDIA"
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# bio (long form, separated for readability)
bio: |
  Born out of wedlock in the Netherlands in 1931, Bernhard grew up shuttled between Austrian grandparents and boarding homes, closest to his grandfather, the novelist Johannes Freumbichler, who opened the door to literature. Pleurisy and tuberculosis struck him as a teenager; he spent years in a sanatorium, began writing, and met Hedwig Stavianicek, the wealthy heiress he later called the most important person in his life. His 1963 breakthrough Frost launched two decades of novels and plays marked by long monologues, obsessive repetition, and protagonists teetering toward madness — Correction in 1975, the five-volume Gathering Evidence memoirs through 1982, Extinction in 1986. The work made him a giant in German letters and shaped a generation of Austrian writers including Elfriede Jelinek, but it also made him notorious at home for his relentless public attacks on Austria's post-war denial and pretension. He died of heart failure in February 1989, three days after his 58th birthday, and left a will forbidding publication or performance of his work in Austria for seven decades.