The young journalist with Hermann Beil

"Two years I wrote court reports. An invaluable chapter. I believe that is where the roots lie." (Thomas Bernhard) The young twenty-year-old Thomas Bernhard began his career as a journalist in 1951/52. He wrote over 250 newspaper articles for Salzburg newspapers and the Vienna "Furche" until 1954. Many of his texts read like small, pointed theater scenes; from many everyday reports, political or social criticism can be heard. Decades later, Thomas Bernhard confessed: "Two years I wrote court reports. They became present to me again later when writing prose. An invaluable chapter. I believe that is where the roots lie." – The roots of his plays and novels. Hermann Beil, who has been closely associated with the Salzkammergut Festival Weeks in Gmunden for over a decade, has also had a decades-long collaboration with Thomas Bernhard personally. He has dramaturgically overseen numerous premieres at the Stuttgart State Theater, the Bochum Schauspielhaus, the Salzburg Festival, and the Burgtheater in Vienna. As part of the Salzkammergut Festival Weeks in Gmunden, he regularly reads at the Bernhaus in Ohlsdorf, and for several years, he has been organizing the staged Bernhard evenings, which have become crowd pullers at the Gmunden City Theater.