Rudolph Bolo Mäglin (also Rudolf and Maeglin), (26 Dezember 1898 in Basel – 28 April 1973 in Binningen) was a Swiss journalist, publicist, writer, poet and cabaretwriter.
He worked as a writer and as a journalist for the National-Zeitung. Mäglin was mainly known through the novel Gilberte de Courgenay published in 1939 . His carnival novella Der Ruesser from 1957, which was later issued as an audio book version[1] read by Ruedi Walter, was also awarded.
Rudolph Mäglin was born on 26 December 1898, the fourth of six children at Herrengrabenweg 22 in Basel.
After an apprenticeship in a bank he became an accountant at the age of 17½. However, his fantasy soon declared war on the rather monotonous office life as an accountant. He quit his job and became a newspaper reporter. The decisive step towards a promising future as a journalist, publicist, writer, poet and cabaretwriter was thus taken.
At first he wrote sports reports, reviews of films, theater performances and guest performances by circuses and variétés for various daily and weekly newspapers. This was soon followed by his humorous and pointed reports named Erlauschtes vom Bäumli, which were extremely popular with the readership, in the Basler Woche. They were about disputes in the Basel civil court on the Bäumleingasse in Basel.
In 1926 he founded the special supplement Dr glai Nazi as a freelancer for the National-Zeitung (today Basler Zeitung). Up until the late 1960s, Bolo Mäglin was the godfather of this popular children's supplement and regularly published his poems in it.
There were times when he wrote under six pseudonyms to deny the claim that if you write lyric poetry, you couldn't possibly succeed in cultural essays, theater reviews, sports reports, satirical glosses and gripping stories for the youth. These included names such as "Prokurator" and "Bimbolo". Since an Italian clown by the name of Bimbolo forbade him to use this name, "Martin Bim" and "Bolo" emerged. The latter was to remain his nickname forever.
In Binningen, where he had lived since 1947 with his wife Elsa "Elsy" Mäglin (* 1904; † 2006) and their two children Marie-Louise "Marly" (* 1938) and Urs Beat (* 1941), you could almost find him found daily with a bundle of newspapers and one of his writing cases under his arm. He liked to retire to a corner of the "Rebstock" or "Jägerstübli" to write, but was occasionally also available for a sociable conversation over a cup of coffee or a glass of wine. Another well-known characteristic of Bolo, wearing white gloves, could be explained by his colophony allergy (an allergy to printer's ink). A portrait of fellow writer Heinrich Kuhn (editor of the National-Zeitung 1934–74) in the foreword to the second edition of the Ruesser also described Bolo's typical appearance as follows: «A narrow face with a sharp, slightly curved nose on top of one rather thin body. Always neatly dressed, with a butterfly tie, gloves and cane, sometimes accompanied by a little fox terrier, a pencil case or envelope in his hand, that's how he appeared at the editorial office with a lively pace."
Bolo had nothing to do with anything fake, wrong or staged pessimism. The Germanist and professor Louis Wiesmann from the State Literary Credit Commission Basel-Stadt wrote about him in 1963: "Bolo is not a carefree writer. He only gives out what is in front of his artistic conscience. Bolo never allowed himself to be restricted. He does what he is inwardly driven to, doesn’t mince his words and appears to be very close to the people. But behind his free, uncomplicated manner there is also an emotional person who knows how to touch his readership to the heart of his readership. His fresh, direct spelling made him popular and successful. " In a previous conversation with Wiesmann, Bolo had made the following programmatic confession: “Reality knows the dark and the tragic, but also the bright and the happy – otherwise life would have no meaning. As little as I can do with pink glasses and illusions, I just don't like black glasses. For me, poetry that does not affirm life misses its most beautiful task. His fellow writer once said of him: “With Bolo, every sentence sparkles with an incorruptible honesty.”
Bolo Mäglin's literary work is extraordinarily diverse. There are poems, short stories, novels, dramas, radio plays, musicals, festivals, operetta librettos, revues, cabaret programs, carnival games, Schnitzelbanks and "Fasnachts-Zeedel" from his pen. He alternated between Standard German and dialect (especially Basel German). Many of his works have been awarded prizes.
In the foreword to the second edition of the Ruesser, Heinrich Kuhn reports on Bolo's relation to Carnival: “Artists and cabaret artists, that was his world. But the Basel Carnival was his main specialty. From the window of the dispatch office, in the "Haus zum Gold", the former headquarters of the National-Zeitung on the market square, he hammered the entire report on the street carnival primavista into the typewriter. The fact that he not only knew the drum and piccolo marches, but also practiced the art of drumming and whistling, made him a competent reviewer u. a. of the Monster Drummeli in the Küchlin Theatre Basel. Many "" (groups performing the carnival) did not always accept his criticism without contradiction and so it could not be missing that one day he himself became a subject of the carnival (Bolo in front of a judge). As a good carnival person, he reacted calmly and with humor to the masked intrigue. [...] In his enigmatic novella, Bolo tells of a Basel original obsessed with carnival. He himself was such an original, fused with his Basel, who knew about the secrets and peculiarities of the old Rhine city. Bolo knew how to express this knowledge in soot and in many dialect poems."
His best-known work is the novel Gilberte de Courgenay, about the young Swiss woman Gilberte Montavon. As a stage play – premiered on 24 August 1939 in the Schauspielhaus Zürich – this play brought it to over 450 performances. It is still very popular with professional and amateur theaters today.
In 1943 he was one of the founders of the Basel Writers' Association, as its vice-president he served for many years.
In 2005 a memorial showcase was inaugurated in the Ortsmuseum Binningen as part of a vernissage, in which, in addition to a small selection of his wide range of works, numerous objects from his everyday life can be seen. Some of his poems, presented by Bolo personally, can be played at the push of a button. Since August 2014, around 40 years after Bolo's death, a path that leads from Binningen's Margarethenstrasse to Bruderholzrain has been named after him.[2]