Bern’s Rebellious Chansonnier Out of the Shadows

Swiss collective memory has a habit of neatly reducing complex artistic movements down to a single, comfortable monument. In the canon of Bernese chanson, that monument is Mani Matter. So dominant is his posthumous presence that even well-known compositions by his contemporaries—such as Bernhard Stirnemann’s song Mys Käthi—are routinely and mistakenly attributed to him. A new biography titled E fräche Siech, edited by musician Rolf Marti, attempts to correct this reflex on what would have been Stirnemann's 90th birthday year.

Stirnemann, who died in 2011, was never quite built for mass idolatry. When the Berner Troubadours emerged in 1965—a group including Fritz Widmer, Markus Traber, Ruedi Krebs, Jacob Stickelberger, Stirnemann, and Matter—they reshaped Swiss-German vernacular culture. Yet Matter’s sudden death in 1972 cemented his mythic status, casting a permanent shadow over his peers.

The contrast in their artistic styles was stark. Where Matter charmed audiences with accessible, nursery-rhyme structures that concealed subtle philosophical depths, Stirnemann was far more blunt. He wrote direct, unvarnished songs intended explicitly for an adult audience.

This sharper edge reflected Stirnemann’s origins. Born in 1936 in Bern’s working-class Matte quarter, he grew up in a Catholic family inside an overwhelmingly Protestant city. That early sense of alienation shaped his identity. Abandoning a carpentry apprenticeship to pursue French chanson and theater, he gravitated toward society’s margins, drawing inspiration from outcasts, fools, and fallen angels.

Eventually, Stirnemann brought this rebellious streak into public office as a Social Democratic representative in both the Bern city council and the cantonal parliament. His legislative legacy was tangible: he secured municipal funding for small independent theaters and led campaigns to preserve historic steamboats like the Lötschberg and the Blümlisalp. During parliamentary debates, Stirnemann defended such spending with characteristic wit, arguing that certain state expenditures might be unreasonable or unnecessary, yet remained valuable purely for their beauty. To prove his point to his fellow parliamentarians, he noted that the modest Nydegg church would have been more than sufficient to get the old Bernese into heaven, making the grand Bern Minster entirely unnecessary—yet undeniably grand.

Bernhard Stirnemann lived and died as Bern’s eternal second lead. Marti’s biography offers a long-overdue recalibration of a troubadour who refused to smooth his edges for public consumption.

Written by Martina Kirchner martina.kirchner@alpineweekly.com