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Swiss literary giant Dürrenmatt honoured with special coin

Dürrenmatt silver coin
20-CHF silver coin 2021, "100 years of Friedrich Dürrenmatt" Swissmint

Author and dramatist Friedrich Dürrenmatt will feature on a commemorative silver coin to mark the centenary of his birth.

“By issuing the 20-franc silver coin on the occasion of Friedrich Dürrenmatt’s 100th birthday, Swissmint is honouring this outstanding Swiss writer and artist for his art and literary work,” Switzerland’s official mint said in a statementExternal link on Thursday.

It added that Dürrenmatt was one of the most successful German-language writers – whose works have been translated into over 40 languages. He is most famous for his plays The Visit and The Physicists, and the crime novels The Judge and his Hangman and The Pledge.

Dürrenmatt was born on January 5, 1921 near the Swiss capital Bern and died in 1990 in the western city of Neuchâtel.

Swissmint regularly honours various personalities with commemorative coins. In 2019 tennis icon Roger Federer became the first living person to receive the accolade. Demand was such that the pre-sale of the coin rapidly sold out, and the website crashed.

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